Analytophilia, Analytophobia and Social Media Weather Forecasting

I was introduced to a new word today. Analytophilia. I love it. Analytophilia is the addiction to (or love of) checking how connected you are in social media: - how many tweets, DMs, facebook contacts, Linkedin connections and comments on your status, or others. This is a world where agoraphobics feel safe, but can also feel really social, without leaving their desk or iPhone (and entering the physical agora or marketplace).

I’d add another term. Analytophobia. This is the fear that your analytics would reveal, with cruel accuracy, that you’re a ‘nobody’, - not even a ‘somebody’ in the digital sphere. This would lead the sufferer to fear the login, like pressing the answerphone button and hearing ‘You have NO new messages’ too often. It’s not good for the old ego Sir. Time to join an online role-play game (MMORPG), like World of Warcraft. They’ll fix the fragile ego in a jiffy because anyone will play with anyone, and they do so in their millions.

Analytophilia and Analytophobia are, in fact, two sides of the same digitally mediated psychological coin, like pride and shame. Welcome to the Sociology of Social Media Emotion.

There are important implications for businesses which need to figure online, and have figures to prove it, in the growing cloud of online social buzz. There are loads of ways of doing it... if you know how and have the time to do the reporting and tracking, and sifting and monitoring. Trying to do it without the right tools to hand and operatives to use them, is like buying a pile of hammers and saws and nails and trying to build a house. You might actually succeed in building a hut of sorts, which will keep the rain out for a while. But you’ll never build a house or a good one at least. And think of the time, and injuries; and it might fall down in a storm! That’s when you call the likes of my good self (shameless plug). Yes we can! (Bob the builder, not Obama)

Prediction/observation: The net, and all communication is, and will be, driven by data, and those who can handle data and present it in a beautiful, simple, meaningful and actionable fashion... will always be busy.

It’s strange to admit, but I love numbers and the challenge of becoming a social media weather forecaster because weather is interesting, and the language of weather is taking over the language of surfing and sea that haunted the web since its nascent beginnings (from surfing and waves to clouds etc). And did you know that the biggest computers were built, partially, to handle the billions of computations necessary to predict the weather? Eniac for example. That chaos theory arose out of the big shift in weather prediction shown because of a few decimal points being omitted? Physics, maths and the computing that facilitated them were largely driven by the simple need to know what the weather is likely to do next. Well, now is the time for the Social Weather and forecasting, and the computing is being done already, but not by one machine, by the cloud of users and their computers. Businesses and people need to know the temperature outside, before they leave the building.

The driving equation and goal for social media: -

(messages ↑, efficiency↑, news/information/gossip ↑,freedom/mobility ↑, work/life-balance ↑) = (time spent↓)

The online clouds, (word of mouth/public opinion) are moved by the seas (offline people whose opinions (temperature) move much slower, but they hold their opinions for much longer). The net is a much more promiscuous, impatient and ephemeral space than the real world. Always has been. Within the clouds there can be hurricanes (like when MJ died), smaller storms, (#Lisbon2), and little squalls (#Luas). The online activity, in a storm, can strike offline public opinion like a bolt of lightning too, when the fact of the online news being so busy has a huge impact on the news of traditional media, and ALL public opinion (reflexively). The weather is also driven by the medium (the air, or platform (PC/iPhone/Facebook/twitter), and the sun (the Internet connection).

OK. The analogy is getting tired. But, it might still be useful.

In short! What can be done with this? Well, we can:

• Monitor social media: Any topic, issue, group, industry category, sector... whatever. This includes forums, blogs, YouTube, twitter and news sites. We can graph, present, analyse and output for you and yours
• Put scale on the storm: how big, how busy, how powerful, who’s involved
• Forecast: where it’s likely to go next. How big it’s likely to get
• Take part: setting up a social media portal/outlet for your business, and maintaining it
• Alert you: When the unhappy or unruly come knocking at the door of the office.
• Give you an Umbrella: Protecting you with online PR advice and provision

So, don’t be afraid of the Social Media weather. Let us give you the forecast and provide you with an umbrella!