TechCrunch reported today the Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising) with a plug for Facebook that sounds like a movie (Facebook Rising). Having access to Comscore, I’m well aware of how effortless it is to pull such charts together, so here’s a few more.
If we discount “Blogger” which is not really a Social Network, but is Social Media - the reach of Facebook is going way up - close to 20% of all the audience for Social Media as defined by Comscore is on Facebook, according to the chart (I’m using WorldWide audience - not just US); MySpace seems hardly a contenter - and at any rate, all we’re talking about is MySpace.com* (sites) - and it must be a new entity that was created over the last month or two - the regular myspace.com entity doesn’t even show up on the top 10.
However, when you look at the total number of pages viewed per million - Facebook far outshines any other Social Networking property (see below) - again this is worldwide numbers.
However, were we to look at average length of visit - hardly any network I know of, shows up - which implies time spent on site might not be the answer to what makes a social network valuable and I almost have to wonder about the panel size and quality - again, these are worldwide numbers.
If anything, what Comscore is telling me, is to go out and look at these other Social Networks I never heard of like person.com, kaixin.com and fotostrana.ru.
Anyway, I want to wish everyone who reads my blog a Happy New Years in 2009!
Ever get the feeling that we’re trying to make something, designed for one task, do another?
I’m reminded of THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN’s excellent post at the New York Times about Cars, Kabul and Banks where he wrote about “the core truth” of a situation that could apply to almost anything, including Twitter and measurement.
“…. If there is anything I’ve learned as a reporter, it’s that when you get away from “the thing itself” — the core truth about a situation — you get into trouble.”
What is the core truth about Twitter?
Twitter’s core truth is that it’s a tool to tell people what your doing at any moment; over the last 18 months, or so, it morphed into many other things, but the core reality of Twitter is as a communications tool - not an influence tool or an authority tool - things that it was never designed to do or measure. Keep t hat in mind as I go over what’s happened in the last few days and my thoughts about it.
First, Loic Le Meur, the French Industrialist, who runs Seesmic and LeWeb posted Twitter needs a Search By Authority in his blog; he wanted to solve a problem he was having in getting actionable feedback (something Twitter was not originally designed to do) from Social Media and got frustrated; he wanted a way to cut through the “clutter” and find the opinions that he though really mattered. However, Noisy Channel pointed out that Loic Le Meur Misses the Point of Twitter - it was created as a communications channel, not a marketing channel. Any Loic asked for this:
“..There were more than 7000 tweets posted during the two days of LeWeb, no way anyone can read them quickly. We need filtering and search by authority.”
“…What we need is search by authority in Twitter Search. Technorati had nailed it years ago by allowing searches filtered by number of links the blogger had.”
Michael Arrington - ever ready to pick a fight so he can generate more traffic through controversy (which seems to work - see Was the Michael Arrington, Loic Le Meur and Le Web row staged?) pointed out that Bloggers Lose The Plot Over Twitter Search
“… I agree with Loic. Being able to filter search results, if you choose, by the number of followers a user has makes sense. Without it, you have no way of knowing which voices are louder and making a bigger impact. It’s a way to make sense of a query when thousands or tens of thousands of results are returned.
Of course, I’m pretty sure I can live without this feature, too. I’m failing to get too worked up over it. But the outpouring of emotion from bloggers is surprising me, and I thought I’d seen just about everything when it comes to blogging.”
Others like LalaWag wrote about If Loic Le Meur Ran The Web we’d all have 4 hour lunches and internet would never work at conferences which got some people laughing out loud. Anyway - I don’t have the luxury of detailing the entire thread of replies - but you can get a swath of them using Blogpulse’s Conversation Tracker.
However, I’m going right for Eric T. Peterson’s post at Web Analytics Demystified blog about Measuring success in Twitter: Influence vs. Participation where I’m cited (see some of that, below:
- Jeremiah Owyang earns a score of 2.95 indicating that Jeremiah “may be a popular person” and “people want to hear what [Jeremiah] has to say” plus he “may be a thought leader in [his] community.” Sounds pretty much perfect to me, but I like Jeremiah.
- Bryan Eisenberg earns a score of 1.04 indicating that Bryan is “respected among [his] peers” (or that he follows his Mom and she follows him, but with 1,951 followers we can assume the former is the best explanation)
- Marshall Sponder earns a score of 2.30 which is pretty similar to Jeremiah’s score against his 851 followers.
- Avinash Kaushik earns a score of 105.5 indicating that Avinash is “either a Rock Star in [his] field or an elitist [who] cannot be bothered by Twitter’s mindless chatter” who “likes to hear [himself] talk” but “luckily others like to hear [him] talk too.”
- Anil Batra earns a score of 1.27 putting Anil in the same category with Bryan above although with only 266 followers his reach is somewhat lower than Bryan.
- Aaron Gray earns a score of 1.49 pushing Aaron more towards Jeremiah Owyang than Bryan Eisenberg, at least on Dave’s scale.
- Jim Sterne earns a score of 17.48 which is in the same “Rock Star” range as Avinash (although an order of magnitude less rock-starry than Google’s own analytics evangelist)
- Omniture earns a score of 1.26 indicating respect among the company’s 247 followers
- Dennis Mortensen earns a score of 13.85 showing that Dennis, like Jim and Avniash, is a true web analytics rock star!
- Nick Arnett earns a score of 0.58 which indicates that Nick is trying but alas, “not getting much Twitter love in return.”
But … aren’t we trying to come up with authority and influence “after the fact”? If we really wanted to measure Authority or Influence (see Mem3x blog)- different platforms would have to evolve or be created whose core purpose is to measure authority or influence - not communicate.
“…. One way of doing that is to go back to Steven Lukes’s wonderful book in which he argues that power can take three forms: 1. the ability to force you to do what you don’t want to do; 2. the ability to stop you doing something that you want to do; and 3. the ability to shape the way you think.
In my experience, the last interpretation comes closest to describing the authority of the blogosphere’s long tail. It’s got nothing to do with the number of readers a particular blog has, but everything to do with the intellectual firepower of the blog’s author. That’s why I pay attention to Ed Felten, Tony Hirst, Nick Carr, Bill Thompson, Richard Posner, Dave Winer, Quentin Stafford-Fraser, Martin Weller, Lorcan Dempsey, Larry Lessig, Andrew Brown, Jeff Jarvis, Charles Arthur and a host of others. Their importance to me derives not from the number of readers they have (though some have large audiences) but from the fact that they are original, well-informed, thoughtful people.
In other words, Authority (within a community) is based on “perceived reputation” by a defined community.
Where’s the community measurement part of Twitter? It doesn’t exist - that’s not it’s core truth - the reason why it exists.
We can get into making Twitter and Facebook mean all kinds of things - but I think, if we really want accurate measures of influence and authority - we’ll need to use platforms created and used for that purpose (ie: much as questionnaires and focus groups are used - and good luck getting a lot of tweeters to use such a tool/platform).
I just post my 2009 predictions this week -7 Social Media & Web Analytics Predictions for 2009 and Financial Predictions 2009. Meanwhile - my 2008 predictions were posted at 2008 Final Web Predictions and Economic Predictions and now it’s the end of 2008 I’ll examine my predictions - how many of them did I get right are mostly right?
1st PREDICTION . As a result of content sharing between different Google Reader accounts AND the ever increasing amount of RSS Feeds that we’re reading - we’ll find ourselves looking, again, to content aggregated or specialists, to take all of that data and make meaning out of it.
RESULT: I think this has happened, but not quite in the way I envisioned. FriendFeed and Facebook News Feeds have enabled us to “aggregate” information from friends in our network and annotate it - others, like Robert Scoble, read Friendfeed almost exclusively now - and he’s been taking that information and sharing it in Google Reader - as shared items.
Therefore - I’ll give myself partial credit for this one - say, 3/4 of a prediction is correct - it just didn’t happen quite as I envisioned it - but it did happen.
2nd PREDICTION - Virtual World Platforms such as Second Life will continue to become more popular in Europe and Asia, as opposed to the United States - where the growth has bottomed out for the time being.
2nd RESULT - this prediction didn’t pan out - I can’t say Second Life and other Virtual Worlds aren’t more popular in Asia - but focus, in general, moved away from Virtual Worlds in 2008, though it may return there in 2009-2010. No credit for this prediction.
3rd PREDICTION - The world of Search, in general, will continue to stagnate, with Google increasing it’s Market Share while Yahoo and MSN continue to either shrink or Stand Still. Ask, as number 4, will continue to innovate, but it won’t make much difference.
3rd RESULT - I was right, though Google did come out with the SearchWiki near the end of the year and I would not call that stagnation - still - I was right but this was an easy prediction to be right on. I get full credit for this prediction.
4th PREDICTION - Mobile Platforms will continue to become more powerful and more pervasive, and it will be possible, in late 2008, to entirely replace a laptop, with a mobile hybrid phone, PDA device - not clear who will be producing it - but my guess in Nokia - since they seem, overall, to produce the most powerful mobile phones.
4th RESULT - this has happened with the iPhone - I can use it and it almost entirely replaces a laptop, if I really wanted to. Other mobile devices are rumored to be coming out, and did just come out, like the Google Phone (Android) that promise to make this a full reality in 2009 - but I think I can get full credit on this prediction, as well.
5th PREDICTION - More and more areas of cities will have free wireless Internet - the trend has been moving along for the last three years and will accelerate in 2008.
5th RESULT - Wrong - I haven’t heard much of anything about free wireless in any major city this year - maybe I missed the news - but I can’t honestly see this as correct prediction of mine - No Credit.
6th PREDICTION - The Writer’s strike that has paralyzed a lot of network Television will be settled by April 2008, but there will be permanent damage due to the strike.
6th RESULT - I don’t recall, any longer when the Writer’s strike was settled - I think before April - but I am not in a position to say that any permanent damage was done by the strike - or not - I simply don’t know - there for I will not count this prediction or lose any credit on it.
7th PREDICTION - Web Analytics will continue to grow as force in online advertising - as more businesses want metrics - 2008 might be the year where Web Analysts are given a SEAT AT THE TABLE.
7th RESULT - again, I can’t say this has/hasn’t happened. Eric Peterson has certainly predicted it - and I ran for seat on the WAA Board to get Web Analysts a seat at the table - but at the end of the day - i don’t perceive any change that has actually happened. I won’t give myself credit for this prediction or penalize myself because of it, either.
8th PREDICTION - The Democrats will take the White House in 2008
8th RESULT - Barack Obama got elected - full credit for this prediction even though it was the most likely result that could have happened.
9th PREDICTION - 2008 is going to be a tough year, financially, for businesses, due to the Credit Crunch caused by Sub-Prime Mortgage Meltdown. I can continue to see a weak dollar, going even lower in value - in fact, it maybe necessary for the dollar to be weak for a while - not only because of the way United States is viewed by the World, but the imports are what is keeping the country from sinking into a recession - and so, by that reasoning, the dollar must stay weak.
9TH RESULT - Correct - 100%.
HOW I DID:
Of 9 Predictions, 2 are discounted (Predictions 6 & 7) leaving 7 predictions each worth 14.3% of a score.
Of the 7 predictions - I earned 68% (including partial credit) - I was right well more than half the time - but also wrong part of the time.
I think 68% correct is not bad, considering we’re talking about a year into the future - the year that just happened - 2008.
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