How is social media activity measured?

Our last few assignments have revolved around the often multifaceted relationship between different businesses (companies, organizations, brands, etc.) and social media: Why do these businesses use social media, and for what purpose(s)? How can participation in social media benefit a business? What are the best business practices in relation to social media? How can businesses increase audience engagement on social media? We have discussed all of these questions and more in gauging the relationship between business -- both big and small -- and social media. This week, we're going to delve a little bit deeper, beyond "likes" and shares, and delineate the measurement of mass social media activity by highlighting a few examples of analytics tools and strategies.

An article on VentureBeat.com called "Top 10 Social Media Analytics Tools" highlights some of the most instrumental resources in social media analytics on the web, whereby professionals can monitor the impact of their social media efforts. I've cherry picked a few of the more notable among the bunch and listed them as follows:

• According to VentureBeat, 33Across is the ultimate social media advertising solution, striking a delicate balance between analytics and marketing. 33Across helps paint a more complete picture of a brand's online audience by "analyzing how [the audience] interacts with the brand's social media interactions." Further, it helps brands focus their marketing efforts, resulting in advertising that is more relevant to users.
• Brandwatch is ideal for corporations with a more international reach, thanks to its support of over 25 languages. Beyond multilingual supports, Brandwatch -- which monitors conversations across all major social networks, like most analytics suites -- claims to use a sophisticated set of data-gathering and parsing tools which "cut through social spam to find the conversations that really matter."
• Hootsuite, one of the most popular analytics platforms, offers a streamlined and user-friendly "dashboard" format to manage several social media accounts at once, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Beyond account management, Hootsuite employs its own brand of analytics tools to yield insightful data. The company has recently partnered up with Brandwatch to expand the reach of its analytics.
• Topsy is able to provide a wide, almost cross-sectional look at what is going across all platforms on the social web, and, as a certified Twitter partner, it also has the unique distinction of having access to every Tweet ever sent out, dating all the way back to the very first back in 2006.

These are only a few examples of the sort of analytics tools professionals utilize in attempting to measure social media reach. Beyond these concrete examples of strictly technological resources, there are also more abstract, strategic, and logistical means of measuring activity and engagement, as outlined in Hootsuite's "Beginner's Guide to Social Media Metrics." Examples include:

• The two most basic forms of activity across platforms: engagement and amplification, i.e. replies and retweets on Twitter, likes/comments and shares on Facebook, etc.
• Measuring growth, performance, and reach on each specific social network over time and determining particular strengths or trends in growth over time.
• Tracking competitors' exposure to view potential "share of voice."

Links:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/20/top-10-social-media-analytics-tools-the-venturebeat-index/

http://blog.hootsuite.com/beginners-guide-engagement/

http://blog.hootsuite.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media-metrics-reach-exposure/

Platforms, Differences, and Best Practices

Last week, the subject of our discussion was how and why organizations, movements, brands, and businesses use social media. For the purposes of this week's discussion—a discussion of the different social media platforms used by businesses, the differences between these platforms, and the best business practices with regards to these particular social media—the goals for our hypothetical business will be to generate visibility and traffic. The platforms I will be discussing with relation to the way businesses work to maintain an online presence are Facebook and Twitter.

For each of the aforementioned platforms, I've found several articles and blog posts espousing a number of strategies and practices which businesses can adopt if they wish to augment their presence on social media. Rather than simply reproduce each list, I've attempted to conflate them and postulate the closest I can manage to a consensus for each platform.

For Facebook, I've arrived at the following:

1. Share vs. Like, Polls, etc.: The blog at Wishpond says that a "share vs. like" post—encouraging users to either like a post or share it depending on whether they want to "vote" for option A or option B, respectively, in a binary of products—is an efficient way to drum up brand engagement on Facebook. Wishpond goes on to say that using this strategy, Walmart saw a 650% increase in Facebook likes. Another form of competition-based posts is opinion polling—similar to the "share vs. like" post, with more than just the two options. A simple means of procuring rough market research, a poll will start with a picture (say, of three or four different but somewhat similar products) and ask users what their favorite of the bunch is. Often times, brand engagement can even be achieved without any need for the competitive aspect, in such ways as offering users a "sneak peek" at an upcoming product line, or by offering users some manner of "advice" (a recipe, for example). Wishpond cites a study of 682 Facebook posts which found that posts containing advice were shared 522% more than non-advice related posts. Above all, it is important to note that images are incredibly effective on Facebook—Moz says that photo posts receive, on average, 39% more engagement. Articles found in Forbes and Post Planner seem to agree with the importance of brand engagement for businesses on Facebook, be it competitive or otherwise, and Entrepreneur even suggests keeping outright promotional posts to a minimum, instead opting for "eye candy, friendly greetings, and other shares from around the internet that consumers will likely find of interest." With Facebook, it's all about encouraging interactivity and communicating directly with your audience—which, in a way, is the single biggest benefit of social media for businesses.
2. Establishing brand identity: This may be applicable to business on all social media, but especially on Facebook, where user profiles and identities can be and often are incredibly detailed and intricate, every brand or business must be able to speak directly to its unique audience by establishing a unique brand identity. Post Planner outlines the importance of determining the tone and identity of a business' page, as well as what content incites the best possible reaction from a business' unique audience, and, perhaps most importantly, taking the time to plan out posts in advance in an effort to establish continuity and consistency within the brand identity.
3. Avoiding lengthy posts: One of the key differences between Facebook and many other social media platforms is the fact that Facebook allows its users to conduct posts with no character limit. However, this isn't a feature that businesses should take advantage of—Forbes says that a "long, rambling" post is not likely to garner the sort of attention one would wish to receive for his or her business on Facebook. Instead, Forbes suggests adopting a sort of self-imposed character limit of 100-250 characters, since these are typically the posts which receive the most attention. This is especially efficient since more than a third of Facebook users are using mobile devices, and in the case of mobile users, shorter posts are undoubtedly far more convenient.
4. Cover photos, profile pictures, page composition: This one is simple—since the cover photo holds prime real estate on a Facebook profile page, and in many ways is responsible for the "first impression" made by a Facebook profile, it should be one of the most important considerations made by any business with regards to its Facebook presence. The cover photo (and the profile photo, as well) should strike the delicate balance between being a solid yet simple representation and introduction of the brand to newcomers, and inciting brand awareness in long-time fans. Overall, a brand's Facebook page, which can be customized in myriad ways, should be composed in a way that speaks to the brand's identity. This applies to all aspects of a brand's page: the profile picture, the cover photo, the timeline, the "about" section, the photo albums or timeline photos, etc.
5. Geo-location/geo-targeting/universal appeal: Again, these strategies may be applicable to business on all social media, but they has been used extensively by businesses on Facebook. Intentionally limiting a brand's target audience creates exclusivity, says Wishpond, which gives way to greater brand engagement. Geo-targeting can be achieved through the inclusion of specific photos or hashtags, localized language, or niche subject matter, and through Facebook's "add targeting" function, which limits the targeted demographics by age, location, gender, et al. On the other hand, larger businesses—including multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola—can benefit by "appealing to the Facebook world at large," casting a larger net and ensuring appeal to as many users as possible.

For Twitter, I've compiled the following list of strategies:

1. Tweets That Resonate: Twitter's business page suggests "combining exciting useful content with an engaging, unique tone to emotionally connect with your audience." So, like Facebook, audience engagement is paramount for businesses on Twitter. However, it is important to note the vast differences in format and presentation between Facebook and Twitter. With regards to the latter, "prompt and timely" Tweets lend themselves to the most engagement from users. Twitter is less "fussy" and more "to-the-point" than Facebook, for lack of better words—as such, the most effective Tweets from a business should follow suit.
2. Short and Sweet: Considering Twitter's general penchant for brevity, this strategy should come as no surprise: keep your Tweets short and sweet. Twitter's business page says that "creativity loves constraint, and simplicity is at [Twitter's] core." Twitter's 140-character limit means that businesses will definitely have to get creative with their Tweets if they want their messages to resonate with users. The business page also cites a report by Buddy Media which found that Tweets shorter than 100 characters receive a 17% higher engagement rate. The example posed by Twitter is a Tweet by e-commerce driven apparel company Bonobos: "19 flavors. #washedchinos #bonobos [Instagram link]." The message is immediate, effective, and resonant—"our chino pants are available in 19 new washes"—all in under 100 characters.
3. Tweet often: The Twitter business page says that Tweet frequency depends on several factors such as a business' audience, its purpose, and its objectives. This is a given; however, a "good basic rule" given by the business page is to keep the frequency at between three and five Tweets per day.
4. Less Structure is Better: Mashable suggests that a business' Twitter presentation can appear disingenuous and "inhuman" if it is too structured and mechanical. This may turn users off—so to speak—and as such, it is suggested that one should treat Twitter relationships the way they would a more intimate, personal relationship: less emphasis on planning and structure, more emphasis on accessibility and relatability. Of course, planning, integration, and even structure are important, but only insofar as they do not lend themselves to a Twitter feed that feels restrictive.
5. The 80/20 Rule: Mashable's Michael Brito also suggests what he calls the 80/20 rule: 80% of a business' tweets should be, to some extent, conversational and personal, and 20% should be about the actual business in question. Rather than "pushing out one-way marketing messages about your product," Brito suggests "[asking] questions, [being] personal, and [engaging] people naturally within the Twitter community." Otherwise, Brito says, costumers won't listen to what you have to say.
6. Tracking trends: Twitter is all about trends. After all, the hashtag started with Twitter, so it stands to reason that the platform itself would be characterized by topicality and of-the-moment conversational trends. "Any enterprise or medium-sized business should invest in a paid tracking service [...] to better track Twitter conversations, identify trends, measure sentiment, and to get a quantifiable picture of what is going on in the social web," Brito says.

These lists are by no means definitive—there are countless articles and lists on the Web containing any number of different strategies for businesses on social media which may even contradict some of those listed above. However, these lists serve a further function, and that is to highlight some of the difference between Facebook and Twitter, especially as business-minded people are concerned.

Going off of these lists alone, the differences become quite apparent. Facebook seems the more structured, formal, and "adult" of the two media. It lends itself to a much more advanced level of detail than does Twitter: for example, the maintenance of a Facebook page's composition, which can speak volumes of a brand, is a relatively intricate process. The lack of a character limit means that the average post can be (and often are) far more in-depth and generally informative than the average Tweet. Further, that one must first "like" a page before meaningfully engaging with it is indicative of a key characteristic of Facebook: it is chiefly about establishing, building, and maintaining relationships. The emphasis on photo-sharing and competition-based engagement (especially with regards to the subject of our discussion) speaks to a sense of immediacy that is generally lacking in Facebook, and is more characteristic of Twitter.

Indeed, Twitter is the more immediate of the two media. The 140-character limit creates a sense of constraint, whereby Tweets become more direct and to-the-point in their messages. The brief nature of the subject matter, together with its emphasis on community (i.e. Twitter is the "digital global village") and hyper-real time, means that Tweets often give rise to trends. As such, Twitter tends to feel more "loose," informal, and conducive to fleeting conversation rather than the cultivation of relationships.

Links:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234532

http://blog.wishpond.com/post/58738215261/11-awesome-facebook-post-examples-critiques-best-practic

http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media/facebook
http://www.postplanner.com/how-facebook-pages-succeed-with-13-simple-best-practices/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2014/05/05/5-content-tips-for-your-facebook-business-page/

https://business.twitter.com/best-practices
http://mashable.com/2009/06/24/twitter-brand-best-practices/

How and why do organizations and movements use social media?

Thus far in our course, we have lent most of our focus to social media vis-à-vis the individual user, as well as the more general, abstract definition of the term. This week, we lend our focus to the way social media can be used as a tool for organizations and movements to advance their interests, spread awareness, and gain popularity and traction with the public.

One movement whose social media presence has always been an intriguing aspect of the way that it presents itself is Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street (hereinafter referred to as OWS) is a protest movement which began on September 17th, 2011, in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan's Financial District. The movement sought to bring national attention to income inequality, student debt, political corruption, and corporate influence on government, among other issues. The decidedly leftist sentiments embodied by the protesters proved especially potent, and iterations of OWS soon spread to over 1,500 cities worldwide. I first liked the movement's official Facebook page in late 2011 or early 2012, around the height of the movement's popularity.

It's now been over three years since the movement's inception, and OWS has since died down. It is no longer as ubiquitous a topic of conversation in the media as it was at its peak; and yet, OWS' Facebook page remains active almost daily. In its early days, the OWS Facebook page was used as a channel through which to call attention to and urge users to join upcoming protests and strikes. Nowadays, the page is used less as a practical and proactive tool of civic change than it is as a means of advertising many of the political views and stances emblematic of the once burgeoning movement, be it by sharing photos, articles, or quotes, or by attempting to bring the attention of users to certain causes.

In many ways, OWS' Facebook is still an agent for grassroots campaigning; now, however, the page achieves this in a more indirect fashion, by aligning itself with a more generally leftist view of American and international politics, rather than through the actual organization of grassroots protests. Recent posts by the page include photos, accompanied by a caption containing the hashtag #FergusonOctober, of a demonstration in solidarity with those protesting Michael Brown's shooting in Ferguson, MO—an event concerning the issues of racial profiling and police brutality, neither of which were issues popularly addressed at the inception of OWS—as well as several posts condemning the racist and imperialist undertones of Columbus day, accompanied by the hashtag #AbolishColumbusDay. Again, it is worthy of note that these issues were not significant to the OWS movement at its outset. Regardless, the page still has a sizable and enthusiastic following—now standing at 636,000 likes strong—which seems to respond just as well to OWS' promotion of its politics as it did the prospects of civil disobedience. Perhaps "to occupy" is just as much about a state of mind as it is a means of action.

One of several photos accompanied by the hashtag #AbolishColumbusDay.

That OWS—or, at least, its Facebook page—is now aligning itself with and broadcasting its support of certain views of these and other seemingly unrelated issues does not speak to a decrease in the potency of OWS' original message, or a loss of sight of its initial goals. Rather, it speaks to the power of social media to preserve an idea like that which is exemplified in the OWS movement—an idea which would've been represented by little more than a "flash in the pan," so to speak, before the advent of social media. Through social media, OWS is able to further expound its initial goals, its general politics, and even its plans for the future. This wasn't the conclusion that I initially had in mind, but perhaps the best use for social media, as organizations and movements like OWS are concerned, is to immortalize oneself.

Links:

www.facebook.com/OccupyWallSt

Social Media, Relationships, and Interaction

Is social media good or bad for relationships?

It's a question you've probably seen addressed more than a few dozen times since the "social media boom" of the mid-to-late 2000s. Our course instructor Aron Hsiao introduced this week's assignment by asserting that jokes and ironic critiques about social media's ostensible detriment to personal relationships have become so widespread that they've begun to verge on rhetorical cliché. As such, it should come as no surprise that if one were to Google a phrase such as "social media and relationships," one would find that think pieces aligning themselves with a negative stance on social media's effect on our the way we interact with one another comprise most, if not all, of the top results. I should know; I Googled that exact phrase myself, and the found that very first result was—surprise, surprise—a Time article titled, "Kim Stolz: How Social Media Is Ruining Our Relationships." The following is just a small sampling of headlines and excerpts belonging to some of the other results on the first page alone:

"Your social media habits could be hurting your marriage, according to a new study out of the University of Oxford's Internet Institute."

"Is Social Media Ruining Your Relationships?"

"Social Media Tips: Don't Let It Wreck Your Relationship"

"Now, couples say are [sic] splitting after only two years and nine months because of weird relationship perceptions due to excessive social media use."

"Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication?"

These headlines and excerpts have been culled from articles published by seemingly reputable and diverse publications such as Huffington Post and Forbes, and yet, it appears that their authors swear by the notion of social media's negative impact on our human relationships unanimously. It seems to me as though the popularity of this stance—that social media usage is harmful to our "real life" relationships—can be attributed, at least in part, to its position as the default "intelligent" response to the cause célèbre that is social media. There is a debate here, but it's one-sided.

The question, then, remains: Is social media good or bad for relationships? It's perhaps safe to say, at this point, that a well-substantiated case has been made for the latter option of the binary. In Time's article "Kim Stolz: How Social Media Is Ruining Our Relationships," Kim Stolz, author of the book Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do, expounds her argument that social media is indeed detrimental to our relationships.

Stolz says that the rise of social media is "definitely correlated" with the rise of narcissism in our society. We derive our self-worth from "how many likes we get, how many followers we get, [and] if someone texts us back," and the problem, Stolz says, is deeper-seated than one might think:

"[...] I think when you see your phone light up from across the room, it's that ping of dopamine in your system. You get that euphoric, excited feeling, and I think that's addictive. Now we [use social media far more frequently] [...] the more we do it, the more we [receive updates], so it becomes a very addictive process."

Stolz argues that our social media usage affects two very important facets of our mental well-being as individuals: our self-worth, and more generally, our mental physiology. When asked whether she thinks social media negatively affects our relationships with others, Stolz responded:

"Yeah, I think a lot of relationships have been ruined by one person's addiction to social media. [...] [Sometimes our social media addiction] simply means that you get home at night to spend time with your significant other and you have nothing to talk about because you've spoken about everything all day through social media or you've looked through each other's social media feeds.

There's an emerging body of research that shows that when you stop having offscreen interaction, you lose empathy. You lose the ability to have genuine reactions to real problems and real things."

Kim Stolz's argument here raises several distinct social issues with which detractors of social media typically associate its ubiquity: its usage may negatively affect our physiology, potentially even manifesting itself in an addiction; it can turn us into narcissists and self-obsessives; it can negatively affect our capacity for empathy; and it can also have the undesired (and ironic) effect of making us feel more lonely and debilitating our capacity for social interaction rather than strengthening our social bonds. The latter point is especially significant with respect to the argument that social media negatively affects our relationships: essentially, the more we use social media, the greater the distance grows between us and the people we care about.

Still, there is another common argument which lends itself to the criticism of social media as a means of interaction between people: social media equates to "fake" interaction, "fake" communication, and "fake" relationships—and, essentially, "fake" versions of ourselves, as opposed to our "real," offscreen counterparts.

In a blog post on Huffington Post titled Why Social Media Isn't Social, Thomas White expresses his belief that social media does two unfortunate things, the former of which is more relevant to our discussion: it allows us to "hold up masks." The "masks" we hold up, as White calls them, serve to project an image of ourselves which may not represent who we truly are "offscreen." Because we are spending more and more time online cultivating our "fake" online personas—the hours spent on Facebook in the U.S. went up 700 percent between 2008 and 2009, White says—and putting them on display for friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers alike, we are thereby creating unreal expectations of the people we are and the people with whom we interact both on and offscreen, for both ourselves and those around us, to the detriment of "true" human interaction. "We're living behind these masks more and more," White says, calling our "wearing" these "masks" "the willful commodification of who we are."

The immediate benefits of social media, insofar as it can act to strengthen our social relationships, have always been quite apparent: it's now easier than ever before to stay in real-time contact with friends, family, and loved ones, even those who are thousands of miles apart. Old friends can become reacquainted, and new friendships can be forged. Social media can also facilitate healthy social interaction between people who may never meet in "real life." However, as its negative implications with respect to our social relationships and interaction with others become clearer with each passing day, it's important for us as a society to think about the extent to which we depend on social media, and further, how we think of social media. In my eyes, social media is about as "real" as you make it. The problem with these all of these different criticisms is that they are predicated on the presupposition that all users of social media treat it as something of a surrogate reality. If we can separate the two in our minds—our "realities" and our usage of social media—and remember to treat social media as a supplement to our lives rather than a platform through which we can live alternate versions of them, then we will always be able to reap social media's benefits, rather than become victims of its pitfalls.

Links:
http://time.com/2917916/kim-stolz-how-social-media-is-ruining-our-relationships/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-white/why-social-media-isnt-social_b_3858576.html

The Economics of Social Media

In my last post, I briefly touched on the economic aspects of the social graph. There are, however, much broader implications which exist vis-à-vis the relationship between economics - specifically in the areas of advertising and marketing - and social media, which I will attempt to cover in this post.

The emergence of social media is thought to represent a paradigm shift in the areas of online advertising and marketing. Most brands now make a concerted effort to maintain and manage an online presence in order to acclimate themselves to the current socioeconomic climate which, in many ways, is driven by social media. However, a mere website is no longer sufficient in ensuring a brand's successful promotion online; indeed, this was the case as recently as a decade ago. With the emergence of social media, companies must now cultivate their brands online through the use of any combination of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. This development and sustenance of a brand's online identity is achieved through what is called online presence management, the process by which companies maintain and draw traffic to their brands and their corresponding websites or webpages through a combination of several different online resources including web design and development; the utilization of any number of social media channels; and search engine optimization (SEO), wherein companies seek to optimize the visibility and accessibility a website or a webpage has in a search engine's (such as Google) "organic" search results. These resources, which lend themselves to the management of a company and its brands online presence, can be thought to keep social media, and the advertising channels which support them, afloat.

And yet, many businesses now depend on social media for new potential ad space. The relationship shared by many companies and social media outlets, however, can be considered a symbiotic one: they depend on one another if they hope to see profits. As businesses begin to gear their advertising models towards the new environment furnished by social media, virtually all social media outlets are beginning to indulge advertisers in order to realize the full potential of their profitability. Facebook, for example, has seen slower growth in its userbase this year than in past years - however, the company reported fourth quarter sales of $2.6 billion this year, up 63% from the same time last year. Over 90% of this revenue is reported to come from Facebook's ad sales, while overall ad revenue likewise rose 73% from last year. 

Moreover, we can look to an article found in Money Morning, titled How Do Social Media Companies Make Money? Money Morning E-Commerce Director Bret Holmes says that social media companies are "legitimate advertising websites, no different than, say, Google or Yahoo." He continues, "The same way Google made its money is the same way Twitter and Facebook will make their money."

The same article cites a 2013 Nielsen report which highlights some staggering findings: 89% of advertisers use free social media advertising and 75% use paid social media advertising, while 64% of advertisers expected that they would increase their paid social media ad budgets over the course of 2013. Another report projected that total social media advertising revenue in the U.S. would grow from $5.1 billion in 2013 to $15 billion in 2018. Simply put, this spells the potential of a tidy profit for both parties to the business arrangement: the social media profit from increasing ad sales, while the companies responsible for the ads benefit from exposure to new markets, a cross-section of an environment which encompasses dozens of different demographics, and overall, an altogether unique model by which to promote whatever it is they are selling.

Links:
http://moneymorning.com/2014/07/14/how-do-social-media-companies-make-money-2/
http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/29/technology/facebook-earnings/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_presence_management

The Social Graph

The term "social graph," as it relates to the Internet, refers to a graph - akin to a mathematical graph - which depicts connections and relationships between Internet users, specifically social media users. In this sense, one could think of a social graph as a map depicting links between different social media - a literal representation of a social network. In simpler terms, a social graph is a graphical representation of collected data which relates the links between different social media and their users. The following gif image, found on Wikipedia's article on the social graph, depicts an example:

This image not only depicts the different natures of the actions ("like," "listen," etc.) and relationships ("friend") which link Adam, Eva, and Kate, it also depicts the different media (Last.fm, Youtube, Peter's photo) on which the graph, and the relationships, are based.

Taken to its logical extreme, a social graph can be conceived as an all-encompassing platform for social media research, establishing links between users of such discrete social media as Facebook, Youtube, Last.fm, Instagram, and Twitter.

The practical - or rather, technological - application of the social graph is exemplified in the Facebook Platform, described as a "software provided by Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook." Simply put, this means that the Facebook Platform utilizes Facebook's social graph in an attempt to encourage third-party web developers to produce content which caters directly to Facebook users by accessing their data, thereby integrating that content into the larger "Facebook experience," as it were. Examples of this include third party applications on Facebook, Facebook's ubiquitous "like" and "share" buttons appearing on dozens of different sites across the Internet, as well as the option to log in or register to several sites using one's Facebook login information.

There is a significant economic aspect to social graphs, as well. Companies such as Facebook often monetize the data collected in their social graphs using methods such as database marketing (direct marketing which involves databases of potential costumers, and the personalized promotion of products to these would-be costumers) and social commerce (a form of electronic commerce which focuses on social media as a means by which the buying and selling of products or services can take place). In this way, a sizable social graph - such as that of the Facebook Platform - can be seen as an economic advantage to competitors. Further, social graphs and the data they contain may also be privatized by the companies which claim ownership of them - something of a "trade secret."

In 2010, at Facebook's annual F8 conference, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about his intention to connect different parts of the Internet with the common thread being Facebook, as part of what he called the "open graph." The idea, in Zuckerberg's own words, was to "take [the separate maps] of the graph and pull them all together," in an effort to "create a Web that's smarter, more social, more personalized, and more semantically aware."

The "open graph protocol," then, can be described as a means by which Facebook has allowed developers to integrate their content into Facebook's own social graph, enabling any integrated webpage or application to become a rich and functional object in the graph, and providing it with the same capabilities as other graph objects (such as newsfeed/stream updates). An example of this is the ability of Facebook users to remotely post that they've finished reading a book through the website/application Goodreads to their Facebook profiles. The "open graph" approach has allowed countless online businesses and applications access to Facebook's massive social graph, which is mutually beneficial for businesses or services with smaller audiences, and Facebook, in being able to expand its social reach - "cast a wider net," so to speak.

The implications of the "open graph," in my opinion, are numerous, chief among which is the possibility of an absolutely integrated social graph, wherein "social media" can be viewed as a single, uniform platform encompassing most, if not all, of the social Web, rather than its current fragmented nature. The idea of the open graph may prospectively open doors towards full collaboration between different, competitive social media platforms - and we may already be seeing the beginning of this now (for example, through the partial synchronization of Facebook and Twitter).

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Platform

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/overview/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-one-social-graph-to-rule-them-all/

Who uses social media?

It's no secret that social media has had a staggering impact on the world since its advent; simply put, it has completely revamped the popularly conceived notion of "connecting" and interacting with one another, as well as how we share information with one another, and in many ways, how we perceive the world. As such, social media has had subsequent effects on society and popular culture, especially in the Western world.

To describe social media in such grandiose terms, though, is - in some sense - to take the "easy way out." An important question which is rarely addressed with regards to the profound impact that social media has had on society at large is, "Who has social media affected?"

In other words, who are the people who frequently use social media? How many people has it affected? If we were to posit that social media has had such a drastic impact on society, then it should follow that the people who make up society have felt the effects of social media as well.

An article on eMarketer published last year claims that the reach of social networking is increasing exponentially by year. According to the report cited in the article, "the number of internet users who use a social network site via any device at least once per month" has increased by 13.4% since last year; the number now stands at around 1.97 billion people across the globe, or around one in four people on earth. The report further claims that the number could climb as high as 2.55 billion people by 2017.

The same report also lays claim that emerging markets in Asia and Africa will be "huge drivers of social user growth" in coming years, and that the reach of social networking has been increasing globally since at least 2011, throughout dozens of countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

An infographic on Mashable, which charts research carried out by the Pew Research Center, provides a "breakdown" of the most well-represented demographics with regards to social media usage. Some of the most notable statistics are as follows: 

• The highest percentage of social media usage occurs among the youngest demographic (18-29 year olds) with 83%, with less usage as age increases (77% among 30-49 year olds, 52% among 50-64 year olds, etc.)
• Social media usage among women is 9% higher than that among men, with 71% and 62% respectively
• People living in cities are responsible for the highest percentage of social media activity by population density, with 70%, as compared with suburbanites with 67% and those living in rural areas with 61%

The most common demographics are 18-29 year olds, those earning a household income of $30,000 or greater, city people, college students, and white people.

The question of whether social media is "the same" for all of these demographics is directly related to the question of which social media platform is being discussed. The same Mashable infographic says 67% of online adults are Facebook users (Facebook is arguably the most popular social media platform), whereas only 6% of online adults are Tumblr users. Elsewhere, the infographic shows that Instagram, for example, is most appealing to African-Americans, Hispanics, urban residents, 18-29 year olds, and women, whereas Pinterest is most appealing to rural residents, women, white people, people with some level of college education or higher, and people of middle or higher income. Clearly, the extent of ones exposure to social media - the expanse of ones "social mediasphere" - differs from demographic to demographic, and is rarely, if ever, consistent across the board. Where a transcendentally popular platform like Facebook has universal appeal to both younger and older people (and perhaps has had such broad and widely-felt impact as a result of this), "smaller" platforms such as Pinterest take more of a niche approach to social networking.

I am of the opinion that a social media platform's importance correlates, at least to some extent, to its reach or the size of its audience. We are continued witnesses of a popular example of this, with arguably the two most impactful and influential platforms to emerge following the "social media boom" of the mid 2000s: Facebook and Twitter. They also happen to have the greatest amount of users of any social network, with 1.28 billion users active monthly (as of March 2014) and 274 million users active monthly (as of July 2014), respectively. Their importance can only be measured by their immense bearing on popular culture, and their default roles as "lenses" through which people continue to study social media's growing impact on society.

Links:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Networking-Reaches-Nearly-One-Four-Around-World/1009976
http://mashable.com/2013/04/12/social-media-demographic-breakdown/