Global social media tracker 2012 – Wave 6 of Universal McCann’s study

 

Since 2006, media agency Universal McCann (UM) has annually surveyed active internet users across the globe on their use of social media. They define active internet users as people aged 16-54 who use the internet at least 3-4 days a week. They chose this group, because it is driving the adoption of social media platforms. While UM’s methodology has always stayed the same, they steadily increased the number of people surveyed. For their latest report, Wave 6, they got responses from 41,738 users in 62 countries, including 1,043 in Germany. A 74-page summary is downloadable for free. There is also a German version available.

I have written about UM’s earlier findings, in particular with a view on Germany,  and it’s interesting to see how the global use of social media has evolved since then. Over the last couple of years, we have observed the impressive growth of social media across the globe, with some significant differences between countries depending on their socio-economic environment. At first, the growth was triggered by an increasing number of specific activities such as blogging or video sharing with each activity having its own purpose for users. Over time, social networks in general and Facebook in particular emerged as the platforms where most users aggregated the different things they were doing on the internet. This trend continued in Wave 6, but as the social media universe matures and new devices for access emerge, we can see more differentiation in the way social media are being used. Here is what I took away from Universal McCann’s latest report.

Less profiles, more contacts

Exhibit 1: Percentage of active internet users managing a profile on an existing social network such as Facebook within the last 6 months. Wave 3 (2008), Wave 4 (2009), Wave 5 (2010), Wave 6 (2011). Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

Since 2010, the number of social network profiles being created by active internet users has slowed down. Only countries such as Germany which are lagging behind the more mature social media markets are still seeing significant growth on social networks (see exhibit 1) and other social platforms.

 

 

 

 

Exhibit 2: Number of social contacts by platform. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

However, while the number of profiles doesn’t grow as fast as it used to, the time spent on managing those profiles is still on the rise, as the number of social contacts managed continues to grow (see exhibit 2).

 

 

 

 

Exhibit 3: Media consumption by channel. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

As a result, users are spending more time socializing online than ever before (see exhibit 3).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social networking means different things to different countries

Exhibit 4: Social networking focus by country. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

While social networking is always about sharing an interest with others, it is to some degree dependent on the cultural context what that actually means: e.g., the Chinese look for education and self-improvement, whereas the Germans look for a sense of belonging (see exhibit 4).

 

 

 

 

Privacy concerns in balance with readiness to share

Exhibit 5: Sharing personal data and privacy concerns. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

With users exposing more of their personal data on social networks, it doesn’t come as a surprise that there is also more concern with regards to data privacy. At the same time, users have become so attached to the habit of social networking that they are prepared to accept a certain level of risk (see exhibit 5).

Brand websites losing importance

Exhibit 6: Active internet users who visited a brand website within last 6 months. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

With social media activities consuming most of the time users spend on the web, brand websites are losing importance across all age groups, but particularly with young users (see exhibit 6). Interestingly, this decline of brand websites is not as distinct in Germany as it is elsewhere.

 

Exhibit 7: What applications do for users. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

With their offering mostly limited to information and commerce, brand websites don’t present many opportunities for engagement with users, at least when compared to social media platforms (see exhibit 7).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brand interactions mean different things to different industries

Exhibit 8: Which interaction would make you feel closer to the company? Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

Interestingly, when asked what kind of interaction users would appreciate when communicating with brands, they respond differently from industry to industry depending on the targeted outcome (see exhibit 8).

 

 

 

PC, laptop and mobile phones still the main devices to access the web

Exhibit 9: Devices used to access the internet. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet, mobile phone, e-book reader, internet connected TV, games console, portable MP3/video player, portable games console, the number of devices allowing for access to the internet is growing. However,PC, laptop and mobile phones are still the main ways to access the internet (see exhibit 9). Of course, this is expected to change as the smartphone penetration is growing rapidly with tablets also catching up.

Exhibit 10: Devices by activity. Source: Universal McCann: Social Media Tracker 2012

When comparing how the devices are being used, it already begins to show how smartphones are strong when it comes to searching, browsing, locating or reading news online (see exhibit 10).

 

 

 

Georg Kolb

Why we can’t have more than 150 friends and still need more than that

 

Everyone’s talking about “social”: “social networks”, “social media”, “social web”, “social games”, “social apps”, social everything, increasingly culminating in the idea of “social business”. But what does it mean to be social in this context? Are you more social when you have 1,000 followers on Twitter or Facebook rather than just 100? It certainly seems that way when looking at many social media success stories.  However, can you actually be social with 1,000 or more people? Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford,  believes that the cognitive limit to the number of individuals humans can maintain social relationships with is at 150. Much to the professor’s surprise, “Dunbar’s number” has made a considerable career on the Internet, certainly helped by the popularization of his findings through Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Tipping Point” and supporters such as marketing guru Seth Godin. Still, Dunbar’s number is not yet common knowledge, and among those who know it, it’s meaning is controversial. So, I figured it’s worth looking into the concept and its possible applications for business communications.

Based on studies with primates showing that there is a correlation between the size of their social groups and the size of their brain’s neocortex, Dunbar speculated in a 1992 paper that this correlation could be extrapolated to humans and predicted a group size of approx. 150. He then compared this number with data on social group sizes in human history such as the sizes of villages, tribes or units in ancient armies and found his hypothesis confirmed (within a band of variation). In a 2002 study, he also examined the “social network size in contemporary Western society based on the exchange of Christmas cards”, and again,  the “maximum network size averaged 153.5 individuals, with a mean network size of 124.9”.

If 150 is indeed the maximum of stable inter-personal relationships humans can maintain, Dunbar’s number also explains why larger groups don’t work without additional structures such as hierarchies or laws to organize the relationships. This is what Malcolm Gladwell picked up on pointing out that organizations suffer from a sharp productivity loss when growing larger than 150 employees. As a result, companies such as Gore, the manufacturer of Gore-Tex fabrics, organized their teams in smaller groups, so that they could keep strong working relationships.

Social GroomingFinally, managing more than 150 stable relationships would not only go beyond the brain’s capacity but also take too much time. In that regard, humans face the same challenge as primates: social grooming is laborious! It has been suggested, though, that humans might be able to increase the number of relationships with the help of social media, since it makes it easier to memorize a relation’s origin and then stay in touch, even over large distances. Dunbar counters, though, that dependable relationships need in-person meetings and social media still doesn’t remove the biological constraints (see for instance this video interview Dunbar had with the Guardian). And indeed, a recent study by Gonçalves, Perra and Vespignani (August 2011) validated Dunbar’s argument. They modeled activity of 1.7 m users on Twitter over six months and found “the data in agreement with Dunbar’s result; users can entertain a maximum of 100-200 stable relationships.”

Does this mean any number of social network connections larger than 150 doesn’t make sense? Well, it depends on what you are trying to achieve.  For instance, a mobile social network company called Path limited the number of friends users can have on their network to 150 (with reference to Dunbar), since their service is built for circles of close friends. That’s understandable. However, as early as 1973, sociologist Mark Granovetter pointed out that not only those people you are closely connected with are important for your network. In fact, they might even bring less value to it, because they probably know the same people and things that you do whereas your wider network of weak ties might open up access to new information and new networks. On a larger scale, the component of weak ties supports the concept of crowdsourcing as famously crafted by James Surowiecki back in 2004: If you really want to extract the wisdom of crowds, diversity is one of the critical success factors, and you will only get it out of a wide network with weak ties.

So, from my perspective, Dunbar’s number is certainly a factor business communicators have to take into consideration. If you want to have a group of people interact and collaborate productively to get things done, the size of this group shouldn’t go beyond Dunbar’s number. Making this group larger might lead to a loss in productivity, because an increasing amount of “noise” in the system can be distracting and will increase the need for coordination and filtering. Also, large numbers of followers or “fans” shouldn’t be mistaken as a proof of social interaction that is by default allowing for stronger relationships than traditional reach. Dunbar has shown that stable interpersonal relationships can’t be managed in large numbers, unless you do it one Dunbar group at a time. IBM employees, for example, operate thousands of internal and external social media platforms creating tens of thousands strong ties inside the organization and outside-in.

Conversely, if the goal is to open up a specific business unit or the whole organization to innovation, it is necessary to go far beyond the Dunbar number and include weak ties. In fact, too many strong relationships within the crowd you are working with will threaten the diversity needed to go beyond existing approaches. Online communities in particular are threatened by the “echo chamber effect“, because once a claim is made by one participant it’s extremely easy to have it repeated by like-minded people, resulting into the reinforcement of their beliefs and possibly hindering critical discourse. Memes or myths  are being created as a result and can block the way for innovation. In addition, the echo chamber effect can be aggravated by algorithms homogenizing search results within social networks, a phenomenon Eli Pariser called the filter bubble. In fact, I sometimes do have the impression that we as business communicators do suffer from the echo chamber in our social networks, because a Dunbar group is reinforcing myths such as  the loss of control on the social web at conferences and on the web. Thanks to Dunbar and others, we can better understand these mechanisms. It is a whole different discussion how to create a wide network with weak ties allowing for diversity and then aggregate the ideas for innovation. Perhaps, a discussion for another post. This one has already been long enough!

Georg Kolb

Loss of control on the social web is a myth

 

Exhibit 1: The art of clean-up (source Ursus Wehrli)

Over the last 6-8 years, I have heard it again and again: organizations entering the social web will lose control of their message. As a result, the fear of losing control has had – and still has – many corporations hesitating to communicate via social media platforms. Today, I will argue that this loss of control is a myth. In fact, the new ways of online communication even enable a gain of control which can potentially be scary. When I recently found Ursus Wehrli’s fantastic photos presenting his “art of clean-up”, they not only made me laugh, but also reminded me how artificial the idea of control in human relations is (see exhibit 1).

Let’s start by clarifying some terms involved. When thinking about the meaning of control within the context of (marketing) communications, I find it helpful to differentiate channels. Market research firm Forrester provided a nice little framework defining the boundaries between owned, paid and earned media (see exhibit 2).

Exhibit 2: Forrester defining owned, paid, earned media

You do have “control” over your messages in paid media like display ads or owned media such as corporate web sites, but it is merely the control over your own monologue. If control means “to exercise restraining or directing influence over someone or something“, controlling your message in paid and owned media isn’t more than “self-control”. This is true for traditional and social media. However, the control ends with people’s reactions to your message. And again, this is true for traditional and social media. While you can control the content of your ad or your blog post, there is no guarantee as to how your audience will respond to it. The difference between traditional and social media is that you can easily see the response in social media whereas you can’t see it in traditional media. You don’t see what people think of your TV ad or if they care at all, but you can see what people say on the web. Hence, you actually have more control in social media, since you can monitor what the issue is and respond to it. Knowing what your stakeholders think of you all the time is a huge advantage, in particular for your messaging.

What people say about you is what you earned in terms of reputation. And again, this is true for traditional and social media. However, the reach and speed of earned media was much smaller before social media existed. Earned content was limited to independent journalists writing about your organization after checking multiple sources, or people promoting your brand offline through word-of-mouth after having an exciting experience. Since the arrival of social media, word-of-mouth is on stereoids, which makes reputational issues and wins earlier visible and actionable. This is not bad news, but very good news for communicators who want to be in control. In fact, the problem is not that communicators lose control over their message, the problem is that they possibly gain too much control by tracking every step of their audiences on the web. With that kind of knowledge, you might be in a position to communicate as targeted and relevant as never before, but you might also creep silently under people’s skin without having their consent. This is what Facebook users fear when they complain about intransparent privacy settings on the network.

It is one of the ironies of our time that corporate communicators fear loss of control on the social web while at the same time social web users fear loss of control over their personal data because of commercial (or political) interests. It is one of the great challenges of our time to balance the commercial interest in providing targeted and compelling content with the personal interest in privacy. We should rather focus our attention on this issue than on the loss of message control, because it is a myth.

Georg Kolb

Meet me at conferences

 

May will be a pretty busy month for me in terms of conferences. I will speak at three German and one international convention:

May 2nd and 3rd in Munich: Social Media in Unternehmen 2011 (Social Media in Corporations 2011). My talk will be on how to make the new feedback culture corporate ready.

May 10 in Amsterdam: Social Media in a Corporate Context. Stefan Kruijer and I will speak about Many-to-One communication fostering one global company culture at Airbus.

 

May 12 and 13 in Frankfurt: Tagung Interne Kommunikation (Internal Communications Convention). My workshop will be on social media policies.

 

 

 

 

26.05. in Dusseldorf: K2-Tagung Interne Kommunikation (K2 Internal Communication Convention). Frank Weber and I will speak about Many-to-One communication for leadership and change at Wüstenrot&Württembergische Group.

 

Would be great to meet some of you there!

Georg Kolb

Book review: From Lincoln to LinkedIn by Mike Klein

 

From Lincoln to LinkedIn. The 55 Minute Guide to Social Communication by Mike Klein is a quick and fun read, making three great points that are relevant to any organisational communicator’s strategy:

1) Communication has always been social, and influence has always been exerted through word of mouth. It didn’t take social media to make that true.

2) Organisational communicators can learn from political communicators who understood early on how to leverage word of mouth in social networks. Abraham Lincoln in particular was a master of social communication we can learn from in very practical terms.

3) It is key to map the “tribes” of your organisation, those communities of interest and networks of trust driving communication socially. They are the real influencers beyond the orgchart that will help you win. Social media might be a great way to identify them and work with them, but social communication is not dependent on any particular channel.

I do highly recommend this book. Mike Klein is an inventive thinker, a great writer and a healthy pragmatist.

Georg Kolb