The ‘Real’ Importance Of Social Media

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This was a slideshow made by Paul Adams that I clicked through to from a tweet by Tom Critchlow. A really interesting presentation on the origins and evolution of social networking online.

Looking through the presentation, the correlation between how we [as people] group our network together is really quite interesting:

The pattern is quite simple, we group people we know together based around a familiar hobby, occupation, interest, acquaintance, or other. I believe this is down to simple memory – we find it easier to remember things in chunks of between 5-9 (in short-term memory) before we start to flounder. One would normally recall friends and family through short-term memory thinking back to those they have been in contact with most recently, or have most affection to. Therefore the above slide works true for most.

However, when this is shown online:

We can distinctly see that it’s possible to have an accumulated bank of ‘friends’. There is no need to pull from short-term memory as such, because all our contacts are accessible through the system architecture, whether that be Facebook, Flickr or YouTube.

Online, it’s now completely possible to store thousands of contacts (how many people have added you on Facebook after meeting you once?) into a system that we can (and do) pull from, and push to, at any one time. Another quite famous theory, the six degrees of separation, would suggest that with the sheer volume of contacts we are ‘linked’ to, we interact with could theoretically connect us to almost everyone we have ever met. In fact, one of Paul’s slides reveals that only 3% of group names, labelled by the test candidates, actually contained the word ‘friend’ in.

How does this affect your business? Well, consider that the customers you interact with everyday are sharing/reviewing/promoting/canning/connecting more than ever. Customer service and added value have always been winners in business, but my gut tells me that it could be even more important than ever. The idea that a reputation spreads would only make the online world a catalyst. The rewards of this are significant if we follow a familiar pattern:

Zipf’s Law suggests that the best wins. By a lot. Conversely, if your customer service, added value, refund policies or telephone manner are bad, then by the same law you would be touching shoulders with ‘Praline’ on this graph. The same graph applies for almost anything and everything, from CD and box office sales, to the biggest insurance companies and largest farmed salmon suppliers.

Harnessing your customers to praise your business/service and then inadvertently spread that message to those closest in their network would almost guarantee some return. If we go by Paul’s research that suggests our close networks are typically limited to a handful of people within a localised area, the potential benefits are obvious for a local business.

Paul mentions that we should learn to embrace what makes us tick socially, and not focus on the technology so much. Whilst I think this is true, I feel it’s also important to harness the correct technology for our core audience. This in principle does require us to learn new technologies and test thoroughly until we find the most fruitful for our labours.

Carrying out an experiment trying to pattern up two people from opposite sides of the world together, and mapping out the journey – now that would be something.

Tagged as: Social Media