Firstly, I am enjoying Li and Bernoff's format thus far of opening each chapter or lesson with a brief story, then integrating their information to relate to it as they delve further into the specifics. Know your audience was the first point they made. Simple enough one would think, however, after further explanation I totally agreed with their segmentation of the each of the main groundswell participant categories. At this point, it was clear that my own tendencies landed me as a devoted spectator/joiner, and while I had a hand or two in the realm of the Creators, Critics, and Collectors, I was not a committed member of any of these spheres.
One question I immediately had regarding the relevance of the survey was how accurate is this data, over 3 years later? Would the social technographics ladder still appear the same? Have the number of "rungs" now increased so to speak? I was pleased when a quick web search revealed author Josh Bernoff had considered this as well.
Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder
On January 19th 2010 Josh posted a "new" Technographics Ladder, integrating conversationalists into the mix. The data came from a survey late in 2009. One thing initially puzzled me however, conversationalists higher up then critics? But doesn't being a critic take much more work and is of more significance then sending a 140 character maxium tweet? A follower of Josh's Forrester blog had a similar question, to which Josh replied:
"Regarding the placement in the ladder -- the ladder is a guideline. Conversationalists are more active in general, but don't have to put in as much effort. So don't put too much stock in the placement of the rungs."
Additionally, the two most important points from the rest of the short article:
"Conversationalists intrigue me. They're 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they're among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.
The data from this survey continues the trends from the last two years -- Spectators are maxing out at around 70%, Joiners are still growing rapidly, and Creators are still growing slowly."
Personally, I was unsurprised females are the most dominant of this new category. Just from my basic observations I feel that females are much more willing to share info on facebook, they just seem to post more status's then males. Aditionally, I would wager these statuses are generally more personal, "emotional" feelings comparitively. Most immediately, I would account for this by simple gender differences, and cultural conditioning, but this is a social media survey, so I needed some hard facts.
Time to check the Facebook mini-feed! What was usually my procrastination tool of choice was actually aiding in my research! Maybe I could get used to this social media thing after all. I decided to take the first 25 actions to pop up on my mini-feed, all "sharing" included. What I did not include in the survey where "such and such are now friends" and any "profile picture changed" notifications, because I deemed these not to be direct voluntary social interactions, aswell as from the mini-feed there is no indicator which party actually initiated the friending.
So what were the results? Opening my minifeed at random and examinging the first 25 posts, a whopping 20 of them where female!
Of these male posts, only 2 were status updates, the others were:
- A "Places" check in
- A survey of "What type of Drinker are you?" (The user recieved "Pisshead")
- A youtube Electro-Song.
Overall, I found it very interesting that Forrest's new survey found Conversationalists to be primarily female. This category is one that more then ever is relevant, as it becomes increasingly easier to post status's or tweet from mobile devices. Short bursts of information truly do facilate increased activity, which is why I do feel imposing a character limit was an essential decision for Twitter to make. Li and Bernoff make the excellent point that there are a variety of contributers in the social media world that all play a different yet important part in the groundswell, forming a symbiotic relationship of sorts.
However, just as Creators, Critics, Collectors, and now Conversationalists all occupy their respective realms, what about subdividing them further by gender? Conversationalists seem to differ significantly in their behavior by gender, what about the other categories? While some categories may be explained relatively easily by societally ingrained and natural gender differences, what about those that have a less clear cut explanation? It is a question that may be worth exploring further, and I intend to keep it in mind as I progress further through the book.
