I tried to take my post about Facebook Rising - Comscore’s Top Social Networking Sites for 2008 and come up with an engagement score, or even a revenue score, and found that it was much more difficult than I thought (link to spreadsheet)
Figuring out Online GDP using Comscore turned out to give me “nonsensical” figures - using CIA Factbook information for GDP by Country and Population and matching that data with Comscore’s provided revenue numbers that were totally unrealistic or believable - and the formula (UV(000) * minutes per visitor per month)/average monthly online revenue (which was derived from data I got off of Wikipedia) gave me numbers far too high (if I looked at them as revenue).
If I didn’t look at those numbers as revenue - but just numbers (which I ended up doing) I’m not sure what they actually represent.
What I think is actually missing is a unit of measurement and what I need to get there (the formula) - but doing this exercise showed me that …
- By multiplying Unique Visitors by Minutes per Visitor - the result should be in minutes (or Visitor Minutes).
Calculating Online GDP per country is hazardous, at best - and it’s hard to find any kind of authoritative number - ComScore’s estimated unique visitors for Conversational Media are so far out of whack with the “semi official” total population numbers as given in the CIA Factbook as to make calculations look nonsensical.
- Spending all evening trying to find one source that had the data that might make my calculations work proved fruitless - it doesn’t really matter if the chart I’m looking for existed or not - it probably does - but is so obscure and difficult to find, even in Search - that I’d have to be someone like Paul Krugman to figure out how to find it (I guess that’s part of an Economist’s Job - knowing where to pull data needed for Economic calculations).
That gives me pause - all this online commerce data that Comscore and Nielsen come up with … where are they getting the actual monetary numbers from? I’m guessing it’s from Census Data like the 2009 Statistical Abstract - but when you mix Online population numbers against statistical data - it’s like mixing apples and oranges - and I bet that’s how Comscore comes up with it’s projections and we’re talking US Data, only. What about International data - I bet coming by that information and translating commerce numbers across currency is pretty tricky.
Anyway - I embedded the spreadsheet - as far as I got with it - till I realized that going further world be pointless till there was some kind of agreement on how exactly what measurements we’d use for Conversational Media (in a formula) - what revenue and population data we’d use - and the authoritative sources for that.
And what do we end up with - is it a dollar number? A point number? An Engagement Score?
It was a fun exercise - but now I can see that pulling data out of Comscore and mashing it up with Census data probably isn’t going to work too well.
Anyway have better ideas?
I’m already seeing it - and it’s just day one of the New Year of 2009 - and I noticed that two of my readers had proposed ideas for me - one a Social Media Map (and it’s use) and another on and Engagement Metric using Comscore for Social Networks and taking in account Geolocation.
I plan to post on both - plus two other readers (virtual friends) on Facebook, read my feed there (a copy of some of it is at the bottom of this blog - but much less detail than the original feed) told me about the Brooklyn Museum’s Social Networking group that meets on the First Saturday of each month in Brooklyn; I mused why MOMA and The Metropolitan Museum don’t have Social Networks - do not use Social Media effectively - don’t understand it, even - and came up with the fact the more traditional an organization is - the longer it’s likely to take them to get into Social Media.
Traditional organizations also include Corporations and Non-Profits that often, despite the opportunity to use Social Media - are unable to understand or live with the transparency and lack of control (need to be curated, instead) and can’t enable themselves to effectively participate in the conversation - I’ve seen this a lot in 2008 but there’s signs of life in 2009 as Corporations become more and more desperate - they’re at a point when they realize they must reinvent themselves - and some of them will move onto Social Media - while others won’t, and will slowly die out, I suspect.
That musing will also lead into another post on Artnewyorkcity.com about why Museums don’t use Social Networking more - again - a collaboration that could not happen if I tried to come up with these ideas by myself.
And it also got me to think about Government and Change.org - the Obama Presidency and Administration will be one market by Collaboration on every level - just the opposite of the failures we’ve had in the last 8 years.
I do want to say one more thing - NAFTA and the goals of the 1990’s to spread the wealth to other nations did, to some extent work - and Clinton’s goals - while they weren’t always working for the benefit of everyone in this country - did effect International Trade in a overall, good way.
What really took this country down, United States, that is, wasn’t NAFTA - it was all the mostly, Chinese money that came into this country for investment, fueled by Real Estate and Low Interest Rates - at that time, had America had leadership that built up infrastructure, improved education, improved energy independence - we’d have been able to compete more effectively in the Global Marketplace we created by NAFTA and efforts like it (including the World Financial Organization, etc)- but instead - this country, with poor, criminal or just non-existent leadership, wasted all it’s resources on two wars, and a bunch of failed initiatives - and there was no collaboration - no exchange - just scandal after scandal.
I think we have an opportunity to change a lot of that starting with this year, 2009, a year where Real Collaboration started - because the tools for it are in place, and the Network Effects coming out of that will hopefully create a prosperity to balance off the trade deficits and debt we accumulated.
And now, I need to go paint something, even if for a little bit of time.
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!
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