Social Media + Users behaviour = Would it change it all? (Part 1)
Reading interesting post series from Alexander Van Elsas “The human factor in social media trends” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, is there anymore incoming?), I thought about some ideas to share with him regarding the trends he pointed out. After having discussed a bit with him about the privacy issue on his blog, here’s my turn to add views concerning user behaviour trends facing the new Internet interaction model that is modeled through Social Media. I would look over information relevancy, permanent points of contact and content sharing, intelligent user laziness, content vs. conversation, digital ID protection, and more. Here’s the part 1 (it’s too long to read it straight, and I know how lazy I am to read long posts –though I’m writing quite long articles–and ready to switch when I look at the crazy small scrollbar displayed) of my posts about user behaviour changes due to Social media.
Here is the first trend Alexander highlighted in his series:
Trend no. 1: Everything will connect with everything, walled gardens will be torn down -> But we will still need a destination
We’ve seen for 2 years a battle for the start page “legacy” moving from a static portal content page (Yahoo!, Altavista, Lycos, and provider start pages) to a customizable start page, like Netvibes, Live.com, or iGoogle to notice only the major ones (provider start pages moving to that kind of start page). That means we still need a destination to gather content. Users don’t mind whether content is decentralized or not, they just want to reach it from one page (avoiding inbox since there’s already too many newsletters incoming that they can’t unsubscribe) that would eventually become their personal information hub to travel from one website to another (the tab feature has been part of the behaviour change).
But an interesting point is that this trend would change more than expected: sure you need a destination, but since you’re not restricted by the Internet address, the easiness to switch from website to website to get one specific kind of information would make the business model move. It has already partly changed due to Google and the lead traffic it manages to do using Google Adwords/ Adsense, generating visibility to dedicated website on niche topics. And that niche content trend would be more and more important (look at Dogster.com, Catster.com, TechCrunch, WebWare, Read Write Web, Mashable, Ajaxian, Disney community, Dell community, Scrapbooking.com, Allrecipes.com, and many other niche topics websites). Until main content providers doesn’t integrate that “multi monomania” people have (you’re an expert of many niches, no?) and implement (or buy) into the content they deliver (which some are starting to leverage), they would have to face traffic leak.
And that would also mean advertising would have to change to adapt to the next way of checking information: as Seth Godin says it would have to stop interupt users while they’re navigating to complete the information they’re reading (Google does it perfectly with its current Adword/ Adsense system and eventually would with the incoming Flash multi layer ads and video ads).
Next part to come this afternoon:
Trend no. 2: “Always on” will have a huge social impact -> But it will lead to a need to disconnect
Social Media + Users behaviour = Would it change it all? (Part 2) - Fast.Fwd.Innov@tion | July 8th, 2008 at 4:55 pm #
[...] the part 2 of the series “Social MEdia + User behaviour = Would it change it all?” (click here to see the 1st part). After having discussed about the 1st trend Alexander Van Elsas pointed out (”Everything [...]
Alexander van Elsas | July 10th, 2008 at 2:25 pm #
Romain, thank you for responding to my (long) posts
The destination I w thinking about is and isn’t a bit like current destinations such as iGoogle, netvibes etc. It might be the same in the sense that we might have similar services and information aggregated. But the crucial difference is that this destination I was referring to is that it should be like our “home” on the web. It’s metaphorically like a house. You own/rent it. You decide what it looks like, but you also get to decide who can visit and who can’t. It isn’t a place that can be Googled, advertised etc. It is your private area. A place where you can retire after a long day of interaction with others in Social Media enabled web.
Social Media + Users behaviour = Would it change it all? (Part 3) - Fast.Fwd.Innov@tion | July 10th, 2008 at 9:05 pm #
[...] the part 3 of the series “Social MEdia + User behaviour = Would it change it all?” (click here to see the 1st part and here for the 2nd part). Today’s focus is on information and ability the Internet (Google [...]