Entertainment & Social Media

This is a brief summary based on the Nokia Report “Entertainment Study – A Glimpse of the Next Episode” and the microeconomics of social media sites as we know them. The goal of this summary is to relate the Nokia report (particularily the notion of the 25 % see below) to findinges regarding user activity on social media platforms on the web.

Entertainment. Concept, observations and assumptions

For the Nokia report about 9000 persons were asked about digital lifestyle, behaviour, and desires.

The Nokia report concludes that entertainment is going to be radically reinvented. It’s going to be fast-paced, bit-sized, and is shifting from broadcast concepts to bi- or even mulitdirectional usage patterns. Portability of devices and the internet emphasize the notion of anywhere and anyone. Nokia also predicts that 25% of entertainment (or content) will be created and consumed within peer communites.

Quote: “Entertainment will be centered around information access and the desire to learn.” (Timo Veikkola, senior futures specialist)

To further broaden the understanding of what’s going to happen or is already happening the report comes up with the distinction of the Current Episode versus the Next Episode.

Entertainment of the Current Episode is best described with those 3 notion:
- Transit Media: relates to time being spent commutin or office dead-time
- Wisdom Wikis: desire for knowledge
- Micromedia: Snack size due to devices. Means Twitter stays ahead of MySpace or E-Comics.

Entertaiment of the Next Episode further (projected to 2012) transforms that shift from traditional conceptions of Entertainment to the next level. Nokia calls this projection of entertainment Circular Entertaiment.

The notion if circular refers to the traits of the Current Episode but further emphasizes the user involvement and the desire for independency of the traditional content/copyright industry.

Circular signifies: sharing, collaboration within peer groups based on remixing, mashed-ups, forwarding
- It is immersive, there is no difference between online and offline
- It is a geek culture, science overrules celebrity
- It is g tech (girls technology) referring to these characteristics: collaborative, customizable, emotional

It’s a local culture which means services need to be available in the respective language, style and tone

Social Technographics

coined by Forrester’s, Charlene Li April 2007 describes as a term what roles and activities are commonly observed in online communities such as messageboards, social networks, sharing platforms, wikis – social media after all.

A quick general impression on user activity from InData, Jessi Hempel June 2007, displays the relations between creators and visitors/users:
It’s 0,16% on YouTube,
0,2 % on Flickr,
5 % on Wikipedia

The interest in user activity in so-called social media started with Ross Mayfield’s notion of the Powerlaw of Participation in April 2006. It is somehow modeled after Chris Andersons LongTail report and many other social network research

It describes in a nutshell what you can expect in any give social media but basically lots experiences of wikis are embedded. This is due to the fact that R. Mayfield was CEO of Socialtext, a wiki provider, at that time.

“From Collective Intelligence to Collaborative Intelligence” describes the different behaviours and the expected number of users that woul engange in those activities. More users cross the low threshold and very few (powerlaw) show high engagement.

Short before Mayfields report. Bradley Horowitz, then VP of Product Strategy at Yahoo, came up with the social pyramid based on research on Yahoo Groups in Feb 2006

Creator: 1 % start a group/thread
Synthesizers: 10 % partcipate actively
Lurkers: 100 % benefit (free riders)

In a comment he emphasizes that creators are also consumers. And that the hurdle to convert up the ladder is also a quality filter on social platforms.

Businees Week jumped on this issue and published data based on InData Sept 2006 and re-formulated the 1% rule
1 % rule
1/100 is creative
10/100 interacts with content
89/100 view content/interactions

The aforementioned Forrester report, from 2007, comes up with a social ladder that describes (based on their research) what you can expect to find on social media sits on average.

Conclusions for expetactions regarding user activities for user generated content platforms

The notion of 25 % encompasses a lot of diverse activties across the entire spectrum of so-called social software. Be it watching videos, uploading pictures, instant messaging, collaboratively editing a wiki, collecting links, creating ringtones, attend events in virtual worlds.

There is no concise hint – in that report – how much the average share of (created/consumed) peer community content is of today. I conclude therefore that those 25 % represent a fundamental shift for stakeholders in the field like Nokia or others.

With respect to expected user activity on social media platforms I’d stick with what has been reported in terms of social technographies.
Since we observe pretty different scenarios but none that goes beyond 13 % (YouTube 0,16%) with respect of creative users I’d recommend to first define what is conceived of as user activity and not stick to the notion of the creative user as the one that creates a piece of content.

Examples for activities: commenting, recommendations, actual content creation, forwarding etc.

In terms of numbers I’d recommend having an eye on what you observe on any given platform. And finally based on the science of social network analysis we need to get a clear understanding of centrality of our user-, and content-base.

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