DigitalAgency

BigMouthMedia's Social Work:

I was a bit grumpy yesterday.

To cheer myself up I had a really good cull of my subscriptions to online newsletters, raggedy feeds, and followers/rubbishy mailers/pokers/and shabby app pushers on some of my social networks etc. (Always makes me feel a bit better, a bit less inundated, a bit 'lighter'.)

One of the newsletters I hit unsubscribe to was from Search specialists BigMouthMedia.

(No offence to the quality and regularity of the newsletter, more a realisation that I'm increasingly time poor and rarely get round to reading many email newsletters nowadays. (And as someone so sagely said recently, "If stuff is really important, it finds me anyways, through some channel or other".)

Soon after hitting 'unsubscribe' in my mail reader, I got a really nice email back from BMM's Head of Search; Andrew Girdwood.

Not only was this response a terrific social gesture, un-automated, personal and lighting-fast, but it also let me know that I could, as alternative, follow BMM on Twitter.

Which I did immediately.

If only more online brands were as switched on, pro-active and social as BigMouthMedia.

Whereas my experience has been that too many vendors of online solutions, (including ad agencies, digital agencies, social media 'experts' etc) are increasingly being infiltrated by spivvy chancers jumping on a currently convenient social bandwagon. Names and details withheld. But in the dark watches of the night, you know who you are.

(Oh dear, I must still have a bit of the grumps lingering from yesterday. Better wrap it here.)

Creationism:

I've been having a conversation on another site recently about user participation on/in social networks.

Discussing how many people actively contribute or passively observe, with a particular interest in the proportion/percentage who upload original content, or mainly contribute via comments/uploading existing work, or are happy to simply lurk/read only?

And why, you may ask, do I ask?.

Well, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities, (and I hasten to add, this isn’t a rant or finger-pointing exercise). Rather, it's a genuine inquiry into user involvement here.

In the early days of most SN's, there seemed to be a surge of enthusiasm to create, contribute and upload here. (Early adopter syndrome?)

However the traffic seems to ultimately degenerate into the; ‘Member A is friends with Member B’, or Member A joins Group C,' or 'here's another mindless music/lookylike/cute cat picture widget that I have figured out how to embed', variety.

All well and good, if that's what floats your boat, but it does seem to confirm the 1/9/90 principle I've been reading about recently. (Also known as the 1% rule.)

It postulates, (oh dear, dipping into the new meeja, stripey Paul Smith shirt, lexicon again), that 1/9/90 % of social media users split into create/contribute/lurk camps.

Much of the theory comes from research covering social spaces like YouTube and the much-respected Jakob Nielsen.

(I’ve personally always taken JN’s pronouncements with a large pinch of salt, but amongst the sodium you can often find a few gems.)

And more importantly, he does adopt a killer look. See below. One which I am sincerely considering emulating:

But I digress, again, and steer myself back to the question, 'Do enough people contribute enough original content on social networks?

Or is the majority happy to let a small, often unpaid percentage, carry most of the creative weight? 

 

Footnote,

Perhaps it’s ROT thing for some?

In addition to Return On Investment, we now live in the era of ROT, Return On Time.

With a whole bunch of social 'outlets' to express ourselves in words, pictures, films and bookmarks: Writing a comment here and there, or cutting together a little movie, posting a tweet, embedding stuff in Google Maps etc, not only takes time to generate for the benefit of others social spaces, but it also consumes/steals time and content from some of our other, perhaps more ‘mainstream’ social channels.

For example, I’m posting less on my business blog, and it’s suffering because I now divert time in my day to a new, business-focussed social network in my neck of the woods. (Willing, and happily of course.)

And where I fall along the 1/9/90 continiuum could be to do with the fact that I’ve got far too much time on my hands, (but my diary, wife and local publican says otherwise), it maybe that most people on social networks are too busy earning a living to contribute more.

I’d be interested in your reaction, your views, and opinions in how we can encourage more creationists.

And if indeed we need to.

Or if we're content to recycle and repackage existing content. (Which in itself is no bad thing, if it’s work unseen by the community before.)

My guess is it’s a combo of both new and old.

With a bit more of an emphasis and boost to the new.

Cake:

Someone on a social network I spend a fair amount of time on, reminded me yesterday of a brilliant spoof on Brass Eye a few years back.

The Cake film if you haven't seen it, is utterly, utterly wonderful.

Any script that can get Rolf Harris to say: "Joss Ackland's Spunky Backpack", or Noel Edmonds to say "It stimulates part of the brain called 'Shatner's Bassoon'." get my attention, vote and fandom.

Have a look here:
(And weep. With laughter, or in frustration and envy at such brilliance.)