SXSW Panel Picker season is upon us again! Last year, I was privileged to be on a panel with friends from FUNimation, Capcom, and some other great companies discussing how we speak to our niche audiences.
This year, I corralled some friends (and they corralled some friends) to put together a panel about some of the issues that we face as community managers. The darker side of community management, if you will. Here’s the description of us & the panel:
This is the true story of five community managers picked to work on a brand, fixing problems and engaging with the community to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. Katie Morse is the music-loving technology geek. Active in the dubstep scene, she snagged a role a Billboard only to learn you do not cross Lil Kim fans and live to tweet about it. Nick Ayres is happy-go-lucky, and potentially the nicest guy on the interwebs. He’s also been one of the social media voices behind two big brands that really like orange (like, a whole lot) – The Home Depot and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The question is: can the man with the million dollar smile keep a cheerful grin when things go awry? Kellie Parker is the ragtag rebel ruling the male dominated world of gaming. When you think Sega you think blue hedgehogs, but Kellie gets to see the darker side of gamer behavior– like all those penis photos. Sam Haseltine can commonly be found standing on a chair at a football ground orchestrating hundreds football fans in glorious song. The ultimate in community management. The same can be said for him online, but without the chair. Anna OBrien is the typical left of center creative girl, with a background in numbers and web analytics. She once made waves in community management for Citibank, but can she survive the challenge of managing brands in a new country? Welcome to the The Real World, Community Management.
We’d really love to make it to SXSW so we can share our stories and advice. I also personally really want to hear Katie’s story about Lil Kim. So please take a second and vote for us, won’t you?
Greetings from SXSW! The conference is over, and my panel is done. I spoke today on “Speaking to Geeks” with some friends from Capcom, Funimation, and other cool companies. It sucks to have the last panel of the last day, and we really appreciated the folks that delayed their end-of-conference partying to hear what we had to say.
I saw a lot of great stuff in the last few days. The “Worst Website Ever” panel was definitely a standout. (I really hope those slides get put on slideshare, because “the fap store” and “40 chan” were truly hilarious.) I got to see Matthew Inman, who writes and draws The Oatmeal, a site that I read nearly every day. He’s just as funny in person, and I’m glad I stayed even though I was in the beginning stages of a bangin’ migraine. My friend Kelly Feller from Intel also did a great presentation about using contests for social marketing. But the most validating and one of the funniest presentations I saw was from Gary Vaynerchuk about the same subject as his new book, The Thank You Economy.
I have been a fan of Gary’s for a long time. He’s an engaging and energetic speaker, he knows his stuff when it comes to community and social media, and he swears a lot… just like me. One of the reasons his session was so validating for me is that his new book is about how brands need to be humanized, and genuinely interact with their fans instead of just shoving marketing down their throats. This is so much of what I do in my day job, and it’s something that my team and I are really dedicated to. We work really hard to be human — we respond to comments, we make small talk, we share behind-the-scenes of our offices. We know the fans that interact with us by name, and our fans know us by name, too. We let our personalities shine through and we have reaped the rewards for it. Yes, we market too — it is part of our job, after all. But brands that think of Twitter as 140 character press releases are simply doing it wrong.
One of the things Gary mentioned in his session… something I truly thought was not an actual thing that would ever happen… is brands exploiting the tragedy in Japan for their own gain. But as I am catching up on my social media streams from the last few days, I was shocked to see that this really is happening. It’s incredibly tacky and crass. And (hopefully!) it’s about to bite these brands in the ass in a big way.
Bing (and Microsoft) have already apologized for their RT campaign wherein they pledged to donate $1 per RT of their content/link, up to $100k. And they just donated the $100k. Mastiff, a video game developer, is pledging to donate $100 for every 100 people that “like” them on Facebook, up to $25,000. Voskos yogurt is also pledging to donate $1 for every “like” they get on Facebook. And I sort of get where they are coming from. Especially in the current economy, not everyone can afford to give money. A lot of people want to help out, and beyond giving money, they don’t know how. So it’s easy for a brand to see it as a win/win — they get to donate money to a great cause, they get new people to market to (or, in the case of Bing, get their name and content out), and people get to feel like they did something to contribute without actually paying out money.
But what’s really easy to miss is how incredibly tacky this is. It smacks of opportunism, of holding relief dollars hostage for selfish marketing purposes. Because essentially, what a company like Mastiff is saying is that they are willing to donate $25,000 to the Red Cross, but if they only get 500 new fans, they’ll only donate $500. So, you know, it’s our fault that the Red Cross (and the people of Japan) missed out on $20,000 because we didn’t click the “like” button. That’s why Bing did the right thing with their apology — they gave the full $100,000 they had pledged.
If you are going to give money, give money. If you want to donate profits from sales of your product, do that. All of those things are perfectly noble and acceptable. But exploiting victims of a terrible tragedy for your own marketing purposes is just reprehensible. These companies should be ashamed.
OK, now that that’s out of my system, I need to go pack. Since, you know, I have to get up in 5 hours to go the airport.
You’ve probably seen them all over Facebook or Twitter. It seems like nearly every other person these days is calling themselves a “social media expert” with little to nothing to back it up. They have no professional work experience in community or social media. (And no academic education either, because it doesn’t exist.) Their main qualification is that they have a blog, a twitter account, and 500 Facebook friends. It’s annoying, and frankly it’s insulting, to someone like me with over 10 years in the business.
In my reading the other day, I came across a link to this article on Social Media Explorer by Jason Falls. It’s about the explosion of so-called “social media experts”, and Jason’s opinion is that we all just need to get off our high horses and stop being worried about them and what they are doing to our industry. And I don’t think he could be more wrong.
I’ve never really been engaged in a serious business conversation with one of these folks, as I’m usually pretty good at scaring them off once they realize that I actually do know what I’m talking about. But I’ve always imagined the conversation to go something like it does in this video.
Jason opens his article by asking “can we please get off the ego-driven, high-horse pedestal and shut the hell up about “social media gurus?” to which I can only answer… NO. Because this is important.
These so-called experts are giving all of us a bad name. The problem stems from the same problem that caused them to want to hire an expert in the first place. They don’t understand social media. At all. So they don’t know what to look for in an expert. I mean, I don’t know a thing about accounting, so I doubt that I’d make a great hiring decision on our next corporate accountant. So they hire an “expert” that looks good on paper (and the internet), and uses all the exciting buzzwords. And they probably do a few things — make a Facebook page, set up a Twitter account — and that’s it. The company may or may not feel ripped off… but they basically were. These “experts” are preying on people’s inexperience with social media and their fear of getting it wrong (because they’ve seen others do a big painful bellyflop and want to avoid that at all costs).
Jason’s point is that we shouldn’t attacking (or in his words, “whining” about) these people because they are young and trying to make their way in the world. Well, yes but no. In some ways, the influx of “experts” is inevitable because there is huge demand to hire people who are knowledgeable about social media, but there’s no formal education in the field. You can’t (to my knowledge, and I’d love to know about it if I’m wrong) get a college degree in online community or social media. The only way to get experience is to do some stuff ad-hoc (be a moderator on someone else’s forums, for example) or to get on-the-job experience. Take that small bit of experience and combine it with the hiring manager’s inexperience with social media, and you get where we are. So I don’t mind young people trying to make an honest start into the field. In fact, I try to help them along as much as I can. But I think a lot of these “experts” aren’t trying to make an honest start into the field, they are trying to make a quick buck preying on inexperience and fear. I also have an issue with taking on the label “expert” right out of the gate. It was only after 10 years of experience that I started to feel comfortable with that label. Thinking you’re an expert because you have 500 Facebook friends is like me saying I’m a doctor because I’ve seen every episode of ER. It just doesn’t work that way.
So how do we solve this problem? There are a lot of components, and it’s more complex than it seems.
1. Academic education. We need to start seeing actual academic degree programs on an undergraduate level, so that young people can get the background they need to make a solid start in the industry. I have beaten this drum often before, but it’s because I think it’s so important and nobody else is talking about it. The program could probably take from existing business, public relations, and marketing courses, but will need some custom-designed courses. Things like reputation systems and metrics could make for whole courses in and of themselves. Until we start giving people proper education and training for the jobs that are out there in community and social media, they will continue to invent their experiences out of thin air to compensate.
2. Corporate education. Someone, somewhere in every organization needs to know enough about community and social media to make a good hiring decision. They don’t have to be experts, but they need to know enough to spot the actual expert in a field of bullshit buzzword artists. Companies need to stop hiring the first person that sounds like they know what they are talking about because they are so afraid of doing nothing. Until companies stop hiring these “experts”, they will continue to burn companies and sour them on the idea of social media expertise at all.
3. Mentoring programs. Until we do implement the academic programs needed to make this career path sustainable in the future, we need to do something with the new people filling the demand for social media expertise today. Because there is no formal education available in the field, most people’s stories start like mine, with “I fell into it by accident when…”. We all have to start somewhere and climb our way up, and we’re working without a net in this industry. The more experienced among us need to work with people who are just starting out to help them get established, get experience, and get a solid foundation that will serve them (and their employers) well into the future. Until we start sharing our knowledge and experience with up-and-comers in the industry, we won’t have any growth of actual experts in the field. And that hurts all of us in the long run.
4. Certification program. I was at the Online Community Summit last week. During lunch, I was sitting with a group of friends that I do consider to be experts in this field, and the conversation turned to all of these faux experts. One of the things proposed to help solve the problem was some sort of certification system whereby people get accredited as experts (or knowledgeable or whatever) and can use that as currency when interviewing for a job or taking on new clients. I think that this idea has a lot of potential, but also a lot of pitfalls. It would be great to have something that companies and hiring managers can see and rely on when hiring someone. It would also help up-and-comers have something solid to put on their resume. And it’s a decent stand-in for pre-employment education. But who oversees and administers the program? How to they and the program gain the respect necessary for the certification to carry real weight and meaning? These are all things that would need to be worked out.
So yes, I do think that the influx of social media “experts” is bad for our industry. That someone with so little experience calls themselves an “expert” is insulting to the years I and many others have worked in this industry. That companies are falling for their schtick is a big problem. I agree that we can’t be afraid of the new wave of people in this fast-growing industry, but I think that us first-wavers have an obligation to differentiate actual experience and expertise from anecdotal expertise. I also think we have an obligation to continue making the pathway more smooth for others who follow in our footsteps.
I was in the doctor’s office last week (I injured my shoulder) browsing the magazines, and the cover story of The Economist caught my eye. The story was “Sex Laws: Unjust and Ineffective” and it’s an in-depth look at how we classify and punish sex offenders in this country. And, as the title suggests, we don’t do it that well.
As I mentioned in a previous entry, I have a BA in Criminal Justice. Although it’s not the main focus of my work these days, I maintain more than a passing interest in the issues regarding the law, the courts, and the prison system.
It’s never been popular to be against sex offender laws. Certainly, no politician could ever get elected (or re-elected) by being against them. But thankfully I am not a politician. And I am, for the most part, against the current laws most states have regarding sex offenders.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of terrible stories about children being harmed by real predators — including Megan Kanka (for whom Megan’s Law is named after) and Adam Walsh. But just as real are the stories of people who are branded sex offenders for what most people would believe are minor offenses. According to the Economist:
A report by Sarah Tofte of Human Rights Watch, a pressure group, found that at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present). No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers.
These are not violent offenders. These people are not harming others. And they are certainly not harming children. Yet most people automatically assume that all sex offenders are violent child rapists and molesters. And why wouldn’t people paint all sex offenders with the same big brush? Their government and laws certainly do. Again from the Economist:
The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous.
Yet there they all are, lumped into one big pile and treated as if they are all the same. And in most states (and thanks to a 2006 law passed by the US Congress, soon all states) these registries are available online for anyone to peruse, map, and generally freak out over. This is also ultimately ineffective. More from the Economist:
Publicly accessible sex-offender registries are intended to keep people safe. But there is little evidence that they do. A study by Kristen Zgoba of the New Jersey Department of Corrections found that the state’s system for registering sex offenders and warning their neighbours cost millions of dollars and had no discernible effect on the number of sex crimes. Restricting where sex offenders can live is supposed to keep them away from potential victims, but it is doubtful that this works. A determined predator can always catch a bus.
So, at this point you’re probably asking yourself why, outside of just stating my opinion, this is on my blog. It’s because of all the hysteria surrounding sex offenders on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. It’s about Facebook removing registered sex offenders from its registrations. Which, on the surface, sounds like a good idea. We want to keep kids safe online, right?
Well, no. Because again, it’s very easy to get on the registered sex offender list for something as simple as urinating in public. And most of the offenses that land a person on the sex offenders list have nothing to do with children. And most of the people on sex offender lists pose little threat.
But it’s more than that. The bias and fear-mongering are right there in the words they use to describe the situation and the reasoning for it. From MSNBC:
“The message … is [that] Facebook has an equal stake in solving this problem of protecting children,” said Blumenthal, who along with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has led an effort remove sex offenders from the social networking Web sites.”They have an equal stake in the predator problem and its solution.”
What they won’t tell you is that registered sex offenders make up approximately the same percentage of Facebook and MySpace registration databases as they do the general population. Barring all registered sex offenders from social media won’t protect children any more than requiring someone who was caught visiting a prostitute to live 1000 feet away from a school protects children. But none of that sounds like good PR.
I think we all genuinely want to keep children safe from predators. But we have to do what reasoned research tells us is right, instead of taking the shotgun approach that we have in the last few years. We need to act logically, not out of panic or outrage. Treating all registered sex offenders like lepers and cutting them off from the online world is just not the best way to achieve the goal, and it’s incredibly unfair to the people who get lumped in along the way.
Disemvoweling has been around since Teresa Nielsen Hayden invented it in 2002, although it’s only gained popularity in recent years. The concept is simple — remove the vowels from a profane, hateful, or otherwise dis-allowed comment in order to take the “heat’ out of it. The original post remains, and you can get the sense of what it originally said without needing to endure it in its entirety.
It’s one of the popular tools of moderation, but like all moderation tools, it’s not right for all situations, all reasons, or all communities. A tool is just a tool — what matters is how you use it. What matters more is WHY you use it.
As I was reading Consumerist this afternoon, I came across a story about Hearst telling a blogger to stop using the disemvoweling tool they have on their blogs. What struck me at first was that there was a lawyer somewhere in Hearst making an argument against using this tool. This seemed odd to me, so I clicked the link in their post that went to the blogger’s entry on being told to stop disemvoweling people, to see what his reaction was. What I found was a whole second layer to the story, and the real lesson here.
In his TimesUnion.com blog, Matt Baumgartner discussed why he was told to stop disemvoweling, and why he doesn’t want to do it.
For the record, I like taking away people’s vowels when they have something negative to say about me or someone else. It feels empowering. And it’s one of the few joys this blog brings me. When I see someone get even more angry after they see their vowels were removed, I laugh and then dance around my room.
And, here’s the real problem. A good tool used in the wrong way. Disemvoweling a post for breaking the community standards/rules of posting/whatever you call them. (You do have some sort of community standards, right? If not, get some ASAP.) But taking any negative moderation action on a comment or post simply because they disagree with you or say something negative about you is just wrong. If you are that thin skinned, and especially if negative moderation is one of the few joys you have, then you need to take a step back and decide if blogging/posting/moderating/community management is really right for you. It’s not about revenge or power, it’s about creating a good interactive space for everyone to participate in.
You will get way farther with people who disagree with you and think negatively about you by engaging them head-on in your own space. I’ve seen people start out to be harsh critics and turn out to be raving fans, and all it took was a little interaction and reassurance that someone’s listening.
We all have our bad days and our pet peeves. I’d be lying if I said that I’ve never smiled and giggled as I’ve banned someone from a community because I was so happy to see them go. But it’s about wielding the power fairly and equally, and not getting drunk from the power. Which Mr. Baumgartner clearly has on his TimesUnion blog.
The tools you use don’t matter as much as the people using them.
In October, I’ll be speaking at the Digital PR Summit in New York City. I’ll be on a panel about measuring your digital PR efforts. Now, I certainly don’t want to misrepresent myself or confuse anyone. I do not work in PR, and never have. I think there can be a lot of overlap between community and PR, but there are a lot of areas where they don’t overlap at all. Earlier this year, I co-presented at the New Communications Forum with Connie Bensen, where I talked about the different tools that we use at SEGA to measure our community efforts, including brand monitoring tools, traditional web management tools, and the stats provided by social media sites. I also discussed some of the ways in which we are limited in how we measure effectiveness. The fine folks from PR News Online were in the audience, and asked me to speak at the Digital PR Summit later this year. I happily accepted, and I’m hoping to share my unique knowledge and experience, and I’m hoping to learn a lot, too.
I am also pleased that I’ll be speaking again at the Community 2.0 conference next year. All of the speakers are still being confirmed, but it’s looking like I’ll be on a panel about the business uses of Twitter (where I hope to discuss SEGA’s Free Stuff Friday giveaways) and I’ll also be doing a solo session on managing multiple brands in community. I have really learned a lot in having multiple people managing multiple brands over multiple tools, and I hope to share some of my learnings.
If you are interested in having me speak at an upcoming conference, I’d be honored! Please look at my page on speaking, and send me an email.
I really don’t want to be an alarmist. Lots of companies want to be hip and ”web 2.0″ and let users create content. But lots of companies are scared of doing so. In the debate between leaving users free to create really cool stuff and restricting their access in case they do something unsavory, I generally come down on the side of the users. Most of the time, they will create really great stuff, and a small percentage will create something you’re not wild about.
You have to hedge your bets as much as you can. This is also akin to “trust, but verify”. Companies can and should let their users create content, but there has to be some sort of moderation plan in place. When the content being created is images or video, you really have to be careful.
This was brought into sharp focus this past weekend for Food Network. They host a reality-ish show called The Next Food Network Star that is a competition to be, um, the next Food Network star. They are currently taking applications for Season 6, and that includes the ability for applicants to upload a video to the Food Network site. Video that is, apparently, not moderated by anyone.
Food Network Humor caught Food Network with their pants down (pun intended). A video entitled “Heating up the Kitchen” was uploaded, stayed up for over 24 hours, and became the third most viewed video on the site (according to the comments on that blog entry). The problem? It was hard core porn.
Food Network Humor caught a screenshot of the video on their site, which was removed from the Food Network site. (They’ve blocked the nudie bits out, but I’m linking to it instead of publishing it just in case you’re at work or are sensitive to this kind of thing.)
I applaud that they want users to create content and upload it to their site. But as a company, you have to protect yourself against something like this happening. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. It would have taken someone extra time to review all the videos before posting, but it’s well worth it to make sure you aren’t hosting and promoting porn to your members. Trust, but moderate.
I’m guessing that someone on their web/community team had a very, VERY bad Monday.
Anyone who has spent time in an online community, on virtually any subject, has experienced hatred. Almost all kinds of hatred grows wild and multiplies quickly on the internet. The internet is phenomenal for helping people find others who share their interests and views, and helping those groups to organize. This is the driving force behind every online community, from knitting communities to white supremacist communities. My friend Jessie Daniels has just published a book called Cyber Racism about how racism has made the jump from offline means (print and in-person organization) to the online world.
Homophobia is no different. From seemingly innocent comments like “That’s so gay” to explicit “I hate gay people” comments, it’s everywhere. But homophobia on the net is often more innocent-looking, and more difficult to recognize, than other forms of hatred. I’m not just talking about forums that are obviously dedicated to homophobia. Remarks like “that’s so gay” pass by in most every community without anyone blinking an eye. And many communities have cultures that don’t discourage that, even if they don’t encourage it. As managers, culture-makers, and rule-setters in our communities, we have an obligation to make sure our forums are free from homophobia, but we have to do it in a way that’s fair for everyone. Lots of attempts have been made, and I’m not sure anyone has found the silver bullet answer yet.
The first of its kind panel discussion will spotlight the issue of homophobia in virtual communities and include the perspectives of both gaming companies and LGBT gamers. Discussion will revolve around the state of the problem in these communities, policy solutions that have been developed to address homophobia – some that are working and those that are not – as well as looking forward to challenges and opportunities in various sectors of the industry including production, policy and enforcement, financial, customer service and the end user experience.
Confirmed panelists include:
Flynn DeMarco (Alias: Fruite Brute), Founder of GayGamer.net
Dan Hewitt, Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
Cyn Skyberg, VP of Customer Relations at Linden Lab
Stephen Toulouse (Gamertag: stepto), Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement on Microsoft’s XBox LIVE
I really wish I could attend this panel, but I have a prior obligation next weekend. (My wife is having thumb surgery on Friday.) If, like me, you can’t attend the panel, don’t fret. It will be recorded and distributed for everyone who can’t make it. I’m really looking forward to the DVD of the panel.
In addition to promoting the panel on Facebook, Twitter, and the GLAAD blog, they’ve taken it one step further. Justin Cole, the Director of Digital Media for GLAAD, wrote an Op-Ed this week on Kotaku, a very popular video games blog. This is most definitely not “preaching to the choir”. As I’ve written before, the gaming industry can be a very male and hetero-oriented place. Kotaku, and its readers, are no exception.
In the Op-Ed, Justin cited this video as an example of homophobia in gaming.
From the YouTube description on that video:
Other than maybe a quick “hello” to the chat room or a request to “veto”, I didn’t say anything first or taunt anyone. What was said by these players was done with no provocation on my part. The vast majority of the times I wouldn’t even respond back so the audio would be clear. Things I didn’t include in this video are the betrayals (people on my team killing me), players asking me NOT to party up, or all leaving mid-game so that I’m all alone.
Justin also cited some startling statistics from a 2006 study from the University of Illinois “the social and behavioral demographics of gay video game players” as well as “the role of sexual orientation on gaming habits.” (Emphasis mine)
52.7% of those surveyed said the gaming community is “Somewhat Hostile” to gay and lesbian gamers, 14% said “Very Hostile.”
When asked what forms of homophobia people have seen in the gaming community, here are some of what the surveyed said:
87.7% – Players use the phrase, “That’s so gay.”
83.4% – Players use the words “gay” or “queer” as derogatory names.
52.3% – Stereotypical representations of gay characters in games.
42.5% – Refusal of game designers to include well-developed gay characters.
49.4% – Invisibility of gaymers and/or the gaymer community.
When asked how frequently players experience homophobia, those surveyed who responded “Always” or “Frequently” equaled 42%. Add in “Sometimes” and it brings up that total to 74.5%. When asked how often those players respond to the homophobia they witness – 50.9% total responded “Never” or “Rarely.”
Given these statistics, it’s no wonder that Justin and GLAAD have chosen to focus on the gaming community first in their battle against homophobia among all virtual communities.
To see how much of an uphill battle this is, one need look no further than the comments on that YouTube video or, more realistically, on the Kotaku article. YouTube comments are notorious for being horrible, obnoxious, profane, and homophobic, and the comments on that video certainly live up to that reputation. The comments on Kotaku are at least more intelligently written, even if the majority of them are still homophobic and unapologetic for it.
I spoke with Justin from GLAAD this week, and we had a great conversation about these massive cultural shifts that are so obviously necessary. There are so many moving parts — the rules we implement about what is and isn’t appropriate in our communities, the consistent enforcement of those rules, and the people who are tasked with setting a positive example in our communities. But it’s also about the development of games (diverse and non-stereotypical characters), and the promotion of games. I also strongly feel that we need to have more diversity in the workforce of the gaming industry in order to really bring about change from the inside out. I know that’s easier said than done — at the end of the day, companies need to do what they can to sell the largest amount of games they can, and hitting that demographic sweet spot (ie: the young, straight, possibly homophobic male) is really tempting. But all of these things need to come together to move this ship forward.
Justin and I had a great conversation, and he asked me to help out with GLAAD’s initiative beyond the panel. I’m so excited and honored to be working with them on this important issue. He is interested in hearing from community managers from all types of communities, so I’ll probably be pulling in many of the people I know in the CM world to help with this project.
In the meantime, I urge all community managers to re-examine your approach to fighting homophobia in your communities. If you’re a member of a community, especially a gaming community, I urge you to re-evaluate how you treat people in the communities you participate in, to see if you can do more. If you live in the SF bay area, I encourage you to sign up for GLAAD’s panel on this issue. I urge all of you to treat people with kindness, fairness, and equality.
I have been a big fan of danah boyd for a while. When I think about my own aspirations and what I’m interested in learning more about, her name routinely comes up in my reading. Her work looks beyond the norms in online community research — how to be a better marketer, get more followers, get better ROI. Her research delves into the architecture, the politics, and the culture of communities and social media.
At the end of June, she gave a speech at the Personal Democracy Forum called “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online”. In it, she shared her research on exactly who was using MySpace, who was using Facebook, and why. The results were interesting and sometimes surprising.
Before I read her talk, I would have told you that hardly anyone uses MySpace anymore. I would have told you that most people have transferred over to Facebook. After reading her talk, I understand why I thought that, even though I was wrong.
The talk started with danah asking the audience to raise their hands if they used Facebook, and then again for MySpace. 90%(ish) of the people used Facebook, but only a few used MySpace. This reflects my experience (I was never a heavy MySpace user, but I don’t use it at all now. 90% of my friends, business associates, and acquaintances use Facebook and not MySpace, too). However, danah points out that while we’re touting Facebook’s growth, we’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle — that just as many people are now using MySpace as they are using Facebook. While Facebook’s numbers have been growing exponentially, MySpace’s numbers haven’t changed.
Two weeks ago, comScore released numbers showing that Facebook and MySpace were neck-and-neck in terms of unique user visits in the U.S. The meta-narrative was that Facebook was winning in the States and that MySpace was dying. I would argue that the numbers can be read differently. The numbers show that MySpace has neither grown nor faded in the last year while Facebook has expanded rapidly and has finally reached the same size. Of course, this is not to say that Facebook isn’t doing tremendously. In a business environment where monetization is shaky, the only definition of success is “growth.” Given that, it’s reasonable to see Facebook as more successful than MySpace this year. But we still need to account for the fact that as many people visit MySpace as Facebook and that, as exemplified by the people in this room, that’s not because there’s a complete overlap of users. Even if you think that Facebook is winning the game, we need to account for the fact that *70 million* people in the US visited MySpace. That’s not small potatoes.
When danah dug deeper, asking teenagers which site they were using and why, the answers were astounding. Some cited feature differences, but many of the answers were around culture, and by extension, class. One teenager called MySpace “ghetto”, while others said that Facebook was more high-class, more adult.
Craig (17, California): The higher castes of high school moved to Facebook. It was more cultured, and less cheesy. The lower class usually were content to stick to MySpace. Any high school student who has a Facebook will tell you that MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious. Like Peet’s is more cultured than Starbucks, and Jazz is more cultured than bubblegum pop, and like Macs are more cultured than PC’s, Facebook is of a cooler caliber than MySpace.
If this language seems harsh, danah says that’s with good reason.
In looking through my data, I found that teens who prefer Facebook are far more likely to be condescending towards those who use MySpace than vice versa. Teens who use MySpace may lament teen Facebook users as “stuck-ups” or “goodie two-shoes” or the “good kids.” But they’re not nearly as harsh in their language as Facebook users are of those who use MySpace.
I agree with danah’s characterization of what happened when people abandoned MySpace for Facebook — it’s a modern-day, internet-based white flight. Whites, the educated, the suburban, the wealthier were all more likely to leave MySpace and go to Facebook. Given this, descriptions of MySpace as “ghetto” and Facebook as “more cultured” take on a whole new light here. To help illustrate this, danah talks about the sociological concept of homophily, which basically means “birds of a feather stick together”. You are most likely to know people like yourself. And how this is one of the driving forces behind why people choose MySpace or Facebook — they are attracted to the spaces where the people they perceive to be like themselves are.
This concept of homophily also shows why I would have told you that nobody is really looking at MySpace anymore. I don’t, and most of the people that I know are like me. Although my group of friends, acquaintances and associates are fairly diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation, they are almost entirely liberal/Democrat, well-educated, and wealthier. Because of who I am, and because of homophily, the people I know are less likely to choose MySpace over Facebook.
The implications of this, as danah rightly points out, are increased social divides.
We can accept when people choose to connect to people who are like them and not friend different others. But can we accept when institutions and services only support a portion of the network? When politicians only address half of their constituency? When educators and policy makers engage with people only through the tools of the privileged? When we start leveraging technology to meet specific goals, we may reinforce the divisions that we’re trying to address.
If you want people to connect around politics and democracy, information and ideas, you need to understand the divisions that exist. Many of us in this room see social network sites as a modern day incarnation of the public sphere. Politicians login to these sites to connect with constituents and hear their voices. Campaign managers and activists try to rally people through these sites. Market researchers try to get a sense of people’s opinions through these sites. Educators try to connect with students and build knowledge sharing communities. This is fantastic. But there isn’t one uniform public sphere. And if the ways in which we construct the digital public sphere reinforce the divisions that we’ve been trying to break down, we’ve got a problem.
I can’t recommend enough that you read the entire text of danah’s talk. It is just this kind of research and critical thinking that we need to understand where we are, why we are where we are, and where we are going. We need to consider a world outside of ourselves and our own experiences. Until we understand it, we can’t compensate for it, let alone work to make it better.
I have a BA in Criminal Justice. My interest in the justice system started in high school, when I took the Government class required by the state of Ohio in order to graduate. The class was taken by seniors, and it had a reputation for being incredibly hard. I went into it without a lot of knowledge or interest in the subject, but I left the class wanting to be a Government teacher. I found the subject matter engaging and interesting, and I often got As on my work. I did the extra credit assignments that the teacher regularly gave because they sounded interesting, not because I needed the credit. When I got to college, I quickly changed my major to Criminal Justice. My aim was to become a lawyer, and I went as far as to take the LSAT and apply to several law schools. Ultimately, I decided to “take a year off” (famous last words), and never went back. But I’ve never lost my interest in government and specifically in the court system.
My work is now in social media and online communities, and some would say there’s some overlap there. So it is with interest that I read this article by Kathy Ossian about the use of social media by jury members, and how that can and cannot affect the impartiality of the jury and ultimately, trial outcomes.
Juries are typically instructed not to access, discuss, or read any information about the case or the subject matter of the case while they are assigned to the jury. Where this would be difficult-to-impossible, juries are sequestered. That’s pretty rare though — most jury members serve during the day and go home at night. But access to social networking, and even the web at large, is starting to play a role in motions for mistrial.
While two of the three cases that Kathy Ossian cited are in regards to jury members accessing informational websites (United States vs. Hernandez, and United States vs. Siegelman), but she also cites a civil case in Arkansas where a court determined that a party was deprived of the right to a fair trial when it was found that a jury member sent messages via Twitter indicating that he was biased against one of the parties.
As services like Twitter grow in popularity, courts will have to face this more and more. Mistrials are expensive and time consuming. As jury members, it’s important that we abide by the directions given to us by the judge, and refrain from seeking information about the case or discussing the case with anyone — including Facebook friends and Twitter followers.
I really do believe that social networking and online community can open up lots of avenues of communication, but there are some avenues that need to remain closed for the sake of fairness and justice.
One of the reasons his session was so validating for me is that his new book is about how brands need to be humanized, and genuinely interact with their fans instead of just shoving marketing down their throats. This is so much of what I do in my day job, and it’s something that my team and I are really dedicated to. We work really hard to be human — we respond to comments, we make small talk, we share behind-the-scenes of our offices. We know the fans that interact with us by name, and our fans know us by name, too. We let our personalities shine through and we have reaped the rewards for it. Yes, we market too — it is part of our job, after all. But brands that think of Twitter as 140 character press releases are simply doing it wrong.
