Users will decide Social Media future

Social Media has given ordinary people a voice and brought them together to be a force capable of holding individuals, businesses and even governments accountable for their actions.

Ironically; as a tool of the people the decision about where to next will be made largley based on the platform that best understands users’ needs, wants, desires and where they find like-minded people. Users will exit those platforms that don’t listen to the people.

I agree with Amy Maas  younger people are getting out of Facebook in New Zealand as they dont want to be ‘mainstream’ and they certainly don’t want their their interactions monitored by parents, or future employers. As  Arik Hanson says this group are taking the opportunity to communicate through platforms like Snapchat or Facebook Poke because of the short-life of posts and the relative freedom of expression.

I predict that the over 30s will stay with platforms support what Seth Godin describes as “tribes”; communities where users find a sense of belonging. I suspect this will continue to be Facebook or Pinterest until the marketers and the spammers take over and then once again we’ll be out encroaching on the young’ns turf and they will then move on.

In the future Social Media will also be used in national and international politics with on-line voting more appealling and accessible to the 18 to 30 year olds who are sadly lacking from our political or voting statistics.

We have already seen social media at work in international politics e.g. Middle Eastern politics, Egypt  and Israel and Iran. This is an important use of the medium as social media crosses cultures through ordinary people, not mediated by television networks or journalists reporting.

In the future we may get to see real democracy in action through social media, maybe there will be no party politics in democratic countries – we may still elect representatives to guide legislaton but instead of a vote in parliament there will be referenda through social media – true democracy.

I see social media also extending further into our daily lives, where it is logical and where it is beneficial, the platforms we use may differ from today’s however we will always be after the same thing – connection, control of our environment and a sense of belonging

If Social Media language styles were dress codes

• Twitter would be underwear – just enough to cover and entice further investigation
• Blogs would be smart casual –  even business orientated posts show their human side
• Facebook would be casual – relaxed and chatty.
• Linkedin would be formal – remembering that potential employers or business networks will view this content.

Language has evolved and moulded to fit the medium, with short snappy micro-blogs for Twitter, with abbreviated text and missing vowels to save space and to keep with 140 key strokes. Being trained as a journalist I see this as headline writing. You have to grab the attention of a reader who is scanning a page of tweets for the most interesting or imaginative or just plain funny.  Advice from Courtney Ramirez  is to keep Twitter posts to around 100 characters to allow for retweets.

The best tweet on my feed today for grabbing attention was this at 138 characters long.

Ricky Gervais ‏‪@rickygervais

“The trouble with fables is, they’re putting animals together that wouldn’t meet. When would a scorpion be knockin’ about with a frog?” KP

 KP = Karl Pilkington

Blog language will depend on the target audience and will vary from semi-formal e.g. CE Blog post to stakeholders to the more casual style of“What Im doing on my holidays” a blog for an audience of friends and family. Even corporate blogs are recommended to have 80:20 personal to business content according to Neal Schaffer.

Keep blogs to short easy-to-read paragraphs, invite comment and participation and reference information to others through links.

Facebook posts are generally short as most readers are again scanning for content to respond to or react to. Facebook is a visual medium with photographs and graphics, links and video clips. This is a casual conversational style of writing even if used for an organisation or business the style of writing should reveal a human side. See for example Queensland Police Facebook page.

If, as Rachel Strella says content is king in all forms of social media – then making your writing style appropriate for the audience is queen.

With Linkedin blog posts I agree with Rachel when she says keep them short and to the point as people reading are busy and scanning for the post that resonates for their business or position.

And remember this piece of advice from Wikipedia on blogs “Dont say anything online that your wouldn’t say in person.”

Assignment One – Memes

Double Rainbow

(Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10 by Hungry Bear 9562)

This meme is a video that was taken of two rainbows outside the vidiographer’s house – its not so much the visual content as the audio that has carried this clip to meme status. The totally over the top commentary by Hungry Bear is out of proportion to the visuals. The emotional commentary and the query “what does it mean” clearly shows a spiritual experience. So why did it go viral?

In TED talk “Why Videos Go Viral” – Kevin Allocca the Trends Manager for YouTube explains that there are three things that a clip needs before it goes viral – “unexpectedness” “tastemakers” and “communities of interest”.

Allocca explains that this clip spent months on You Tube before talk show host Jimmy Kimmel tweeted the video clip and his followers, and those that followed his followers also liked or reposted this which eventually led to meme status.

The emotional, slow drawling  commentary appealed to people and was considered amusing because not only did Hungry Bear film this clip, he then put it on You Tube for everyone to hear and see.

After working with this meme for a week I realise that for some cultures a double rainbow is a sign of good fortune and brings good luck, maybe this is a clue to Hungry Bear’s response. Memes cross cultures, nationalities, and the popularity is often astonishing to the maker or subject.

Why is Double Rainbow considered to be a meme? With 36 million views this fits  Dan Dennett’s TED  description of memes where he quotes Richard Dawkins from the Selfish Gene – “memes replicate better than the competition”. This applies to genetic memes as well as internet memes.

As Kevin Allocca says this community of participation actively takes part in creating the memes whether creatively or by voting through views, likes and reposts giving a sense of ownership of the culture.

In this community anyone could become famous, and all can participate in deciding who does.