Social Media - Constantly changing enviroment. Be prepared!

In their article Users of the world, unite! (Business Horizons Jan-Feb 2010) A. Kaplan and M. Haenlein are providing a classification for the concept of Social Media and giving 10 hints and tips for companies to take advantage of it.

The classification is done by reflecting Social Media towards the characteristics and definitions of User Generated Content and Web2.0. To further define the concept Kaplan and Haenlein are sorting Social Media services by the axis of social presence and self presentation. They eventually come up with six different types of Social Media; collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds.

It is understandable to simplify the reality by such a strict splitting, but in the dynamic field of Social Media it may be a bit misleading. The separate services are all tangled up with each other in many ways. Also it might be difficult for the users to separate their behavior. People are blogging using youtube and sharing the content eventually through FB or Twitter. This kind of multiplatform behavior is already difficult to explain by the six types that Kaplan and Haenlein are suggesting.

People are using the services all of the time in different and differing ways; in ways that those could not be expected to be used. For example the behavior on Facebook is changing rapidly. People are somewhat fed up with each other's self-disclosure, blocking good-day-friends and using the platform for more meaningful knowledge sharing. This in mind, a static model on the types of Social Media might not be all that accurate in a long run.

Talking about the need to disclosure... Earlier on I wrote about the need for people to express themselves in a creative manner. Reflecting to that, Kaplan’s and Haenlein’s model with the self-presentation / self-disclosure axis is really interesting. It will be exciting to see what will happen for that behavior in the near future. I see the beginning of the Social Media era in the early 2000’s as through Myspace and etc. it came popular for Average Joe to present himself in public. My presumption is that already in the near future the services that are based for high self-presentation with light content will either fade away or find new ways of providing value. As said earlier, people are exhausted sharing all the thoughts that run through their minds. More than that people are tired to read other’s nonsense. Self-disclosure with heavy content, such as topic related blogs and serious creativity will remain, for sure.

Kaplan and Haenlein write about reflecting one’s identity in the Social Media presence. It is interesting to think, how the real-life environment would be if people really were like their Social Media appearance. Most people would be dream-in-laws, extremely fit and beautiful, constantly cooking fine dining meals for spouse and friends. Some would just be drunk and wasted spending their time most likely already at Piritori.

Amsterdam – The Reach for the New Dimensions

The MediaBizLab study trip to Amsterdam was somewhat a success. Workshops, business visits and the time spent together provided plenty of extremely interesting and useful new things and thoughts. Here are the ones that I’ve been pondering ever since the trip.

1.     What’s your story? What’s our story?

Usually the ones who have managed to create a rich and multidimensional story around the idea concept are the ones to meet the success. A good story doesn’t offer any shortcuts but might be one of the key elements.

I got to say that I’ve been quite skeptic about the storytelling aspect. There is a big danger that the story is just pasted weakly on the top of a stand-alone concept. What if the stumble was avoided by crowdsourcing or even opensourcing the story. Give your customers or a community a ticker to play with, a prologue to the story and see what they come up with. Take some bits and pieces of what they’ve done, develop it maybe a bit further and give it back to the customers. The results should be a story that is written through the customers’ eyes, and thus will engage them. The whole process is engaging itself too.

2.       The publishers are just following the markets

There is no difference for the publishers whether the platform for the content is Nokia, Samsung, HTC or Apple. They just follow the needs of customers. Currently Apple and IPad are obviously the hot words on everyone’s lips. The current situation is quite easy to handle for R&D, but we’ll see what happens if the device/platform field will be more fragmented in the future.

3.       The rhythm of IPad

The studies show that people grab their tablet the first thing in the morning and give it a good night kiss  just before going to sleep. What are they doing? What are their information needs in the both ends of the day? What if the applications would take the time of the day in consideration and provide morning-content and night-content?

4.       Fold your towel outwards

Most of us fold the towel towards body after taking a bath in order to wrap it tightly on the hips. This is absolutely the wrong way of doing it. Fold the rim outwards and the wrap will be tighter than you would’ve ever dared to wish. This was an eye-opening lesson and something that I will carry with me to the very end.

5.       Elderly – the heavy users of tablets?

It seems that elderly people have very well found the possibilities of the tablets. This is significant as they are the ones that never really found their ways online. The behavior of aged consumers is something worth of researching as their needs and conventions differ significantly from the younger generation. It is fairly easy and natural to study the behavior of people that one currently is that was. None of the young researchers have ever been old and thus the potential of researching elderly might not be observed or taken seriously.