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RSSSo lately, when I hear social networking described as revolutionary, I find my contrarian nature kicking in. I believe that social networking is an evolution, not a revolution. In fact, I was originally going to title this column "Enough Already With the Social Networking," but I realized that was more clever than fair. I don't mean to suggest social networking isn't the bee's knees, nor do I deny that all the kids seem to love the Facebook and the MySpace. Rather, I offer up two somewhat contrarian points of view for your consideration and refutation.
The first: In the U.S., at least, Twitter's explosive growth appears to be slowing.
The second: on Web 2.0, content isn't king.
So here we go.
Twitter growth appears to be slowing.
I know that cable news, reality TV personalities, and professionals in the Internet marketing and social media spaces are all widely embracing Twitter. But diffusion beyond this core set of constituencies, at least compared to the historical adoption curves of MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, appears to have hit a speed bump.
You've probably already seen the Sysomos study on Twitter usage, four months old now but still of interest. At the time they found that 85% of Twitter users posted less than once a day; that 21% had never posted, that 94% had fewer than 100 followers, and -- perhaps most telling -- 5% of users generate 75% of the tweets (Ashton Kutcher and comScore Executive Chairman Gian Fulgoni, I'm looking at you...) Of course, a persuasive argument may be made that following is as important to Twitter as tweeting is, and in that context we should be careful not to evaluate Twitter traction merely by the creation of content, but also by its consumption.
I've noticed that in the circles through which I travel -- generally, old and graying yet still devilishly handsome audience measurement professionals -- attitudes toward Twitter are distinctly binary. One school just doesn't get the point; the other school is entirely energized by this new, cutting-edge technique for jacking right into the real-time zeitgeist of human consciousness a la the Matrix. No one seems to be neutral about Twitter, and that in itself is interesting. I'm on Twitter, but I am unabashedly in the former school. Several of my co-workers, and many of my professional colleagues, are in the latter school.
ComScore's U.S. Media Metrix shows that in December 2008, only 1% of U.S. Internet users visited twitter.com; by June 2009 that penetration had grown over tenfold, to 10.4% -- but, at least with respect to Web site reach, the data show that Twitter penetration has slowed. In July reach was up a comparatively modest half a point, to 10.9%; and in August we actually saw it dip slightly, to 10.6%.
To be fair, Sysomos reported that half of Twitter activity originates offsite through helper applications such as Tweetdeck -- but then, the reach figures I'm quoting are the share of the online population who hit the site at least once from a computer in a month. Even the most avid Tweetdeck users are likely to make at least one visit to the site in a month. (For comparison, Facebook -- now the Big Dog in social networking -- had a reach in Media Metrix of 46.7% of U.S. Internet users in August.)
And too, we're showing Facebook with 22 monthly visits per visitor, and Twitter with 5. Again, that frequency will understate the true Twitter activity because of the phenomenon of posting from off site; but still, the spread is noteworthy.
Perhaps most noteworthy is time spent. In August, we showed twitter.com accruing 533 million total minutes of usage; we showed that web users spend twenty-four times as much time with MySpace, and thirty-two times as much time with Facebook. Again, though, Twitter is probably more like Google than like Facebook with respect to engagement, lending itself to very short interactions as opposed to deeper dives.
Finally, I should point out that most of the avid tweeters I know do much of their tweeting from their phone, and mobile traffic is thus far excluded from Media Metrix. It will be interesting to see what the impact is on Twitter usage (and indeed, on Facebook and MySpace, both with aps on my iPhone) when we can look at the total Twitter universe, including mobile access, via Media Metrix 360. Thus far, though, at least in the U.S., incremental traffic accruing from mobile devices remains quite small for many publishers. Twitter may well be the first significant exception to that rule.
Clearly, Twitter has become indispensible for its avid users. It will be interesting to see how that avidity spreads.
Content isn't king.
What, exactly, is the big difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0? Ultimately I think it comes down to one thing: democratization of content creation. And that is indeed profound. It used to be that large enterprises constructed websites, and you visited them. Now, through platforms like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, through photo-sharing sites and blogging platforms, through product review sites and so on, some of the biggest digital media companies have carved out a soft deal for themselves: now you create the content. They just have to sell the ads.
Marshall McLuhan observed that the content of any new medium is the previous medium; novels provided fodder for film, films became content for TV, off-network reruns became the original content of cable. The content types in Web 2.0 -- videos, photos, conversations, product reviews, even the cyber hook-up -- are, really, the content of Web 1.0. The lone exception, ironically, is the tweet, the 140-character blast of what's-happening-now that populates Twitter and often your status on Facebook -- and is, indeed, the first wholly new content type of Web 2.0. (Of course only a curmudgeon would point out that much of the content of tweeting is linkage to digital versions of traditional media content.) While one of the watchwords of Web 2.0 is UGC (user-generated content), I was creating UGC back in 1999, when I wrote my first Amazon review (5 stars for Lucinda Williams.)
At comScore, we've tracked the rise in popularity of social networking around the world. In the U.S., since we began breaking out the category separately in July of 2007, time spent by Americans with Social Networking has increased 35%. Globally, Social Networking reach is up 17% in August year over year, and time spent is up 26%; in August 2009 we projected that over two thirds of the world's 1.2 billion Internet users visited a social Networking site.
But at the same time, we've also tracked a commensurate decline of the community and personals categories. The fabric of these categories hasn't died; people are still forming communities, seeking out others with similar interests, even finding dates and playmates online. They're just doing it through social networking platforms. The digital milieu for the activities and content types has shifted.
But if the content of Web 2.0 is not really new, the passing of control is profound. In moving from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, we have realigned the tools and content types around the consumer. We've put the consumer in control, made 300 million copies of the keys to the kingdom and made them available for free download.
So why don't I think this is a revolution? Because revolutions are violent, turbulent, and often unsuccessful; whereas evolution is natural, orderly, and inexorable, and involves adaptation and alignment around shifting environments. And that describes the migration to web 2.0, and the emergence of social networking, to a T.
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As far as the evolution goes, I think you're on to something when you say that the ability to follow someone (offline I think we call it stalking) is perhaps Twitter's most powerful feature. Think of how Twitter has changed the rules of relationships with that and you'll see that there is the potential for something very big here. This idea of viral relationship building (following followers of others) is what Facebook and MySpace look at and get really jealous about. They're stuck in the model of making relationships the old fashioned way: through trust and experience. Twitter has created a sandbox where those rules are mitigated by technology and people are liking it because they know everyone else is (or should be) playing by the same rules. In this sense, I think the comparisons between Twitter and Facebook are less valid than those between Twitter and another phenomenon that changed the way we relate to each other: eBay. You can't deny that eBay is a revolution. Tens of thousands of people make their primary living from it now on a global basis. Twitter has all sorts of options for expanding based on the viral relationship model it has created. Sure, now it's 140-character updates, but the viral social model has all sorts of potential for other things, too.
To hold up the micro blog tweet as the defining output or currency of "social media" is a superficial critique of the new medium. And to mis-guess why content is or isn't central to all this further belies a (sorry!) pretty newbie view of the shuddering ground shifting beneath our feet. We kid, because we love...
I too was there during disco and mostly stuck with Patty, the Pistols, Buzzcocks etc. But I'm still paying at least enough attention to recognize that what happens to content - videos, apps, music tracks, articles, widgets, links, search ads, pictures etc - when you set it loose across the wild and amorphous territory of the socnets (and puh-leeze, i am NOT talking about Facebook...) - is enough to make even the most jaded amongst us keep our dancing shoes shined and ready to lace.
Whilst pragmatism has its place so does seemingly blind faith in new (OK, to the sceptics not entirely new) channels. After all what would the VC's and angel investors do without some thing new to justify their leading edge plays which, in turn, supports digital progress.
My only problem with Josh Chasin's article is that he broke the rule and actually accepted Disco into his life.
Beyond that, insofar as social media participation is concerned, I wonder what the numbers will look like when the economy begins to, for lack of a better turn of phrase, "happen again?" Will involvement fall off simply for lack of time.
You have to remember today people overall have in some ways more time on their hands due to business falling off, unemployment, an urge to do more online for the sake of brand awareness, etc. etc. and these things are all tremendously time consuming. This isn't to say that the medium is going away, I don't think so, but I've seen the numbers hitting my blog go way up in both August and September....these are unique visitors through Google search. My observation is that there are larger reasons than the pure love of social media underlying the increase in traffic.
What say you?
In fact, I believe that is how Khloe Kardashian decides each day if this skirt goes with these shoes...
Our chairman, Gian Fulgoni, who helped me craft this column, is a big Twitter fan. He has mastered Twitter, and I'd refer you here to see how: http://cindymilleratl.com/blog/2009/10/09/introduce-yourself/
I've since come to see that Twitter is extremely versatile and there are a lot of "right" uses. For me, it's easier than using email, is arranged to find relevant content quickly and gives me control over what I'm seeing. Rather than "what are you doing now," perhaps Twitter's mantra should be "what would you do with 140 characters?"
http://www.quisenblog.com www.twitter.com/mickeylonchar