The
term social media is one that has
become very popular in recent years. What it means depends upon whom you ask,
but many would describe it in terms of software and applications like Facebook,
YouTube, Flickr and Google +. Functionality varies, but users are able to post
messages publicly to specific groups, upload files like pictures or video and
note or indicate approval of the latest lolcat mash-up.
Stories
about social media abound in the news – the number of users in a network, the
online petition influencing government policy, the social and economic
implications of these networks and communities.
One very popular category of story is based on estimates of market value
of the leading social media companies. At the time of writing, Twitter has been
valued at $8bn. If this is accurate – and it probably isn’t – it has a market
value equivalent to Marks and Spencer A. These values can go down as
well as up. Myspace, which was bought in 2005 for $600m was sold on in mid-2011
for just $35m B.
Many
of the reasons that these companies are valued so highly are marketing related.
Brand building, customer relations and advertising are all activities for which
social media has a very significant impact – Facebook alone expected
advertising revenue of $4bn in 2011 C. The same is true - doubly
true - of market research. Why is this? Almost regardless of what the users
think the social media platform is for – keeping in contact with friends,
sharing holiday snaps etc – these are, when considered objectively giant
machines for harvesting and processing data about the millions of people that
use them.
So,
if you are a user of [say] Facebook, exactly what sort of information are you
voluntarily handing over? Obviously your name, a contact email address, a list
of friends and acquaintances which you helpfully build up. You probably comment
on things that you did or did not enjoy – and many of those will be product or
service related. You can even ‘like’ brands, companies or organisations that
you feel you have an affinity with. Images of you and your friends in your
native environment. You might take part in opinion polling or an online game. For
all of these and more your actions and contributions are watched, recorded and
analysed. Other social media platforms, like Foursquare, even have you sharing
your location and route.
This
is a level of detail and precision that is extra-ordinary in market research
terms. The volume and quality of data being handed over – free of charge no
less – to these companies is staggering.
No
less significant are the social and cultural implications of these machines.
Many of these focus around the topics of privacy and ownership of data. Here is
something you might not have thought about. When you upload an image of
yourself to share with friends, to whom does it belong? You might assume that it belonged to you.
You’d be wrong. That box you ticked a couple of years ago to indicate your
agreement with the terms and conditions? That was you agreeing that the
ownership of all content you entered or uploaded is transferred away from you
and towards the company supporting the platform.
Here
is a portion of the information section on privacy and use of information from
the Facebook help-pages D – read and think about the implications:
·
We receive data about you
whenever you interact with Facebook, such as when you look at another person's
profile, search for a friend or a Page, click on advert or purchase Facebook
Credits.
·
When you post things like photos
or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata),
such as the time, date and place you took the photo or video.
·
We receive data from the
computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook. This may
include your IP address, location, the type of browser you use or the pages you
visit.
·
We receive data whenever you visit a game,
application or website that uses Facebook Platform or visit a site
with a Facebook feature (such as a social plugin). This may include the date and time you visit the site, the web
address, or URL, you're on, technical information about the IP address, browser
and the operating system you use and, if you are logged in to Facebook, Your
User ID.
·
Sometimes we get data from our
advertising partners and customers that helps us deliver better adverts. For
example, an advertiser may tell us how you responded to an advert on Facebook
or on another site in order to measure the effectiveness of - and improve the
quality of - those adverts.
We also put together data from the information we already
have about you and your friends. For example, we may put together data about
you to determine which friends we should show you in your News Feed or suggest
you tag in the photos you post. We may also put together data about you to
serve you adverts that might be more relevant to you.
When we
receive data about you from our advertising partners and customers, we keep the
data for 180 days. After that, we combine the data with other people's data in
a way that it is no longer associated with you.
These
companies know a lot about you, and one of the ways they make money is by
packaging vast quantities of personal data together and selling it. The
advertising revenue is so great because the people paying for the advertising
feel they have a much better customer
insight into the people that will see the advert. Certainly much better
than the equivalent advert on TV. This is the essence of the how and why of
market research – collecting and processing information about your markets so
that you can make better and more accurate decisions. The value of Myspace
collapsed because the number of users – and hence the flow of data – was
rapidly dwindling.
Worried yet? Even if you are blasé about
the transfer of data from you to commercial organisations, there are perhaps issues you might not
have thought about. Google – who I think we can agree know a thing or two about
collecting and interpreting information – have what is called a Chief
Information Officer, whom I think we can agree knows a lot about collecting and
processing information even by the standards of Google’s workforce. His name is
Eric Schmittt, and he recently suggested that young people would – in the not
too distant future – be offered by their respective governments the chance to change their name when reaching
adulthood in order to create a disconnect between their adult selves and all
the stupid things they had done and made public in their youth E.
We might call that rebranding. Indeed, one
of the reasons that social media is so popular is that it allows users to
define, express and brand themselves. Choices of colour, design, content - such as pictures
selected – these are all branding choices, and they all tell the machine about
you and your preferences. It should be
noted that Google itself is getting into this lucrative game with a platform
called Google +, and by the time you read this you might have an extensive
profile there. That profile will be under your own name, as Google isn’t
allowing online pseudonyms to be used – that would pollute the data as far as
they are concerned F
The
title of this section comes from George Orwell’s book – 1984, and Orwellian is
a term some have associated with this combined technological and social trend. The
most famous phrase from that book is of course ‘Big Brother is watching you’.
To conclude, one example of how this
impacts on you and your future. Microsoft recently surveyed HR managers
globally, asking them what use they made of social media in assessing
candidates for jobs with their organisation. Their findings? The vast majority of HR
recruiters are including information obtained about you from social media
sources in your evaluation G. Still think that photo of you in your
underwear and wearing a stolen traffic cone was a good idea? Oops!
A
This particular news story by Dominic Rushe can be found on the Guardian - www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/02/twitter-valued-8bn-large-investment
there will be a similar story in the next week made available on the news-media
platform of your choice
B A
summary of the life-history of Myplace, and analysis of the reasons behind the collapse
in value are available in the story by Andy Fixmer at www.businessweek.com/news/2011-06-29/news-corp-calls-quits-on-myspace-with-specific-media-sale.html
C A
full report on revenue streams for social media platforms is available at great
expense from the eMarketer website. A summary is free to view at www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Emarketer_2000757.aspx
D
Facebook provides extensive information on privacy related topics. This is
continually updated as legislation and technology evolve. The top of the
section can be found at https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq
E The
story first appeared in the Wall St Journal, but a more accessible version is
available from the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11009700
F For an amusing and insightful take on the
creation and maintenance of online identity, see the Guardian at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/jul/28/google-open-letter-google
G The
report covers a great many issues on or about privacy can be obtained free from
www.microsoft.com/privacy/
