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!

Is Social Media a Fad?

It seems not.

Moore Street on the Net. The Trader Segment of Netizen will Grow in Importance

A recent segmentation I ran on Internet behaviour showed several groups.

Dolittles (6%): This group don’t do much and could be termed low intensity Internet users. They report that they all use the Internet for email and chat and they will use all of the other Internet categories, but much less often than the other groups.

Media Consumers (31%): These are the consumers of net content in all its forms, and from all form of traditional media online (RTE, Irish Times, Sky etc), so I’ve called them the media net. Yes, but they’re net surfers with a purpose rather than aimless geeks enjoying the beauty of things digital. This group will go to read news of all sorts. They’ll be financially savvy and are well educated. They also have good jobs and incomes too. These use the net as an information resource and a career enhancing tool to aid decision making and economic communication.

Networkers (8%): Perhaps once considered the ‘sad’, depressive net addicts this group is now recognized as a growing segment of net activity, and they’re using the net tool to help extend their overt social nature... (or over compensated social phobia) and they love it.

These are the group who are into chatting and networking. They like to be linked and bring on the buzz of chit chat and juicy gossip. Yes, more girls in this group, but only just. They like chat, user generated content, bulletin boards and dating. These are the net socialites who get their fix of friendships and talk online.

I think this group are especially important as the trend towards a more digitally mediated social existence and staying in contact with ‘everyone you ever knew’ to feel part of the community is a strong one. It may just be a new stage in reaching maturity, or feed into broader psychological needs, but its there and will only become more prevalent in society and persistent in nature.

At an extreme, it gets silly. Is someone with 14 contacts less happy or socially or economically adept than someone with 100? Or 500? Doubt it, and studies would indicate that 50 is the max number of relationships people can handle at all. (For Lions its 30). Business contacts may be different of course and it will be quality not quantity that is important there too. Get this for a wheeze. There’s a cheat on Bebo so you can pretend you have 100s of friends. (Hope there’s one for LinkedIn L)

Mappers, Restaurants and Cars (42%): Then, there are those who use the net for restaurants, car trading and maps.

They might use email, but the net hasn’t impacted on this group socially or economically at all really. These tend to be older men who perhaps don’t have the time or the need to be chatting to their peers who aren’t that net savvy anyway. The net makes sense to them when they can print off a map or a timetable, but the rest of the stuff? Well, really! It’s more for the kids isn’t it, though he doesn’t understand what exactly it is that they do when they do it. But, he’s (as it typically a he) is proud of his net connectedness nevertheless. This group you won’t see on the web that much really except for newspapers, Google and main stream media.

Traders (13%): This is the group that are the main focus of this post. These use the Internet like an ATM... a ticketing machine for flights, banking and shopping. Functional stuff. 13% of Internet users are in this distinct group. Doing things without having to queue for less money, or when they need to upgrade their phone.

But, within this group are those that use eBay and Classifieds. The tech savvy ‘trotter’s independent traders’ of the great web boot sale in the ether. This is one of the most important sectors to Ireland Internet economy. The invisible spivs, the attic hunter gatherers, the ebayerati.

What exemplifies this group from the others is their need to make money from the net rather than spend time on it or buy things on it, though they will be include those who do. They ‘make’ money either in savings on goods purchased in other markets, or by selling and trading. And, I think in the current economic climate, this group is set to grow...

eBay consider people to be basically honest, and they’ve been proven right. Yes, there are always some people who’ll try to sell fake goods, but we don’t blame the platform, but rather the seller, and that’s the way it should be.

For example, I’ve always known that if I buy a €5 watch when I’m on holiday in Tunisia and it turns out not to be a real Rolex it’s totally my fault for being such a mean muppet – thinking I can take the piss in a third world country and even haggling him down from €20 and thinking I was clever. God, I so deserved it. (‘Wanna buy Rolex, Tag, Swatch? Reel Gold! Verry good price for you my friend. You Ireesh? My Mother she ees Ireesh. I write letter to her in Ireesh.’ And I thought I had the upper hand. what was I thinking?)

No, there’s is no such thing as a free lunch. And, the same applies online. But, on the other hand I also know that there are good carpets to be bought in Turkey, or art, or whatever, so I’ll have few qualms about taking that risk. eBay is a bit like that for me. Great bargains for the discerning purchaser. It’s just like the real world. There are millions of things to buy online, if you look and it doesn’t take long with a little practice. eBay should be a primary port of call before you shell out full whack for new goods with all the VAT attached. Very often, the only difference between an eBay purchase and a retail one is the box and Styrofoam it’s packed in, and even that can be an inconvenience to get rid of. Then there are tickets, brand new goods, antiques and all sorts of stuff you will only be able to buy online - if you look that is.

There’s a new breed of Irish seller to join the street sellers of Moore’s Street and Camden Street, and they’re waiting with their wares to sell to the highest bidder on the net.

This group don’t look like traders though. They are homemakers, women with kids, men who look for car parts online, fixers, menders and make doers. Oh, and a few petty crooks of course. These are the people who keep the family budget ticking over and make sure the car gets the kids to school. These are the head down and work hard bunch and these are the group I think are kind of recession proof, philosophically speaking anyway. It’ll be hard alright but they’ll manage, and if they don’t remember a recession themselves, their parents and grandparents won’t waste any time in reminding them.

And finally, I think we should all take a leaf out of the philosophy of the net trader. For the giant Irish middle class there’s no shame in saving money in Lidl any more is there. It’s a competition for how much you’ve saved, rather than being concerned about how much you have to spend. And to sell and trade things you don’t have to have a stall on the main street and the voice of 10,000 Woodbines - it can be done from your front room. I think it’ll catch on.

And Finally...

And finally, though these groups add up to 100% they are not ‘discrete’ groups. They cross over each other and almost all use email and Google etc to some extent (there are those that don’t believe it or not). So, there will always be exceptions, that is, groups that don't fit into these bands, but these groups represent a statistically valid generality with whatever insight that can provide. If you know a find a different group not described above they may reside within one of mine, or the Dolittles, or they are just new, or strange. Or indeed, they maybe have been so niche the weren't picked up by my sample. Gamers, for example, are omitted, and they are becoming steadily more important. But, they fall between stools in my breakdown... somewhere between social networks and chatters including behaviours of both. Why do they fall between stools? Well, because the stats told me they did. And, what does that mean? Well, if you think about it gaming is a social communicative practice after all, but there is no typical ‘gamer’ behaviour online on sites other than gaming sites that differentiates the gamer, as a type of Internet user, from the others. In other words, gamers are normal, just like the rest of us or there’s a gamer in all of us. Gamers don't use the web any differently to the rest of us... at least not yet with any statistical significance anyway. That will probably change in the coming years.

But tell me what you think? Do you know some groups that need exploration? Is there more to this than meets my eye? Let me know. I always listening, very interested and keen to learn.

And in the meantime why not get an eBay account and check it out. You know you want to and you could maybe save a bundle! J

Stacked Media Consumption with Internet Protocol

Picture the scene.  Person sits at the TV, some music station, with significant other who’s playing a game on Xbox with the headphones on.  The mobile is on the arm of the chair, and the laptop on the lap.  (S)he is downloading music, transferring them to the iPod on the iPhone while checking the Bebo page, changing the flashbox for the new Kaiser Chiefs vid, answering mails, (emails that is) and scribbling on the wall (on the social network, not the actual wall.  OK?)  (S)he also uploads some pics from the night before that a mate MMSed to the public email account. (S)he got them on the phone that night ffs.  What a laugh.  Select list: Friends: Send.  Then, they’re done.  She waits till he’s killed and then shuts the lappy, kills the telly but hits record for later and the partner stops and drops the console on the shelf.  They head off for a walk by the sea, hand in hand, sharing the newly downloaded album, one earpiece each. Ahhh.  Sweet.

This is a true story, it really happened, just the other day, and just like I told it.  But what does it tell us?  It tells me that the way we see media consumption is totally out of date.  Radio.. one measurement.  One type of consumption... ¼ hours.  TV... one measurement... OTSs.  Newspaper... One measurement and daily slots.  And, then comes the Internet.  Don’t get me started.  Other non-Internet media see their consumption in a vacuum.  You are watching TV, and not doing anything else, like reading the newspaper, or checking your emails, or texting, or having the radio on at the same time.  As if we are back in the 1950s when whole families would sit around and listen to the wireless because it was the only medium in the house.  Those days were over in the 1950s

But now all of these media can be delivered over IP, and it doesn’t matter what physical client was used to deliver the message.  It is just media consumption.  Not Internet.  Not audio-visual.  Not multi-modal.  If it’s news, it’s not TV news or radio news or newspaper news.  Though it might be each of these.  And what is Internet news exactly?  All of the above?  It’s just news....  The barrier between the different delivery vehicles for the message have got so blurred, they’re largely irrelevant. 

Worked example: Let’s think of TV news.  TV over the TV, or the TV on the PC streamed or podcasted, or recorded TV, which isn’t the same as Video or DVD or PVR or PPV.  Is it WiFi?  Ariel on the house? Cable?  3G? Broadband? Or is it good old analogue, with rabbit’s ears sitting on the top of the box as we use in Galway three channel-land (one is in Irish though L).  And what about TV over the iPlayer, or TV news on my 3G iPhone.  It that no longer TV?  You say potayto, I say potahto.  You say it’s TV, I say it’s mobile video 3G news content from RTE.ie with text and video delivered over my local WiFi broadband hotspot for free. Oh, and I went to irish-times.com as well and sent a webtext.  Ah, let’s call the whole thing off! 

Does it matter?  Does it make me different if I have a different way of receiving the message?  Does it make the message different?  Em... No.  It doesn’t.

The truth is that all of the different delivery mechanics for the TV news are getting confused with the physical boxes used to consume them, the signals and codes they are communicated in, the methods of paying for them, the way they are watched – recorded or live and where they are watched – stationary, on the move, work, home, car etc...  So confused, they are almost un-researchable, and un-countable.... unless they are all over IP.  And, in a short time, this will be the case.  IP can tell if the TV content consumer is mobile, interactive, recorded or downloaded, or pay per view because IP all comes from servers, with ads and creative’s that are requested, sent and tracked, counted and billed.  It isn’t simple stuff mind.  The exact opposite in fact.  But IP will win out in the end of the day, because IP knows what is requesting the content, where, and in what form.  IP is the only ‘it’ that knows this.  Analogue will never know it.  DAB, digital audio band, knows it, because it too is digital and IP(ish).  IP doesn’t know everything, but it knows a lot.

So.  Questions:  What is the Internet?  What is on the Internet?  What is it used for?  Where is it used?  What about people consuming Internet and other media at the same time?  Well, these are all kind of the wrong questions.  The Internet isn’t a thing, like TV, or radio or a newspaper.  It’s a vehicle for things like TV, radio and newspapers, and a whole lot more, like social nets, email and phone calls.  When we measure the Internet what do we count?  Answer: The lot.

The truth is that it is possible to measure what media people consume, even if they consume lots of different media at the same time, but, we’ll have to do it in a whole new way.  Not with the existing structures of national media measurement, because these are out-moded and obsolete, and imply a way of living that isn’t the case anymore.  They are pre-digital.  They also imply nationally bounded media consumption, something that hasn’t existed now for many years and will never exist again.  Sadly, this is also the rationale behind the Joint National Internet Measurement, as if the Internet were a nationally bounded entity rather than being something that contains all of the other media, and is global.  It’s kind of the whole point of the net I would have thought.

Anyway.  Back to my two friends.  The modern media consumers.  Well, they don’t care about any of this stuff.  Music?  Free.  Video? Well there’s online, TV, iPhone, iPod, Video Pod, laptop, PC, Cinema, DVD, PVR, SkyBox, iPlayer.... and who cares.  News is just news, whether it’s print, on paper, or on a screen, or aertel, or a text, on the RTE website, or a newspaper site, or an RSS newsfeed, or an email subscription, or a paper flyer.... and again, who cares.  They don’t.  But they do care about the news, and sometimes they even know where they’ve seen it, but that isn’t the point.  They don’t say, I saw the new Kaiser Chiefs video on the analogue TV the other day.  They say they saw the new video.  They say ‘did you hear the news’, and often don’t remember where they heard it, exactly... because they were doing loads of other things at the same time, and it doesn’t matter where you heard it, as long as you heard it.  The delivery mechanic, the medium... isn’t the messag.e in a digital world.

So, we need to start counting messages, not media, and then work backward and infer, with probability the medium they were consumed on, by, for example, counting the media that a person has access to, and their propensity to use them.  And what happens to measurement then?  Audiences increase hugely for content, but maybe individual media audiences are vulnerable, because maybe, in truth, they are dropping.  This is the case for newspapers for example.  In the fullness of digital time we’ll know more about the media used when we look at IP.  We won’t know everything but we’ll know a lot more than we do right now and it will stack up.  And, when the content is consumed, over IP, from servers, will be able to track where it’s consumed, and measure the efficacy of the broadcast... just like we do in Internet land every day.  Simple (kinda).

Publishing 2.0

What's publishing, or journalism, when the reader is also the writer, publisher, editor and marketer. Publishing 2.0? It’s very confused… that’s for sure. When I was at college, I was taught that there were basically two directions to any communication. First the sender creates a message, and passes it to the receiver, and then the receiver becomes the sender and a new message goes back, often acknowledging receipt and comprehension of the first message. However, for mass media, those with the power are those who can disseminate messages to large numbers of people, who are not able, or permitted, to publish for themselves, either to the population, or the media provider. The history of human social communication, as far back as you can go, can be seen massive imbalance on the first one-directional message: - from the powerful media owner, the owner of the pyramid, or printing press, and recently, the traditional medium; tv, radio, newspapers - to the people, the audience, the readership. There's been little if any communication back. Well, that’s over. The imbalance is rapidly being redressed online, in a remarkably civilized anarchy.

It's what I'm calling Publishing 2.0; a logical enough name for online Web 2.0 blogging, writing, publishing etc. It is blogs, Wikis, Usenet, bulletin boards, torrents and all the rest. And that’s just in the publishing direction. Links, search engine submissions and spidering, tags n diggs, anchor text, references and quotes... That’s both the marketing and advertising, and the ‘audience-to –publication’ direction. This − ‘letting the audience speak back’, is a long way from ‘letters to the editor’. It's user generated buzz marketing. In fact, for many, this has become the whole point. You can speak to the publisher, and in doing so have your comments published, in real time, and then maybe start your own blog, linking the original publisher of the first blog, and so it continues. The blogs can be about anything, and everything. A colleague recently told me about ‘arseblog’: the blog of an arsenal fan. It is one of the most popular blogs in the UK at present. It has an impressive readership, and no doubt, an equally impressive earning from advertising on-site. Publishing 2.0 can be diverse. There can be publications with a tech nature, communicative actions spaces − calling people to make a change in government or in the world, or just vanity blogs, with pics of me and my cat who happens to look like Hitler.

The old media concepts need an upgrade, or a least a few qualifying patches. I can still hear a voice at the back whispering ‘sure that’s only online stuff. That only affects Internet users’. Well, you're right at the back, except for the tone of voice, and the word 'only'. Online news would be simple to pigeon-hole and put aside, if it weren't for the fact that it is so popular and pervasive. Online, to me, infers a connected, dynamic, multi-platform, efficiently marketable, infinetly archiveable and searchable (and findable) space. So yes..., it is online. That’s the point. That’s why you should take notice. It’s not on a CD, or Disk, or in some Library’s Opac system. It’s online. It’s free, it’s cool, it’s excellently efficient, and its here to stay.

It’s also so much more fun than the way it used to be. And, it was not in a good place. I will never forget the news of the 80s and 90s… looking at the excellent but skinny bearded face of Michael Murphy in a brown suit on RTE, who every night, so incredibly carefully mouthed and munched the words ‘And this is the news’, (my heart would sink) followed after what seemed like an immeasurably long time filled with information delivered with the same tone of importance, (a record breaking Super-Lobster and then the Falklands War), followed by ‘agus anois an Nuacht,’ and he was off again in Irish…. I despaired. And then this was followed by the news for the deaf where the words went up the screen at the wrong speed, and Maurice had to slow up noticeably while, at the same time, the sign language lady looked more and more desperate, waving frantically to catch up! (That was the best bit.) And then it was time for bed. My final hours of telly ruined by crap news programming. It was so stilted, and boring and bad, it put many of us off any news for many years. I know I was too young, but I remember thinking this was the only news, the only source of information and truth, and you got the impression that if wasn’t on the news, it hadn’t happened at all or was totally unimportant. Also, that the only news worth knowing happened in Ireland, maybe the UK and America, occassionally France or Europe, and not many other places. Maybe they were too poor to have news, or tellies, or both!

What is happening now is so much more fun and so much better. Populations are actually engaged in a new wave of information sharing, gathering and communication. It’s all very democratic, as we’re all enfranchised to have our say, to consume what news and content we like, and to filter out the irrelevant, boring and un-interesting. I really feel we all have some catching up to do, in our attitude, and our skills, if we’re to keep pace, because all media are going online in a way. All content already is, or will become digital and leave a digital path. The traditional media try to keep pace, and some, like the Guardian and the BBC have great success, and lead the way. Our own RTE is doing very well lately, and has big plans that aren’t far behind the big publishers, from bigger, richer countries with bigger budgets and populations. But these Irish publishing entities remain traditional in structure, administration and attitude..... with all the good stuff; like scale, quality, integrity and accuracy; and all the bad stuff, like gate keeping and agenda setting, government control, conservativeness and with just an inability to keep up with the ever accelerating pace of communication and social change. Often, they’re just too big.

But there is even a further leveller between the big and small publishers online, and its a big one. Is the content read? Online, you can quickly tell it has been read, by the number and quality of the comments, by links, references, and many other measures of buzz. You can also track what advertising has been viewed, clicked on, and what clickers did afterwards. Offline, well, its nothing like that. With TV, there's on-going measurement from the TAM ratings panel, which is effective, but you can't click on TV; not yet anyway. For papers, and press news... Well, its not possible to gather even these measures. You can report the print run per publication, but not the readers per publication. With big publications, advertisers know quickly enough that the advertising is working, that they are getting a return on their investment, (they should do anyway). But, for small offline publications, often business to business or industry publications, its even worse. These will have smaller numbers printed, and fewer readers. These publications are accepted as containers for infomercials and corporate pieces ('Ronseal now does even more than exactly what it says on the tin!). Online, you can have independent measures of the readership of each business to business article, not merely the issue or title. You can independently track exactly how popular and effective that specific article has been. You wouldn't do it most of the time, but you could, - if there was a business case behind it. There are independent mechanics for believing the popularity stats of the publisher. We encounter this all the time at NB, and we hone advertising plans and executions based on the effectiveness of each site, each site page, and each format over time. This stuff is well worth thinking about too, if you are a journalist or editor. Sometime around the corner, the value of all writings will be measured in this way. 'Value', I said, not 'quality'. This will be a brutal space, where excellent quality writing may not be as popular as poorly constructed populist trash. If the story doesn't burn the impressions, the editor will pay less. I think, in the end of the day, the cream will float to the top, and that the readership is more sophisticated than some gutter press have given them credit for, but that's not my business really. I'm not a publisher. Measurement by stories read will happen though. As an online audience researcher, and advertiser, that is my business.

So how do NB see ourselves in this new space? Well, our job is to observe, reflect, describe and then engage consumers with ad messages on behalf our advertisers and their agencies. We need to engage Irish eyeballs wherever they may be (dance, dance) with a view on the quality of the content, its popularity and the community and loyalty that surrounds these messages. As interactive media changes everything, we aim to understand these changes, and change with them. The Internet is an experiential medium, so we have to be part of it, if we’re to fully comprehend what’s happening. Naturally, we’re partisan, in that we’re interested in Irish content on Irish sites, but also democratic, in that, it won’t be just the big sites, or government driven content we’ll recommend. Well, actually, we will of course do exactly that most of the time, i.e., recommend advertising on bigger, better sites; sites that produce multi-media content typically of a higher quality, but we’ll also watch closely what’s happening with the little guys… and recommend these when its good, and when it works.

So, there are some thoughts on publishing. These thoughts aren’t meant to upset anyone, but I do hope they stimulate some sort of debate, or reflection, and that they are informative to some degree to the digitally in-initiated. If not? Grand. Enjoy the next blog.