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Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had a working theory that the social media buzz of last year is fundamentally changed.   I’m not suggesting that social media is dead – no, it’s here to stay.  Rather, there’s an evolution to its usage; it’s something of a maturing market. Over the past week, several news headlines have caught my attention:

MySpace looks to the past for its future.  The social networking site plans to return to its roots by pushing entertainment content and jettisoning portal-like features.  (3/10/10, LA Times)

Facebook and Twitter join the location wars.  Facebook and Twitter are each rolling out geo-location services designed to link updates to users’ current locations. Twitter’s feature uses Google Map overlays to show users’ whereabouts, while Facebook plans to introduce a location-based service at next month’s f8 conference.  (3/10/10, Smart Brief on Social Media)

At SXSWi, Twitter may finally have met its match.  No question Twitter is still huge here, but Foursquare and Gowalla have to be considered a major part of people’s organizing principle.  (3/16/10,  CNET.com)

Surprised?  It was only a matter of time before end-users started asking – and expecting answers to  – the question:  “what’s in it for me?”  (We saw the same thing with Internet adoption in the mid-to-late 1990s.)  The economic downturn of last year, in my opinion, helped fuel interest in social media (people had more time on their hands), which may have accelerated the questioning of social media’s value/investment.

A  Barracuda Labs’ study of 19 million Twitter accounts supports this idea, at least in part.  Interest in Twitter peaked during the first two-thirds of last year, the height of the economic downturn.

This study reported on in MediaMemo, also did an interesting analysis:  they defined “True” Twitter users as those who had at least 10 followers, were following at least 10 people and had tweeted at least 10 times.  Using that definition, only 21% of Twitter users were “True.”

Furthermore, “in terms of tweets, the report estimates that 34% of Twitter users hadn’t tweeted even once, while a whopping 73% of Twitter’s users tweeted less than 10 times. That means nearly all of the tweets on the social network were coming from about 1/4 of the user base.  Power users dominate.”

If the 80-20 rule applies, that means that around the world, around 5% of Tweeters are generating the content.  In all likelihood, that’s not very engaging or interactive for most people.

So the evolution in social media isn’t all that surprising.  People want to be noticed for their efforts and geo-location services get them noticed.

If you’re a marketer who’s still wondering about social media and its payout, particularly if you have a retail presence, look into the geo-location services and design retention and promotional programs around them.  (They will be especially effective with your younger target and should be eminently measurable.)

If you’re into social media, keep an eye out for the aggregation services (tweets posting to Facebook; the centralization of content).  This way, if you decide to take a “short-cut” you don’t lose your reach with your audience.

Want to learn more?  There’s a great piece from Mashable called “9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing” which you can find by clicking here.

In the January 18, 2010 edition of Newsweek, there was a great piece entitled “Your Online Brain.” It’s well worth the read as it focuses on the different theories about the Web’s impact on how we think.

The last paragraph really caught my attention as I had just participated in a creativity session last week.

“Science historian George Dyson believes the Internet’s flood of information has altered the process of creativity: what once required ‘collecting all available fragments of information to assemble a framework of knowledge’ now requires ‘removing or ignoring unnecessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.’ Creativity by destruction rather than assembly.”

The image I got from this was of “sculpting knowledge.” As a qualitative researcher, identifying consumer insights has always been about sculpting knowledge.

What does this have to do with my brain online? Well, my brain has been overwhelmed lately. I had some downtime over the holidays and I signed up for even more newsletters and feeds. I now need to cut back. I need time to think. The Internet is causing, as Evgeny Morozov said in the same article, “the disappearance of retrospection and reminiscence.”

It’s like a swimmer’s lung capacity: a swimmer might be able to hold their breath for a long time, but they still have to come up for air. I need a breath – to sculpt, process, digest – whatever your metaphor.

So is the Web changing how I think? No, at best it’s impacting how I problem solve (as I’m able to seek out so much more information in this new way). It provides me with more to think about.

Creativity is an iterative, infinite process: from inspiration to output and back again. It’s likely we’ve always been “assembling” and “destroying.” Said another way, when we seek the “knowledge hidden within,” it’s always through the prism of our “framework of knowledge.”

What are your thoughts?

Yesterday’s Meet The Press on NBC showcased the new Shriver Report, entitled “A Woman’s Nation.” The roundtable discussion was lively and focused on American families, how women are often out-earning their husbands in the U.S. (even while still earning less for the same jobs), and the issues the modern family faces (child care and elder care, in addition to heath care).

It was interesting to hear David Gregory, the moderator, say his wife out-earned him – which he didn’t have a problem with – and how he recently went into his female boss saying that with his wife traveling more for work, he needed greater flexibility in his hours.  Flexibility was a theme throughout the discussion; a high priority for most American workers.

And while I found this discussion fascinating, what I really found of interest was the “Meet The Press Minute,” from 1972, featuring Gloria Steinem.  I began working about a decade after this interview, and it’s like it was a different century.  I’ve always been grateful to the women who paved the way before me, but this (cold) “blast from the past” reminds us all that society evolves based on our thoughts and actions.  As corporations and individuals, we can make a difference.

To watch, click visit: http://tinyurl.com/yhls8cy.

Before Malcolm Gladwell, there was, among others, John Naisbett.  Naisbett’s Megatrends was a must read.  My favorite was the “High Tech/High Touch” trend.  His theory was that the more technology impacted our lives, the more we would strive to find balance with human interaction.  We are social creatures, after all.

High tech/high touch has been going on with humans since the advent of technology.  My view is that this is a three-step adoption/integration process.

Take the wheel.  Great new technology.  Took awhile to figure out how to use it (Mastery).  First used it for work (Utility).  When it became easier to make wheels (and more “cost effective”), someone probably thought “let’s hook up a mule and go visit some friends”  (Social Usage).

Or the pen, after paper became plentiful (costs had come down).   Mastery again came first (practice for legibility), utility came second (use for business or lessons), and social usage came third (write a letter to a friend).  High tech to high touch.

Social usage is often linked to lowered costs and a distribution system or infrastructure that’s in place.  Take the telephone.  Initially, it could only be mastered by a few as distribution was more limited.  When the infrastructure was built, bringing phones into homes, costs were still high, and usage was more local and limited – but business usage soared.  Over time, and as people moved further apart,  the telephone allowed people to “visit” without making a trip; they could do so more often and without the time and expense of a real trip.  High tech to high touch.

Name your technology and it follows this basic  mastery-utility-social usage adoption process, if the infrastructure is in place.

Video games:  learn the rules –> a fun way to spend free time –> play with others online

iPod:  learn how to use it –> build library –> share tunes with others

So social media networks are the logical manifestation of becoming comfortable with the Internet and cell phones and the other technologies of today.  We’re comfortable now, so we’re socializing them.  Facebook makes it visual.  Twitter makes it fast.

I wonder what’s next!

For a week now, many of us have been keeping up on what we now know will be the closing chapter of the Michael Jackson saga.  Like millions, I’ve kept up on the news.  One might argue that this really isn’t “news” (battles in Afghanistan, anyone?), but no one can argue about whether this is a “story.”

As humans, we’re programmed to listen to and tell stories.  Books, movies, and television (especially soap operas) all tell stories in one way or another.  Facebook and Twitter might very well be tied to the desire to tell our own stories.  The more easily we can relate to a story, the more likely we are to follow it or to become involved with it.

In marketing, we know that a sale can’t take place unless there is some connection between a consumer and the brand.  Consumers are connected to “Brand Michael” and so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his record sales are way up.  Brands typically don’t have a story they tell to consumers, but they can (e.g., the launch of Saturn).  Companies do have stories to tell (their history) and those stories often are the foundation for corporate culture – the way employees know how to act within the story.

In marketing research and account planning, storytelling is a critical skill.  It’s the stories we tell (aka research analysis and consumer insights) about target audiences which inform new product development, operations, and advertising, to name just a few.  Our job as consumer advocates requires we tell their story, objectively and with passion, so they have a voice when decisions are being made.

More in a future post on what makes for great marketing research/account planning storytelling.