Influence research: what drives people to Digg stories

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In the lead-up to Future of Influence Summit 2009, we will be pointing to some of the more interesting research into the influence space – there will be a wealth of insights coming up so keep posted even if you can’t make it to the event.

Let’s start with one which is a little outside the mainstream, drawn from the report Social Media for Marketing: An Analysis of Digg.com Engagement and User Behavior, created by new media research company One to One Interactive.

Digg was one of the first “influence aggregators”, bringing together the opinions of many to guide what content people read. In addition, the Digg ecosystem is a great example of an influence network. Research in early 2007 showed that 30 people were responsible for 30% of the stories that made the front page of Digg. Their personal influence networks generated waves of behavior that resulted in stories becoming very popular.

Today Digg’s prominence as an influence aggregator has waned relative to the growth other channels, most notably Twitter, however it is still a powerful force that concentrates vast amounts of web traffic to those stories the community push to the fore.

One to One Interactive uses a proprietary methodology that uses physiological data (breath rate, galvanic skin response, heart rate) in addition to eye tracking information and self-reporting to assess engagement. They did the study on a number of respondents who visit Digg an average of twice a day to see how the engage with the site.

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Source: Social Media for Marketing: An Analysis of Digg.com Engagement and User Behavior

The above diagram from the report shows part of the research that resulted in the second insight below, that headlines are the most important factor in driving attention and traffic to stories.

These are the four key insights generated by the study:

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Adults take over social networking, children bail out?

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UK telecom regulator Ofcom has released a major study on use of telecommunications in the UK, out of which some interesting statistics on use of social networking have come.

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It’s not surprising to see the substantial rise in social networking in the 25-54 year old age bracket. Adults have “got it” and piled on board to network online with friends and for work. What is more surprising is that 15-24 year olds are using social networks slightly less than they were, with the Guardian speculating (there is no evidence for this from the report) that it is the uptake of social networks by older people that is causing this “adolescent exodus”. The nub of it is this:

“There is nothing to suggest overall usage of the internet among 15-to 24-year-olds is going down,” said Peter Phillips, the regulator’s head of strategy. “Data suggests they are spending less time on social networking sites.”

Part of it is definitional – what constitutes a social network? When young people use the Internet, they are primarily using it to connect with their peers. Whether that is on Facebook, through content sharing, or on music sites, they are effectively social networking.

The significant drops in use of social networks by the 65+ year olds makes me question the survey methodology – I find it hard to believe that 80% of the over 75 year olds who were using social networks a year ago have dropped out with none taking their place.

Here is the data as a spreadsheet, kindly provided by The Guardian’s Datablog.

Dialogue with Dave Snowden at KM Australia on success in a world of infinite information

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Knowledge and complexity guru Dave Snowden (@snowded) recently tweeted me to ask if I would like to have an on-stage conversation with him to close the KM Australia conference. Apparently the session as originally planned didn’t pan out, so I’m the last-minute back-up plan.

In a brief Twitter exchange we decided on a discussion topic of :

“How to build organisations that succeed in a world of infinite information”.

I think the idea is we’ll walk on stage and have a conversation. I think it’s fair to say that Dave is forthright in his opinions, so it should be fun. :-)

It will be quite a while since I’ve been to a knowledge management conference.

Chris Anderson on the social filtering of news and media

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Chris Anderson, currently most well-known for his provocative book Free, today put forward his views in yet another interview, this time with a cranky reporter from Spiegel, published under the catchy title of ‘Maybe Media Will Be a Hobby Rather than a Job’.

I’m most interested in what he says about how he gets his news, which is precisely the How Influence Drives Content and Publishing theme of the upcoming Future of Influence Summit. It is good to hear this said in someone else’s words, from an information consumers’ perspective. Here is an excerpt from the interview…

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“Influence is the future of media”

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After three extremely successful years running the Future of Media Summit, held simultaneously in San Francisco Bay Area and Sydney, it is time to move on. This year the event, run by The Insight Exchange, will be titled Future of Influence Summit. This is because:

INFLUENCE IS THE FUTURE OF MEDIA

We have already begun to discover this through the now-dominant concept of “social media”. In the Future of Media Strategic Framework that was launched for our Future of Media Summit 2006 we described the (symbiotic) relationship between Mainstream Media and Social Media.

Social media is all about human relationships, about how we shape our view of the world based on our peer communication. The extraordinary breadth of information and opinion that we are exposed to today, combined with the ability to converse, means our own opinions are often driven more by peers than traditional sources.

In fact this shift to the social means that media is becoming far more about peer influence than information and reporting.

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Last.FM needs a “serendipity factor” dial

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I’ve been listening to Last.FM (and writing about it) since it was launched in 2002. I love it, to the extent of forking out when they finally asked me to start paying a few months ago.

However one of the features I most miss is a “serendipity factor” dial.

A basic concept in information filtering is the degree of serendipity of content selection. Do you want a highly predictable stream, or do you want to be very surprised sometimes?

I vary in how much I want the serendipity dial cranked up.

It would be totally awesome if Last.FM were to introduce a serendipity factor dial.

How about it guys?

Insights from Social Media Strategies event

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Today The Insight Exchange ran its Social Media Strategies event. It was an excellent session, with some great case studies. Below are the rough notes that I took during the event – hopefully a reasonable representation of what we heard.

Aisha Hilary, Communications Specialist, New Media and Brand, SBS

Social media is the use of electronic & internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with others.

It’s not niche any more – there are 5.1 million Australians on social networks, 7 million sharing photos, 3.6 million sharing video, 4.5 million reading blogs and 1.5 million with their own blogs.

So why engage? To each out and connect to customers and audience, building awareness, providing unique and relevant content, and building loyalty.

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Launch of Social Media Strategy Framework

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Today we launch our Social Media Strategy Framework. This provides guidance and a frame on how organizations can approach engaging with social media, following in the tradition of our highly popular frameworks such as Web 2.0 Framework, Future of the Media Lifecycle, and Influence Landscape.

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Click on the image to download pdf

[UPDATE:] The image and file above is of the updated Beta version 2 of the Social Media Strategy diagram – see here for a brief explanation. Click here to download the Beta version 1 diagram.

[UPDATE 2:]

The Social Media Strategy Framework has being translated into:

Social Media Strategy Framework in Chinese – ????????

Social Media Strategy Framework in Dutch – Sociale Media Strategie Kader

Social Media Strategy Framework in French – Plan Stratégique des médias sociaux

Social Media Strategy Framework in German – Social Media strategische Rahmenrichtlinien

Social Media Strategy Framework in Italian – Schema della strategia relativa ai mezzi di comunicazione sociale

Social Media Strategy Framework in Japanese – ?????????????

Social Media Strategy Framework in Korean – ????? ?? ?????

Social Media Strategy Framework in Portuguese – Modelo Estratégico dos Meios de Comunicação Social

Social Media Strategy Framework in Russian – ????????? ????????? ? ?????????? ?????

Social Media Strategy Framework in Spanish – Encuadre de Estrategia de Medios Sociales

Social Media Strategy Framework in Turkish – Sosyal Medya Strateji Çerçevesi

This is a Beta version, pulled together to release before The Insight Exchange’s Social Media Strategy event today. I can already see some improvements to be made, but I would love to get your thoughts on what’s wrong (and right) for this to be taken into account for the next version.

The Framework begins with LEARN, follows two streams of ENGAGEMENT and STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT, and comes together in the ongoing imperative to DEVELOP CAPABILITIES.

The five key points for each element are also written below.

LEARN

Use social media yourself

Study relevant case studies

Educate senior executives

Hear from practitioners

Explore the latest trends

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The overlap between tech and porn: an overlooked element in search optimization

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If you search for “multiplayer sex game” (and a number of variations on these words) on Google, this blog comes up #1.

In April 2006 I wrote a blog post Massively multi-player sex games, which discussed the launch of Naughty America: The Game, an MMORPG involving sex. As far as I can tell my predictions of great success for the game were wrong, though other similar players such as Red Light Center, which is essentially SecondLife involving graphic sex, powered by Utherverse, seems to be doing very well.

Partly due to my blog’s prominence, and I gather due to some links from Chinese websites, this blog post, three years later, is still deemed by Google to the most authoritative source on the topic, and the post consistently gets more traffic than many of my other long-term hits such as our Web 2.0 Framework and Extinction Timeline (though most of those visitors to these latter posts tend to stay and browse a lot longer).

For a long time I thought this was nuisance traffic. If someone is searching for multiplayer sex games, they are unlikely to be the audience I want for my blog. A couple of years ago when I was speaking on a panel I used the story to make the point that not all visitors to a blog are equally desirable.

However I then noticed that a significant proportion of visitors – in fact close to 20% – were staying to read more of my blog, sometimes spending over 10 minutes browsing around. It turned out that (some of) the sex game-seeking visitors were not single-minded, but could be distracted by insights into strategy and technology.

Further light on this has now been shed by Sam Niccolls of SEOMoz in a post on TechCrunch Upskirt: Why Michael Arrington Blogs about Porn.

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Image source: SEOMoz

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A list of business applications for blogging in the enterprise

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We’re getting a great response to our Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report. We’ll get up a discussion space on the site soon.

In the meantime I’d thought I’d share a brief excerpt from the book, in chapter 10 on Blogs in the enterprise. You can download four other chapters from the website, including our Social networking in the enterprise chapter.

Selected applications of blogs in the enterprise

INTERNAL BLOGS

Executive communication

Blogs are increasingly used as a tool for CEOs and other senior executives to communicate within the organization. This provides a more informal communication mechanism that is a valuable complement to existing channels.

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