Social media data mining: Garbage-in, garbage-out?

September 16, 2015September 16, 2015 Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Demographics, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Media, Media Consumption, Social Media Data Mining, Declared Data, Demographics, Google, Pinterest, Rudi Anggono, Social Media, Social Platforms, Tim Kendall

It’s human nature for people to strive for the most flattering public persona … while confining the “true reality” only to those who have the opportunity (or misfortune) to see them in their most private moments.

It goes far beyond just the closed doors of a family’s household. I know a recording producer who speaks about having to “wipe the bottoms” of music stars — an unpleasant thought if ever there was one.

In today’s world of interactivity and social platforms, things are amplified even more — and it’s a lot more public.

Accordingly, there are more granular data than ever about people, their interests and their proclivities.

The opportunities for marketers seem almost endless. At last we’re able to go beyond basic demographics and other conventional classifications, to now pinpoint and target marketing messages based on psychographics.

And to do so using the very terms and phrases people are using in their own social interactions.

The problem is … a good deal of social media is one giant head-fake.

Don’t just take my word for it. Consider remarks made recently by Rudi Anggono, one of Google’s senior creative staff leaders. He refers to data collected in the social media space as “a two-faced, insincere, duplicitous, lying sack of sh*t.”

Anggono is talking about information he dubs “declared data.” It isn’t information that’s factual and vetted, but rather data that’s influenced by people’s moods, insecurities, social agenda … and any other set of factors that shape someone’s carefully crafted public image.

In other words, it’s information that’s made up of half-truths.

This is nothing new, actually. It’s been going on forever. Cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell put her finger on it years ago when she observed that people lie because they want to tell better stories and to project better versions of themselves.

What’s changed in the past decade is social media, of course. What better way to “tell better stories and project better versions of ourselves” than through social media platforms?

Instead of the once-a-year Holiday Letter of yore, any of us can now provide an endless parade of breathless superlatives about our great, wonderful lives and the equally fabulous experiences of our families, children, parents, A-list friends, and whoever else we wish to associate with our excellent selves.

Between Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and even LinkedIn, reams of granular data are being collected on individuals — data which these platforms then seek to monetize by selling access to advertisers.

In theory, it’s a whole lot better-targeted than the frumpy, old fashioned demographic selects like location, age, income level and ethnicity.

But in reality, the information extracted from social is suspect data.

This has set up a big debate between Google — which promotes its search engine marketing and advertising programs based on the “intent” of people searching for information online — and Facebook and others who are promoting their robust repositories of psychographic and attitudinal data.

There are clear signs that some of the social platforms recognize the drawbacks of the ad programs they’re promoting — to the extent that they’re now trying to convince advertisers that they deserve consideration for search advertising dollars, not just social.

In an article published this week in The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today blog, Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s head of monetization, contends that far from being merely a place where people connect with friends and family, Pinterest is more like a “catalogue of ideas,” where people “go through the catalogue and do searches.”

Pinterest has every monetary reason to present itself in this manner, of course. According to eMarketer, in 2014 search advertising accounted for more than 45% of all digital ad spending — far more than ad spending on social media.

This year, the projections are for more than $26 billion to be spent on U.S. search ads, compared to only about $10 billion in the social sphere.

The sweet spot, of course, is being able to use declared data in concert with intent and behavior. And that’s why there’s so much effort and energy going into developing improved algorithms for generating data-driven predictive information than can accomplish those twin goals.

In the meantime, Anggono’s admonition about data mined from social media is worth repeating:

“You have to prod, extrapolate, look for the intent, play good-cop/bad-cop, get the full story, get the context, get the real insights. Use all the available analytical tools at your disposal. Or if not, get access to those tools. Only then can you trust this data.”

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with Anggono’s position? Please share your perspectives with other readers here.

Bird dropping: Instagram overtakes Twitter in the social media derby.

March 22, 2015March 23, 2015 Phillip Nones Demographics, Marketing Communications, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media eMarketer, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Millenials, Pinterest, Social Media, Social Media Networks, Social Networks, Tumblr, Twitter

It seems like the jockeying for position among social networks is never-ending.

The latest case in point: Instagram, which is presently the fastest growing social media network in the United States.

According to the latest figures released by digital market research company eMarketer, as of February 2015 Instagram now has over 64 million users in America.

That’s a ~60% increase in just one year, and it puts Instagram in third place among all social networks, surpassing Twitter for the first time.

Not only that, eMarketer forecasts that Instagram will add more than 10 million additional users in the United States this year:

Facebook: ~157 million U.S. users forecast in 2015
LinkedIn: ~115 million
Instagram: ~78 million
Twitter: ~53 million
Pinterest: ~47 million
Tumblr: ~20 million

(Source: eMarketer and LinkedIn, February 2015.)

eMarketer also forecasts that Twitter will continue to fall further behind Instagram in the upcoming years, since Twitter’s annual growth is expected to be in only the single digits throughout the rest of the decade.

Based on the overall American population, Instagram has now a market penetration of nearly 25%. Of course, that’s well behind Facebook, which has nearly 50% penetration.

But Instagram’s user base is skewed heavily towards teens and millennials – people between the ages of 12 and 34. This makes Instagram a bit more of a threat to LinkedIn and even Facebook than you might think at first.

Facebook’s user base has been skewing older in recent years. If those trends continue, we could see a measurable drop-off in Facebook’s share of users, with a corresponding rise in Instagram’s penetration.

Of course, we mustn’t forget that Facebook was the social media network of choice for younger people at one time, too. After all, it got its start on college campuses. But now that Facebook has solid adoption among older Americans (age 40 and over), no longer does it seem like a “cool” network for some millennials and teens.

So it would be foolish to assume that Instagram is a slam-dunk to continue to be the “network of choice” for younger people in the years hence. One never knows what new network might suddenly appear on the horizon and capture their hearts.

Still, Instagram’s rise has been noteworthy. And it certainly puts the lie to the notion that there wasn’t room for a new network to enter the increasingly crowded social media space and make a big splash.

Personally as an “aging boomer,” I don’t have an Instagram account, and neither do most of my acquaintances. What about your own personal experience or professional experiences with this network?

Pinterest: Will it ever become a male hangout?

August 20, 2014August 20, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Social Media comScore, David Rubin, DigitasLBi, Gender Differences, Jill Sherman, Marcomm, marketing, Pinterest, Social Media, Social Media Platforms, Social Platforms

Here’s a statistic about social media platform Pinterest that will probably surprise few people: As of June 2014 statistics reported by digital analytics firm comScore, its user base is more than 70% female.

… Which means that Pinterest remains the most “gender imbalanced” of all the major social media platforms.

For the record, other social platforms have far more gender balance among their user bases – with at least 45% being male:

SnapChat: 52% male
Tumblr: 52%
Twitter: 48%
Facebook: 47%
Instagram: 45%
Pinterest: 28%

But here’s the thing: Pinterest has been trying mightily hard to attract more male participants, but the proportional figures have yet to budge.

This points to a fundamental challenge. It’s very difficult to change the image and atmospherics of a social platform once they’ve become so firmly entrenched.

And it’s not just a question of image. The platform’s content says it all.

Jill Sherman, vice president of social and content strategy at marketing communications firm DigitasLBi, puts it this way:

“If you pull up Pinterest and go into any content section, you will see purses, dresses and women’s shoes — because women are the user base. When 70% of the users are female, then 70% of the content is going to be female-oriented.”

Hope springs eternal, however. Pinterest is continuing its effort to attract more men.

Or at least … to make the site more “guy friendly” when a new member goes there signs up. This means making sure to show items more stereotypically catering to men’s interests rather than things like women’s fashion items.

But how to get men to the stage of even signing up? That challenge falls to Pinterest’s new “head of brand” – who just happens to be a man.

He’s David Rubin, erstwhile senior vice president of marketing at Unilever, where he worked on marketing the Axe brand of men’s body care products.

Mr. Rubin might wish to start his tenure by asking himself what would bring him to engage with Pinterest more … because according to news reports, Rubin had posted only 22 items on Pinterest prior to joining the company.

DigitasLBi’s Jill Sherman sees a challenge for Pinterest that is fundamentally basic. “They haven’t cracked the motivation code: How to attract men and keep them using the platform beyond saving things that pique their interest.”

I agree – and I’d go a step further. Convincing people to visit Pinterest to find or view something of interest “feels” like a function a search engine such as Google Images is doing quite well already. Who needs “yet another place” to tap into that functionality? Especially if one is a male of the species?

In order for Pinterest to evolve beyond where it is today, perhaps it needs to look at what Facebook and others have been doing to create communities and interaction beyond just pretty pictures and videos.

It could be a tall order.

Is Google+ actually going anywhere or not?

July 29, 2013July 29, 2013 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing Communications, Uncategorized Facebook Twitter, Gigya, Google, marketing, Nones, Pinterest, Searchmetrics, Social Media, Social Media Fail, Social Sharing, Web

I’ve blogged before about Google+, speculating what sort of future it has in the social media realm. Google is reporting that the platform has a growing user base – but one wonders just how active the social community really is.

Many people I speak with have set up personal or corporate Google+ accounts for the sake of having a full presence in social media, but Google+ represents very little (in some cases none) of their activity.

Speaking personally, I don’t have a Google+ account, nor do I have any future plans to establish one.

Why? “So many platforms … So little time …”

And now, a new analysis has been published that reinforces the perception that Google+ isn’t all that consequential in the social media realm.

The evaluation comes in the form of a report by Gigya, a developer of social media plugins, gamification and other services. Its findings reveal that only about 2% of social sharing happened on Google+ during the second quarter of 2013 (April through June).

Instead, social sharing is far more “happening” in three other social zones: Facebook (50% of all share activity); Twitter (24% of share activity) and Pinterest (16% of activity).

These same three social sites are the top sharing destinations from e-commerce sites as well as publishing/media sites, too – whereas Google+ is stuck at the same 2% level.

If anything, Pinterest is the “breakout star” in this constellation.

What does Google have to say about these rather sorry-looking statistics, more than three years after the debut of its Google+ social platform?

Google argues that a significant degree of sharing on Google+ happens “privately,” making the activity invisible to data crawling.

But that’s not how Gigya has captured the data; it’s measuring clicks via social tools that are embedded on its client sites (Gigya serves more than 700 brands including ones like ABC, Verizon, Nike and Toyota).

And under that scenario, it’s still clear that very few visitors are clicking to share any Google+ content.

Searchmetrics and other groups have posited that Google+ sharing might overtake Facebook by 2016. But upon closer examination, it appears that these predictions are the result of questionable definitions: +1 clicks on Google+ aren’t the same thing as “shares” on Facebook. A more fitting comparison would be Facebook “likes.”

Viewed on that basis, Google appears to pose no threat at all – short- or long-term – for overtaking Facebook in the social media marathon.

Are any readers using Google+ for the majority of their social media interactions? If so, I’m interested to hear what you like best about the platform – and why you might prefer it to the alternatives. Certainly, if the rest of us are missing something, we want to learn about it!

On the other hand, if you’re like me and giving Google +1 pretty wide berth, let us know why as well. Please feel free to leave a comment.

“Social Media Stress Syndrome”: Real or Fake?

May 22, 2013May 22, 2013 Phillip Nones Advertising, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary, Uncategorized Communications, Consumer Behavior, Facebook, Gord Hotchkiss, Meghan McBride, Narcissism, Nones, Pinterest, Social Media, Social Media Stress, Sociology

There’s no denying the benefits of social media in enabling people to make new friendships, reconnect with old acquaintances, and nurture existing relationships.

Facebook and other social platforms make it easier than ever to maintain “in the moment” connections with people the world over.

Speaking for myself, my immediate relatives who live in foreign lands seem so much closer because of social media.

Plus, thanks to social media, I’ve met other relatives from several different countries for the very first time. This would never have happened in the pre-Facebook era.

But there are downsides to social media, too – and I’ve written about them on this blog on occasion; for example, whether social media is a platform for narcissists.

Other negative consequences of social media have been noted by numerous observers of consumer online behaviors, including Canadian digital marketing company Mediative’s Senior Vice President and online marketing über-specialist Gord Hotchkiss.

In a recently published column by Hotchkiss headlined “The Stress of Hyper-Success,” he posits that self-regard and personal perspectives of “success” are relative. Here’s a critical passage from what he writes:

“We can only judge it [success] by looking at others. This creates a problem, because increasingly, we’re looking at extreme outliers as our baseline for expectations.”

Hotchkiss’ contention is that social media engenders feelings of stress in many people that would not occur otherwise.

Pinterest is a example. A recent survey of ~7,000 U.S. mothers conducted by Today.com found that ~42% of respondents suffer from this social media-induced stress; it’s the notion that they can’t live up to the ideal suggested by the images of domestic bliss posted on the female-dominated Pinterest social network.

Facebook causes a similar reaction in many; Hotchkiss reports on a survey showing that one-third of Facebook users “feel worse” after visiting the site.

It may not be hard to figure out why, either, as visitors are often confronted with too-good-to-be-true photo galleries chronicling friends’ lavish vacations, social gatherings, over-the-top wedding ceremonies, etc.

It’s only natural for people to focus their attention on the “extraordinary” posts of this type … and to discount the humdrum posts focusing on the mundane aspects of daily life.

Just like in the national or local news, people tend to focus on personal news items that are exceptional – the activities that are set far apart from the average.

Wall Street Journal report Meghan McBride Kelly has come up with a pretty interesting way to address social media stress: She quit Facebook earlier this year after a nine-year run. McBride contends that “Aristotle wouldn’t ‘friend’ you on Facebook,” writing:

“Aristotle wrote that friendship involves a degree of love. If we were to ask ourselves whether all of our Facebook friends were those we loved, we’d certainly answer that they’re not. These days, we devote equal if not more time to tracking the people we have had very limited interaction with than to those whom we truly love.”

Likewise, Hotchkiss tries to head us off at the social media pass:

“Somewhere, a resetting of expectations is required before we self-destruct because of hyper-competitiveness in trying to reach an unreachable goal. To end on a gratuitous pop culture quote, courtesy of Sheryl Crow: ‘It’s not having what you want. It’s wanting what you got.”

What are your thoughts about “social media stress disorder”? Please share your observations with other readers here.

More Interest in Pinterest …

May 18, 2012May 18, 2012 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Bulletin Board, Business, E-Commerce, e-Commerce Marketplace, Internet, Jaconi, Nones, Nones Notes, Pinterest, Rakuten

While it pales in comparison to the $1 billion+ Facebook public offering today, social bulletin board Pinterest, the topic of a recent blog post of mine, has snagged its own financial windfall this week. It comes in the form of a $100 million investment led by Rakuten, Inc., a Japanese conglomerate of Internet-oriented businesses.

With this filing, Pinterest is now valued at approximately $1.5 billion.

Why is Rakuten making the investment? Very likely because one of the key components of the conglomerat is e-Commerce Marketplace, which is Japan’s leading electronic commerce player.

Michael Jaconi, an executive officer at Rakuten, is quoted as saying that “Pinterest recognizes Rakuten as a global Internet player and they want to leverage some of the skill set in the growing business world.”

With 77 million members in Japan already, Rakuten has ambitious plans to become “the top global internet service company,” according to Mr. Jaconi.

But why choose Pinterest instead of Facebook or Twitter for such a major financial investment?

The answer to that question isn’t necessarily “either/or,” actually. “We want to continue investing in technology that is as innovative as Pinterest,” Jaconi notes. “If we need to buy and invest to bring us closer to that source of innovation, we will.”

Stay tuned, obviously.

What to Make of all the Interest in Pinterest …

May 13, 2012May 14, 2012 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Bulletin Board, comScore, Digital Marketer Benchmark & Trend Report, Experian, Nones, Nones Notes, Pinterest, Scrapbooking, Social Media, Social Networking

Until now, I’ve hesitated to blog about Pinterest, the digital bulletin board and newest “breakout network” in social media. I wanted to see how it was evolving before jumping to conclusions about its importance and staying power.

Without a doubt, Pinterest is one of the biggest stories in the social sphere right now. It seems that something as simple as enabling users to post “boards” of their collections of photos has struck a nerve.

Pinterest is one of the most user-friendly social sites in cyberspace. Pinterest participants use a “bookmarklet” button installed in their browser to affix photos or images to virtual bulletin boards set up on particular topics or themes such as interior decorating, food arts and fashion. Each image has an accompanying clickthrough link to the web page where it was found. Users can also “re-pin” images they find on other Pinterest boards.

Simple, easy … and popular. In its most recent Digital Marketing Benchmark & Trend Report, Experian reports that Pinterest is now the third most popular U.S. social networking site. Only Facebook and Twitter rank higher.

Just how well is Pinterest doing? Consider that this invitation-only site has ~10 million users and receives nearly 25 million visits in a single week. That’s 30 times larger the volume of visits recorded on Pinterest just six months ago.

I’m still trying to determine how much staying power this latest social media phenom possesses. The rapid adoption rate tells us something right off the bat … and there are a few additional reasons why Pinterest may be here to stay in a big way:

Pinterest is a highly effective form of digital scrap-booking that seems to be extremely popular with its users.

Online audience measurement firm comScore reports that users spend an average of 1.5 hours per month on Pinterest, second only to Facebook.

Pinterest is easy and intuitive to use, making it popular with people who aren’t your typical “geeky” computer user. Pinterest users tend to skew older … more female (~80% actually) … and generally located more in “flyover country” than in coastal zones like New York and California.

Any time a social network can claim to have attracted the hearts and minds of the broader population, that’s noteworthy … and it leads me to believe that Pinterest isn’t merely a passing fad.

Indeed, we may have just scratched the surface of what Pinterest will be and what it will offer in the years ahead.

What are your thoughts about Pinterest? Dynamic or dull? Flash-in-the-pan or here to stay? And how do you see it being used by marketers to promote their products and brands?