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Social Media: The Newest Addiction?

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Social media: The latest addiction?With the burgeoning popularity of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, some observers are beginning to wonder if a new type of addiction is now in our midst.

So-called “Internet addiction disorder” came to the fore in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with social scientists contending that some people were neglecting their interpersonal relationships, and instead were spending hours of time online every day.

Of course, since social media is about interrelationships, perhaps likening it to the solitary pursuit of web surfing might not be an apt comparison. But a recent study demonstrates that social media, too, appears to have addictive aspects.

The online consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo commissioned an independent study of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers distributed across age, income, gender and geography. Guess what? The study revealed that many people appear to be obsessed with their social media circles all throughout the day … and also checking in throughout night.

About half of the respondents reported that they check Facebook or Twitter feeds just before going to bed, during the night, or as soon as they wake up. Nearly one in five admitted checking in with these sites “any time I wake up” during the night.

It’s not a huge surprise to learn that owners of iPhones are more involved with social media; they use Facebook and Twitter more often and in more places.

Moreover, nearly one in five respondents actually view these two social sites as their most important sources for the news they consume, rather than Internet news sites, TV/cable programming, the radio or the daily newspaper.

As a truer measure of “addiction,” the study’s respondents were asked to estimate how long they could go without checking in on Facebook and Twitter. While about four in ten reported they could avoid checking in over “a long time,” a similar percentage indicated they could not make it any longer than five or six hours at a stretch without checking in on these sites. (The balance felt they would need to check in at least once a day.)

And how about tolerating electronic messages that interrupt their activities? Half of respondents under the age of 25 in the Retrevo study didn’t mind being interrupted during a meal. One-fourth don’t mind the interruption happening on the job or during a meeting. And a die-hard 10% don’t even mind an interruption during – you guessed it – lovemaking.

As for how respondents over age 25 answered these same questions, they’re only about half as tolerant, so it’s easy to see how the propensity for social media addiction might manifest itself more with the younger set.

Since the online social media revolution is a relatively new phenomenon, one might wonder if the attraction of social media bordering on addiction is just a passing fad in part because of its novelty.

That might be true. But it’s difficult to see exactly how behaviors and attitudes will change dramatically over time. After all, television viewing was extremely high when TVs first came out … and those numbers stayed high for decades thereafter. Social scientists started making rumbles about the phenomenon of TV addiction early on … leading some people to refer to television sets as the “idiot box” or “boob tube.”

And actually, with social media the temptation for “total immersion” is even stronger. After all, the TV viewing public was forced to watch whatever programming went out over the airwaves. But in social media, the content is whatever the participants choose it to be – and it’s interactive to boot.

Where Does the News Begin? Pew Looks for Answers.

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Pew studies news reporting today ... and who's crafting it.
You don’t have to be over 50 years old to be concerned about where the world might be heading when it comes to the generation of news stories and how they are vetted. As newspapers and other publishers have cut the size of their reporting and editorial staffs, the quality and consistency of news reporting has suffered in the eyes of many.

Recently, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism decided to take a look at this issue to see how it’s playing out on the ground by studying the “news ecosystem” of a single geographic region. The market chosen for the study – Baltimore, Maryland – just happens to be in my backyard, so I’ve been able to review the results with a good understanding of the dynamics of the region in question.

Pew’s Baltimore study evaluated the news environment during the summer of 2009 and came to some interesting conclusions. While the regional media landscape – print, web, radio and TV – has broadened considerably to include 53 separate outlets that regularly produce and broadcast some form of news content, much of what is truly “new news” came from the traditional news outlets and not from other media resources.

Six major local/regional news threads were studied, ranging from the Maryland state budget situation to crime trends, issues affecting the metro transit system, and the sale of the Senator Theater, a local historical landmark. An analysis of those news threads found that:

 More than 80% of the news stories were repetitive – just rehashes of someone else’s original news content that contained no new information.

 Of the ~20% of the news stories that did include new information, nearly all of the content came from traditional media, published either in conventional format (e.g., print) or in digital.

 General-audience newspapers like the Baltimore Sun produced roughly half of the news stories, followed by local TV stations such as WBAL-TV contributing ~30% of the reporting.

 Specialty business or legal newspaper outlets such as the Baltimore Business Journal and the Daily Record contributed just under of 15% of the news items, with the remaining news reporting coming primarily from local radio stations such as WYPR-FM.

 Interestingly, about one-third of the news coverage generated by newspaper publishers appeared on the Internet rather than in their print editions.

Thus, the Pew study demonstrates that “new news” is coming from the same sources as before, led by the local papers. But another clear picture to emerge from the Baltimore profile is that the scaling back of editorial staffs has resulted in less original reporting, with much heavier reliance on simply republishing stories that have appeared elsewhere.

At the same time, new interactive capabilities are giving “we the people” an unparalleled broadcast platform via the ability to post feedback and commentary, not to mention utilizing Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms as a megaphone.

In today’s “everyone’s an editor because they can write” environment, no one can stop us from broadcasting our own opinions and analysis to the world. But that’s not the same thing as a properly sourced, properly vetted news story. And that’s what Pew sees falling away.

Companies are Concerned about the Risks of Social Media

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As blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media tools have moved into the mainstream in a big way, managers at many companies are responding with interest … as well as concern. On the “interest” side, social networking is seen as having great potential for enhancing relationships with customers and promoting brand affinity. But there’s also “concern” that social media has the potential to damage a company’s reputation through the dissemination of information that is unflattering, taken out of context, or simply wrong.

Now, thanks to a July 2009 national survey of nearly 500 management, marketing and HR executives conducted by Minneapolis-based firms Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law, we have a more quantitative idea of the collective corporate thinking about pluses and minuses of social media.

Four out of five respondents in the Russell Herder/Ethos field research believe that social media can help build a company’s brand. In addition, nearly 70% see social media as a viable employee recruitment tool, while two out of three recognize its potential as a customer service tool.

But the survey also found that over 80% of respondents believe that social media poses a corporate security risk. Similarly, half of the respondents consider social media to be detrimental to employee productivity.

These findings show that senior company managers are somewhat ambivalent about social media. They see its positive potential … but at what cost? On the other hand, is shutting the door on social media a wise response (or even a viable one)?

One solution to this dilemma is to be found in dusting off an old standby – the employee handbook. In many companies, policies have evolved over the years to cover pretty much every kind of issue – from what constitutes approved and non-approved workplace activities, attendance policies, and conducting personal business during office hours to policies regarding alcohol consumption, gender/age/racial discrimination, and sexual harassment.

Why not incorporate new guidelines outlining the company’s philosophy toward social media and what constitutes appropriate company-related social media activities on the part of employees?

While it may also be a very good idea to conduct meetings or training sessions on social media as well, this a good first step that will give employees a sense of the “boundaries” they should observe when commenting on company-related issues in the social media realm.

The alternative is a “Wild West” atmosphere in which a problem is destined to arise sooner rather than later. And when that occurs, if no formal social media policies are in place, the company will have no cause for defending itself in the court of public opinion – as well as little recourse for disciplining in addition to counseling the employees involved.

How “social” should your office environment be?

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In the early years of the Internet, companies worried about the loss of productivity if employees were tempted to surf online in amongst their work duties. There was also the issue of the “appropriateness” of the web content being viewed. In response, various web tracking capabilities were introduced that enable companies to monitor online activities on networked computers.

On the other hand, as the Internet became all-pervasive in daily life, many companies also adopted a policy of allowing a modest amount of web surfing during work breaks to allow employees to conduct personal business such as shopping and bill-paying.

Now, with the rise of social media, the whole issue has been brought to the fore once again. The proliferation of Facebook accounts in particular has resulted in a new spike of personal online activities at work. A recent study by Nucleus Research bears it out. Based on study findings, Nucleus deduces that companies allowing employee access to Facebook lose an average of 1.5% in total employee productivity. And in an era of cutthroat competition globally, 1.5% of productivity is no slouch amount.

To reach this conclusion, Nucleus Research found that slightly more than three-fourths of the employees surveyed have a Facebook account. Of those who do, nearly two-thirds admitted to accessing their account during working hours.

The average amount of time spent per day on Facebook on office time is about 15 minutes – although the study uncovered a few employees who spent upwards of two hours daily during work hours. (Shame on those employees … but shame on their employers, too, for being so utterly clueless about those employees’ behavior!)

Of course, some people’s activities on Facebook have a business purpose, don’t they? Well … it is true that some employees manage “fan” pages for their company as an adjunct of their personal Facebook account. But that shouldn’t represent more than a small portion of any firm’s workers – perhaps those in the marketing, sales, HR or shareholder relations departments.

And the Nucleus Research study findings reflect this as well, because nearly 90% of the respondents who access Facebook at work could not articulate a business justification for doing so.

Perhaps the study’s most surprising finding was the ~5% of respondents who never access Facebook anywhere but at work. What this may mean is that they built their entire Facebook profile on work-time as well. Chalk up some more wasted hours!

The Nucleus Research findings demonstrate that as time progresses and various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter become even more pervasive communications tools for people at all levels in the organization, the old guidelines for balancing work and personal life must continue to evolve.

The kneejerk reaction is to simply block access to Facebook on all office computers. But there will always be some employees who have a legitimate business reason to be on Facebook. And then there are the the ever-growing ranks of telecommuters working offsite, who surely have access to alternate laptops or PDAs even if their company-issued equipment blocks access.

As is usually the case with situations like this, the easiest fix is sometimes not the best one. And at the end of the day, “big brotherism” could reduce employee morale even further — hardly the result one would hope for in the current difficult business climate where “improving company morale” is far more just an abstract concept in an HR textbook.

Twitter’s Law of Unintended Consequences

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As I’ve outlined in a recent blog post, where Twitter has shown it has “legs” isn’t in the area most hyped by its founders.

As it turns out, “What are you doing?” hasn’t been much of a foundation for building a money-making social media platform. And in fact, the inevitable media backlash has now set in — even as the number of new Twitter users have begun to plateau and the majority of current members use the service hardly at all.

But hard on the heels of the Iranian and Moldovan unrest, in which Twitter played an important role facilitating the organizing of anti-government public demonstrations, comes another use of Twitter that few could have foreseen.

A recent article by Steven Sears in Barron’s Magazine outlines how Twitter is being used to affect the share price of stocks. According to Sears, “Before the market opens and throughout the trading day, Twitter lets you tap into market-moving news .. and link through attached URLs to more detailed analysis … You can control your information streams by deciding who to follow, and who can follow you.”

That’s hardly revolutionary behavior. But here’s the interesting part: By law, brokers must save instant messages and e-mail correspondence, but no such mandate exists for tweets on Twitter.

What this means is that some of the more sensitive information or speculation about a company makes it onto Twitter long before it’s broached elsewhere.

One example noted in the Sears article was Matrixx Initiatives, the manufacturer of Zicam nasel spray. Speculation that using Zicam might damage people’s sense of smell started to circulate on Twitter. The result? The stock price fell dramatically from $19 to $13 … and those following the news about Matrixx on Twitter were “in the know” a lot sooner than others.

So here we have yet another example of the unintended consequences of adopting new communications techniques. Twitter is effectively replacing instant messaging capabiliites — without the attendent legal paper-trail requirements.

I wonder what’s next?

Hype and Hope: The Twittering Machine in Action

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Twitter logoOver the past few days, we’ve heard reports of how the post-election demonstrators in Iran have been using Twitter as a means for organizing protests, moving crowds from neighborhood to neighborhood to keep one step ahead of the armed authorities … and to upload images and video clips of the demonstrations to broadcast to the rest of the world. Twitter has played an important (and successful) role in engineering a “grand workaround” scheme, thwarting a government-ordered news blackout.

We saw the same phenomenon play out in the Eastern European country of Moldova just a few months back.

Viewed from this perspective, Twitter seems to be living up to its billing — in spades.

But there’s also research that shows another side of the coin. A just-completed Harvard University study of 300,000 Twitter users has found a classic rule of behavior in force: just 10% of users are generating more than 90% of the content on Twitter.

It goes even further than that. The average Twitter user “tweets” about once every 75 days … or even less frequently. And the median number of tweets made per person is … One!

That’s right. More than half of the 300,000 people in the Harvard study have sent just one tweet ever. It was with dry understatement that Bill Heil, the Harvard Business School graduate who carried out the study, reported, “Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has seen it has instantly loved it.”

I have an additional explanation to offer: Perhaps most people haven’t (yet) figured out what to do with Twitter to make it meaningful in their lives.

It didn’t help that Twitter itself set the bar at a pretty low level right from the start by suggesting that users answer the question: “What are you doing?” How inconsequential is that?

As it turns out, the trivial isn’t where Twitter has found its true voice.

Indeed, ask the Iranians or Moldovans whether Twitter has been meaningful in their lives. You’ll get a life-and-death answer in the affirmative.

Twitter: The “Next Big Thing” in Marketing Research?

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By now, it’s obvious that Twitter has become the newest darling of the social marketing world. With somewhere around ten million users today and growing exponentially (there were fewer than one million just a year ago), it’s clear that Twitter has successfully made the leap from novel curiosity to mainstream communications vehicle.

Indeed, Twitter may have worthwhile applications beyond simply the ability for people to update their status information in real time from a mobile phone, computer or online portal. In fact, Silicon Alley Insider recently ran a contest inviting readers to submit their ideas for turning Twitter into a financially viable social network.

The winning entry? An idea from Chicago communications agency Denuo recommending that Twitter charge marketers for access to opted-in users willing to field an occasional research question from brands. Twitter would also charge for dashboard access to the research analytics.

I think this idea has a good deal of merit. Instead of incurring the cost to design and deploy custom research projects, simply tap into Twitter’s existing platform and huge user base to “anonymize” the data and open it up for mining.

Of course, some people voice concern that Twitter will soon be overrun by brand-related messages and advertising. That’s actually begun to happen as certain brands “follow” twitterers ad nauseum — so much it almost constitutes a form of cyber-stalking. But by offering operating an online research panel such as this, Twitter has the potential to deliver scads of valuable, actionable data at the speed of “now.”

Like YouTube, Twitter is actually going to have to figure out a way to make some money for its investors, and soon (imagine that?). So this idea bears watching.