Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Social network to social media

LinkedIn started out as professional networking site.  It was a networking site for sure, but it did not have traffic that members would be excited about.  It was meant for sharing your resume as Profile and keep in touch with your colleagues from earlier gigs.

When Facebook first came along, it was also a virtual Profile browsing site.  It had bunch of photos and people create their profiles.  It was meant for sharing photos and let others comment on who has the coolest photo on her profile.

Only after Facebook introduced news feed and Twitter came along, then it started becoming social network.  People started connecting with friends that they knew, and it created huge network effect for sharing information.  In order to see what someone else is sharing, you have to be on Facebook or Twitter to see what's going on.  Real social network began.

List of social networks.
Wait.  Where is Facebook on this picture?
Obviously it's not drawn by user base...

But once social network rose in popularity, odd things started to happen.  People started to obsess over who is seeing their updates.  We started to pay attention to number of friends or followers each of us have.  We even fixate on who has the most number of comments and how many times it has been shared.  On some occasions, no-name Joe turned into overnight celebrity after his post becoming viral on Facebook and Twitter powered by YouTube.  Social network turned into social media.

It's like how everyone pays attention to television rating.  We've been conditioned to value rating, and we are applying the same value judgement on our self worth based on how many people are following us.  There are now industries getting created to help emerging social media stars to get their content out so that they can maximize their chance of going viral.  Some even buy followers to fake their rating.  Social network is no longer simple message exchange platform.  It is full blown media where everyone is vying to get more rating.

We have to remember that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and all other Web 2.0 services are public media.  Most of content that we share are meant to be observed by everyone in the system, and each site encourages all members to join this rating game.

Be mindful of how these social sites are designed.  They are designed to encourage more sharing to drive greater value out of each user.

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