by Matthew Hodgson
July 14, 2009 at 6:30 pm
· Filed under social media
What are people actually doing when it comes to using social media?
Recently, noted social media evangelist and strategist Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research suggested that the reason Friendfeed was not taking off was because it relied on the “least used behaviour” in social media roles — the Collector.
Forrester neatly categorises the behavioural roles people adopt when using the web today:
- Creator — Publish a blog/web page, upload music and video
- Critic — Post ratings or a product, comment on a blog, contribute to a forum, edit a wiki
- Collector — Use RSS, vote for websites, add tags
- Joiner — Maintain a profile on a social media website, visit networking sites
- Spectator — Read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch video, read forums and ratings
- Inactive — None of the above
Even while [adult] Collector behaviour has increased over the last few years that Forrester have examined what people do online, the frequency of Collector behaviour is still very low as a proportion of all behavioural profiles.
The pattern of behaviour is similar in Australia with Collectors forming only 16% of online adult population in 2008. That is, approximately 11% or 1.8 million of the 16.3 million Australians 18 years or older [1].
The lesson for Friendfeed and other social media projects? Famed social media commentator, Robert Scoble, suggests that a range of issues are at fault with Friendfeed’s approach to market, from unknowns in monetisation to no brand and no hype. Jeremiah’s comment, though, reminds us that there’s more to social media than just a solid marketing strategy. Ultimately, understanding people’s behaviour in online environments is a first important step in formulating a social media strategy — whether with clients and stakeholders or even within the organisation as a step toward Enterprise 2.0
M
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1. Source: Analysis of ABS cat no. 8146.0 and ABS cat no.3201.0
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18 Tweets
Sadie wrote @ July 15th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Nice post, very informative. Its suprising that there are more “spectators” than there are “creators”. Why do you think this is the case?
Sadie: Nice name of your blog, I am Socialicious. I think it always will be more “lurkers” than “creators”. It takes time, energy and effort to create a blog and keep it going. And then you have spectators that will become creators eventually. I think almost everyone starts with reading blogs, before starting one. The question is how the first blog came about… 
Matthew Hodgson, I am reading the Groundswell book at the moment. Fascinating reading. So, what do you think is the main difference between Twitter and FriendFeed? I use a FriendFeed widget on my EGO blog, collecting different streams (blog posts, Twitter tweets, FriendFeed messages, Tumblr posts, etc.) into one lifestream.
Thanks for the pointer to the Forrester research. A recent post from NYC based VC Fred Wilson makes interesting reading in parallel: http://snurl.com/ncsc8
Wilson writes about “Active Users and Online Retailing” . He makes the case for “focus on making users active first and foremost and give them a lot of things they can do on your website beside transact. By doing that you increase the number of monthly visits and therefore the total amount of potential transactors.”
And further to Martin’s response regarding “lurkers and creators” I recall reading in Yochai Benkler’s “Wealth of Networks” about the relatively small number of people who actively contribute to Wikipedia versus the numer of readers. I can’t find the reference but in a 2005 Business Week 2005 interview with Wikiepedia founder Jimmy Wales http://snurl.com/ncul7 indicates:
“The number I like to talk about is the number of very active editors — those that do the bulk of the work. As of October, there were about 1,850 for the English version of Wikipedia, and 4,573 worldwide. We don’t know how many unique users visit the site because we’re lame and don’t keep track of it — we don’t sell advertising, so we don’t have to. But we get about 2.5 billion page views per month”
If anyone has more recent Wikipedia particpation numbers please share.
Jenny,
I think that the 80/20 rule – Pareto principle is at work again!
New Post “Social Media Stats: Who is doing what?” http://bit.ly/rhJbS
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magia3e wrote @ July 14th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
new app gap post “social media stats: who is doing what” http://bit.ly/rhJbS
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RT @magia3e: new app gap post “social media stats: who is doing what” http://bit.ly/rhJbS – including cautionary note for Friendfeed
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Reading: Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? | The AppGap http://ow.ly/hhWo
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Reading: Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? | The AppGap http://ow.ly/hhX1
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eclasper wrote @ July 14th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
RT @servantofchaos: Reading: Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? | The AppGap http://ow.ly/hhX1
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RT @servantofchaos: Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? | The AppGap http://ow.ly/hhX1
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veloce wrote @ July 15th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? http://ff.im/-5fqho
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lyceum wrote @ July 15th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Reading “Social Media Stats: Who is doing what?” @TheAppGap http://bit.ly/rhJbS
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naro wrote @ July 16th, 2009 at 2:29 am
Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? http://ff.im/-5hYES
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billives wrote @ July 16th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? http://bit.ly/gXv6P
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RT @BillIves Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? http://bit.ly/gXv6P
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retwitd wrote @ July 16th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
[1 retweets] Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? http://bit.ly/gXv6P: billives: Social Media Stats: Who is do.. http://bit.ly/qvEkH
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gr8 analysis re using social media @the appgap http://bit.ly/rhJbS
#futureofwork #virtualwork
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gr8 analysis re using social media @theappgap http://bit.ly/rhJbS #futureofwork #virtualwork
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EHayen wrote @ July 17th, 2009 at 12:23 am
“Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? | The AppGap” http://bit.ly/l1ynk
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Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? http://bit.ly/xr5QT
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pdegraw wrote @ July 22nd, 2009 at 6:32 am
Social Media Stats: Who is doing what? http://bit.ly/xr5QT
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