The social network class divide

Whilst only a very small group of people have the time or inclination to tell their friends on Facebook about an awesome Tweet they did relating to their latest wicked good Tumblr, it’s high likely that we will start to see many of these networks starting to clearly divide by class, age and most certainly function.

I’ve come across a few stats this week that show how some of the popular networks are evolving in terms of user profiles.

The NYT highlights that despite Myspace’s decline it still has virtually the same amount of visitors as Facebook in the US. However interestingly it isn’t age that divides these two Networks, but potentially class. Danah Boyd, Microsoft’s Social Media Researcher who conducted the study found the following:

‘During the 2006-2007 school year, conversations with high-school students began showing a trend of white, upper-class and college-bound teens migrating to Facebook –much like the crowd in the conference hall has. Meanwhile, less-educated and non-white teens were on MySpace. Ms. boyd noted that old-style class arrogance was also in view; the Facebook kids were quicker to use condescending language toward the MySpace kids’.

The next indicator comes from Business Week citing a study conducted by Anderson Analytics. The US study found the following:

Twitter users like news, restaurants, sports, politics, personal finance and religion, pop culture, music, movies, TV and reading.

- They’re more likely to buy books, movies, shoes and cosmetics online than the other groups.

- Twitterers are also entrepreneurial.

- They are more likely than others to use the service to promote their blogs or businesses.

- More likely to be employed part-time (16% vs. 11% average),

- An average income of $58,000, and average 28 followers and 32 other Twitterers they’re following. They’re not particularly attached to the site, though — 43% said they could live without Twitter.

MySpace users skew younger

- They’re more likely to have joined MySpace for fun and more likely to be interested in entertaining friends, humour and comedy, and video games.

- They’re less into exercise than any other social group but seek out parenting information more than any other.

- Their average income is the lowest, at $44,000, and they have an average of 131 connections.

- They’re more likely to be black (9%) or Hispanic (7%) than users of the other social sites. They are also more likely to be single (60%) and students (23%)

Facebook users
News, sports, exercise, travel, and home and garden skewed slightly higher than average

- They are more likely to be married (40%), white (80%) and retired (6%) than users of the other social networks.

- They have the second-highest average income, at $61,000, and an average of 121 connections.
Facebook users skew a bit older and are more likely to be late adopters of social media.

- But they are also extremely loyal to the site — 75% claim Facebook is their favourite site

Little things that deliver a lot

Wikiv2

I came across this today which may well have been around for a while but I only just noticed it. You can now search Wikipedia direct from Google. Whilst this only saves me 2 seconds at most it’s a nice touch and over the period my life this could equate to a lot. Perhaps even a handful Tweets in Twitter Time.

It also reminded me of a Dan Ariely Ted talk that amongst other things highlights how easy it is to spend money on advertising but if you ignore the little micro interactions that precede it, you might be a wasting the lot. If you want the full story on how forms increased the number of organ donors and how The Economist tricks your mind to sell higher value subscriptions, then it’s well worth watching.

Musical apparel – Mos Def releases album via a T-Shirt

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Mos Def’s new album, The Ecstatic, is released in the US today but it’s taking a refreshing approach to distribution. Rather than offering up a CD (who buys them apart from me) people buy a T- Shirt with the album artwork on it, along with a code embedded into its tag so you can download it.

I love this kind of blurry stuff that is digital, traditional, social and a product innovation all rapped up in one (excuse the gag). It’s such a simple idea I can’t believe it has been used more often. Imagine how much The Ramones could have made with all those millions of walking adverts – it might also have ensured the cool kids actually listened to the music as well.

Not only that, it has raised the price to $39, probably reduced the production costs and generated cheap, peer 2 peer advertising. Genius.

The Zombieconomy Room 101. Entry #1- Lazy giveaways and boring bribes

After yesterday’s post I think I’m going to start a Zombieconomy Room 101. So here goes with entry # 1 …

But before I start this post I want to state that I have nothing against promotions, just the boring and lazy ones. I also have nothing against promotions using social tools, just the boring and lazy ones.

Now a post about giving away free stuff just to get an email address, followers or some traffic has been brewing for a long time. I just don’t think they work and at the very least it only delivers some very artificial or tenuous numbers that do not constitute effectiveness or engagement. I don’t have any concrete research to back this up – but I don’t think people find them interesting, I don’t think people want the brand more than the prize and only a certain type of person enters them. Of course all of these points can be overcome, but it would require people to stop being zombies. Again not concrete but it shows how uninteresting this is becoming. The fact that people spend their free time scouring the web for free stuff also speaks volumes.

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However what tipped me over the edge this morning was the whole MacBook Pro Giveaway that Moonfruit are doing dubbed by Mashable as a ‘Twitter competition done right’. (Note: this is about lazy bribes not about trying something new and being on Twitter, which Moonfruit has done well).

So I can win a MacBook just by Tweeting #moonfruit? Thanks Moonfruit, I still have no intention of even visiting your site but thanks. It was top of the Twitter trends list for about 4 hours but now it is wedged in between #DemiLovatoLive and #urwashed. What does that mean and who cares? Only the people that sit on hashtags so they can spam people. Case in point
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Has it influenced search? No. The biggest influence on search is us marketing folks talking about it.

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The only interesting thing I have learnt about Moonfruit is that it’s also the term used for the part of the body you see when someone bends over too much whilst mooning.

However there are some great promotions out there such as the Whopper Sacrifice and Spot the Bull. These just weren’t created by Zombies.

What was you first Walkman? (or portable music device for you natives)

The BBC has reported this story about a 13 year old who gave up his iPod for an original Sony Walkman for a week, just for a little sociological experiment. One of the funniest parts has to be the fact it took him 3 days just to find out that the tape had another side! Oh kids today, they don’t know they were born.

However it wasn’t all bad. The original Walkman did have two sockets so you could share your listening experience with a friend. You have to buy an adapter with today’s iPods. Who said brands have only just started being social.

Here’s my first. Very big and very yellow huh
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Creating value or part of the Zombieconomy?

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Umair Haque, Director of Havas Media Lab has posted this interesting article on Harvard Business relating to his theory about the ‘Zombieconomy’. In essence it relates to the problem businesses, brands, advertisers and people have with creating real value.

Haque, accusing the ‘Beancounters of killing the incentives to create value’ said: “We don’t reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets”.

Using the music industry and MJ as an example Haque continues to highlight this self destructive concept: “If the world’s biggest pop star only made $12 million a year from his recordings, why would anyone make serious music? Where did the rest of the money go? Why, straight into record labels’ pockets. Did they make better music with it? Nope — they made Britney and Lady GaGa. And that’s how they killed themselves by underinvesting in quality, to rake in the take”.

From a marketing point of view, the Zombieconomy is rife with this kind of thinking. Marketing peeps, as a rule of thumb have to/want to deliver on the short term beans and not the long term value. As a result they spend money doing the same things or repurposing the same stuff, in the same way as everyone else.

Take this down to a people level and think about the slowdown of blogging. It’s easier for people to create less for more currency- in this instance, currency = popularity. Two cases in point, Twitter followers/retweets and more recently Tumblarity, that both to differing degrees reward people for allocating the same old assets.

The ‘currency’ cannot solely be about the numbers any more.

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