Ryan MacMillan

Throughout our recently released Contagious report, we’ve been examining the current social media landscape and asking just how we can measure the types of activities that are going on there. In looking at this world of blogs, podcasts, forums, wikis, crowdsourcing, and endless conversations, it is possible also to detect some new developments. In this essay, we identify these emerging trends – which are the sort of phenomena that we’ll be applying our social media metrics to in the future.

Persistent profiles

Our online profile is a representation of ourselves online. Profiles can vary from a  username in a forum to an avatar in Second Life. Increasingly it can be a social network profile. Who we are, how we present the aspects of ourselves and how we maintain control over that is an increasingly key issue in social media. One way that we think this is going to develop is in the consolidation of profiles and possibly the creation of consistent or persistent profiles. Google’s OpenSocial presages such a development. It is comprised of three elements; Profile Information (me), Friends Information (my friends) and Activities (things that happen). The principle of OpenSocial means that as a user moves an application or widget between different social networking platforms their profile is maintained and the same as they move their profile between widgets or social networks. So my contacts on VBMA, my industry network don’t have to be all uploaded again to my Bebo profile. The application I add to my Linkedin profile will also work on my Plaxo network. 

What might we choose to keep in this profile? Credit rating, sexual preference, search history, privacy settings, music taste. And where might it follow us? Not just across social networking sites, but across all sites that provide some level of interaction based on who we are and what we want. Our profiles will have elements that are maintained as we do our banking, add friends to  MySpace and as we slay a few enemies in World of Warcraft. We will be able to manage our profiles as we see fit – presenting different identities to the online world depending on the context. Friends will see a different profile to business associates. However for this to work  properly, there will need to be some significant improvements in how our data is collected, stored and used. In the same way that the web is teaching us to doubt the veracity of all information, so it will also erode our naivety about all degrees of privacy unless those we trust with our privacy prove to be worthy of it.

Aggregated intelligence

The online environment has made it easier for large groups of widely dispersed individuals to express ideas, vote for an outcome or to give something a rating. It also makes it easier for these expressions to be aggregated. This aggregated intelligence has been termed the ‘wisdom of crowds’ or ‘collective intelligence’ and the process of harnessing it; ‘crowdsourcing’ is on the rise. The web audience is already familiar with sites that harness the collective intelligence. Old favourites Wikipedia, Flickr and del.icio.us are being joined by new ones such as the Encyclopedia of Life. If collective knowledge is what we are seeing now – the harbingers of the next stage; collective action are already starting to emerge.

In the UK myfootballclub allows supporters to buy a share in the club and then vote on transfers, player selection and all major decisions affecting the club. Collective football club management is also being experimented with in Israel on Web2sport.com where fans log in and watch the game live via a video feed. Fans use a chat facility to comment on the game and suggest tactical alterations, which are then voted on. Sitting in the dugout, with a laptop computer and wireless internet access, the coach enacts the changes. “This is the wisdom of the crowd, not one man. It’s democracy,” Hogeg said. “This idea has no limits.”

Wherever people group around an interest, there is aggregated intelligence; MySpace started life as (and is still very popular as) a platform for bands to promote themselves. We’re now seeing the emergence of ancillary services such as German based Sellaband, which collects small amounts from large groups to finance the production of professional recordings for independent bands, and so doing away with the need for financing from labels. 

Its not hard to see how this principle of collective participation and financing could be extended to dance companies and novelists resulting in the 2009 launch of The Royal MySpace Ballet and the tear-away success of a self publishing platform as writers dessert their publishers and go direct to their public; www.bidforabook.com/martin_amis

These examples demonstrate that the principles of crowdsourcing work, albeit in quite different ways; some tapping collective intelligence, some simply taping collective bank balances. While this idea is not new, the Westminster electoral system and the stock market share these principles of collective participation, they are more easily accessed and more widely distributed when put online. And this is going to continue to increase. How will crowdsourcing move into other online activities? As I am writing this article Snagsta is launching; a service that promises to take your like minded friends into account when retuning search results; it’s social search.

Open acronyms

Open is always better than closed in social media. In the Contagious report we’ve looked at how truly social applications like Last.fm and Google Maps are opening up their APIs for use by partners and audience members. This opening up is also happening with IP through the Creative Commons copyright tools. Last year Ryan*MacMillan worked with Sony Europe to release all of the assets for the Blu-ray campaign under Creative Commons licenses. The growing demand of social media audiences for content and their disregard for traditional copyright restrictions will lead content owners to look at ways of letting their audiences participate with their content and data more freely and creatively. The smart ones, like Last.fm, will work out how to do it so that it enhances rather than cannibalises their businesses.

As forward-looking companies release their data we are going to see more ways that users can take it and make it useful. Already Yahoo! Pipes enables users to take the APIs from different businesses and create completely new data sets and services. The number of ways that this can be done is only going to increase as these new versions of data find audiences and these new audiences discover new needs and express new demands.

The audience matters (even more)

The feedback cycles enabled by social media mean that consumers are no longer just wanting to have their complaints heard by a complaints department they are expecting a resulting change in the product or service. This will mean a blurring of marketing and product development, as the cycles of each become intertwined and eventually twinned.

Smart brands won’t wait for consumers to come to them with product ideas, they will go out and find the sharpest audience members and actively engage them. The well known examples include Lego letting its customers design products, posting them on the site and then order the bricks required to construct them. Some of these creations are then picked up and become a part of Lego’s actual wider product offering.Companies like Innocentive are creating a collection point for brands to find experts they can tap for collective knowledge. The recently launched Kluster gathers a community of people as well as a process for developing the ideas. As the demand for expert opinion and skills increases verticals will appear. Already Techdirt provides a service for IT and technology companies wanting input into trends and product ideas.

Increasingly the marketing or product enhancements released by brands are going to be pieces of software or utility. The sense that the audience can try an application for a day or a week and then drop it has created an environment of constant development. For innovative brands wanting to get into social media it means that its easy to test the water. For traditional brands used to controlling the distribution and impact of their efforts this is going to be very frustrating as it requires a new way of approaching communications; KUDOS might well give them a good steer as to where to begin. 

Thinking of the audience as users

The people online are users. This is a word that has been criticised in some circles because it de-humanises the audience, but it’s salutary to remember what it means in the traditional computing sense: having a functional requirement. In other words they are trying to Get Something Done. If a brand can help them get something done then they’ll be happy. If it can’t they will step around it and if it impedes them they’ll get angry. As users they are not sitting in between Coronation Street and Strictly Come Dancing waiting for a gorilla to play the drums and make them smile - they are actively engaged in Getting Something Done. Now that something might well be wasting half an hour looking at clips on YouTube - which could well include a clip a mate has linked them to of a gorilla playing the drums. But brands need to remember - this content can’t just be put in front of an audience - the users will select it if it is useful to their functional requirement. Which might include laughing their arses off.