I’ve been spending some time, as of late, thinking about how we, as a company, understand various social media platforms (namely Facebook, Twitter etc…). This process has involved looking at a number of factors:
- What the social media platform is for (as defined by the creators)
- What the social media platform is actually used for (as defined by the users)
- What emotional needs the social media platform meets
- What rational/funcational needs the social media platform meets
Whilst the uses (both creator and user defined) and the functional/rational needs the SMPs meet differ between platforms, it’s become apparent that the emotional needs – by and large – remain constant regardless of the SMP. After the jump I’ll tell you what these emotional needs are…
Ok, so, what are these ubiquitous emotional needs that exist across all social media platforms? Well, I undertsand them to be this:
Connection:
- See your place in the world
- Provide a sense of belonging
- Feel connected
- Self-affirmation
- Enable other people to re-affirm your identity
Uniqueness:
- Demonstrate who you are
- Voyeurism/curiosity
- Information from multiple sources
Comfort:
- Feel connected
- Voyeurism
- One’s viewing activity is private
- Security (…setting on one’s user account)
Variety:
- Provides multiple media
- Information from multiple sources
Feel free to disagree and tinker with this list (arguably there shouldn’t be duplication of needs across different sections but this list is still in its infancy). I hope what this serves to do is show where my thinking is at: namely that regardless of the social media platform, the successful one’s achieve fulfilling broadly similar emotional needs for the users/members. When I get this list finalised I think I’ll feel confident that as and when we need to advise clients on how to develop a social media platform it will be this list that we use to test SMP ideas to ensure they achieve those most elusive but important of user needs: emotional needs.
And, of course, there’s the cyclic aspect to all of this: that by drawing on, and learning from, multiple sources, you are more able to self affirm and feel connected.
Not to put to fine a point on it, SMPs, however useful, are also platforms for our egos. Or perhaps ‘self expression’ is a nicer way of putting it. We bolster our sense of self using the information which we glean both within and from outside of any given SMP and this, in turn, improves our position and value within it.
Or at least we HOPE it will improve our position and value. We might bolster and glean from the wrong sources withoin our social network sphere OR we might have an inherently weak social sphere to begin with. Non?