Matthew Cain's blog » Technology

The social divides of social media

Matthew — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:01:41 +0000

Opportunistic marketers aren’t slow in suggesting that social media monitoring could have helped the Police understand the outbreak of rioting over the last few days –this article is just one example. Police do monitor social media (most obviously, large police forces tweet themselves) but it wouldn’t have been particularly useful over the last few days. Basic keyword alerts might have had them deploying forces to Leicester, Coventry and Birmingham’s childrens’ hospital all of which were reported on Twitter as being targeted – none of which were.

In fact, the real activity – and the point of greater interest to intelligent marketers was away from the obvious social media networks like Twitter. And therein, lies the more interesting story.

The promise of social media was that it would bring people closer together, creating a more democratic world. Its role in the London riots is a reminder of how utopian that promise turned out.

Social media – or more accurately those who use it – have recreated the divides that already existed in society. The well-educated US graduates who flocked to Facebook were rejecting Myspace – not just its design and features but also its community. The shift was described by a leading researcher as ‘white flight’, echoing the exodus of middle class people from cities to suburbs.

There are echoes of the social divide in the growth of Twitter. Casual observer could be lead to believe that Twitter is of a similar size to Facebook. It certainly eats up column inches in the mainstream media. According to Journalisted there were more mentions of Twitter in the national press than Facebook in the last week. For the avoidance of doubt, there are 24m UK Facebook users and less than half the number of Twitter users. Hits to Twitter account for just 1 in every 184 UK internet visits. To put it another way, Trufflenet’s clients see hits to their website from Facebook on their analytics. Twitter is too small to notice.

So why has Twitter got such a large profile? Because it’s used by older, more affluent user, mostly living in London. Research from the Oxford Internet Institute has shown that adoption of Twitter loosely tracks adoption of the iPhone. Trufflenet has even found in its work in the political sphere that it is disproportionately left wing, findings underscored by Hitwise.

It is plausible that young rioters chose to use BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) because they prefer the privacy of the closed network. Indeed, Trufflenet has previously found young people much less likely to boast about poor behaviour on Facebook than Twitter. But anyone who had actually considered the privacy angle would have been likely to find the controversy about RIM handing over data to dodgy regimes in the Middle East. It is much more likely, however, that the greater penetration of BlackBerry’s amongst poorer teenagers meant that more of their friends used it.

Twitter played a vital broadcast role in amplifying news of the riots, spreading rumours and localising the news; and now in promoting the cleanup. BBM played an organising role. Many are using Facebook as a support mechanism for close friends and families.

Understanding what’s being said on social media is no small task. But anyone seeking to utilise that to plan activity needs to go beyond that to understand who is using which channel, how and why people it is being used.

Being ignored could kill Ed Miliband

Matthew — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 07:49:13 +0000

Important parts of the Labour Party are worried about whether Ed Miliband will be left wing enough or right wing enough. It’s the oldest debate in the party so it’s a comfortable one, with the actors playing their usual parts. But the stage has shifted. Labour has no divine right to be heard and this could not be clearer than on social media where Ed Miliband is struggling to be heard by the public.

This isn’t the 1980s where the Labour Party is the political wing of a protest movement which is dominating the public attention. And we’re no longer living in an age where political parties were discussed, voted for and joined as a matter of course.

Actually, Ed Miliband has had worse weeks on social media. People did actually talk about him – for a change. For the first time since the party conference season more people spoke about Ed Miliband than Tony Blair. He even had the highest profile of the shadow cabinet ministers – even if some of this was negative reaction to the disastrous PMQs performance.

But the attention he’s getting is not from anyone who he needs to vote for him, even if Labour is to hold what it’s got at the next election. Seven out of 10 people who talked about Ed were politicos, journalists or news junkies. Miliband is failing to even provoke comment amongst hard working mums on forums, bargain hunters on Moneysavingexpert, TV watchers on DigitalSpy or football fans on leading fans’ forums.

If you measured the sentiment it would be even worse – but there’s little point when the debate is happening between party supporters. It’s like canvassing the canvassers.

The leadership election gave a false impression of Labour’s standing. There was little other political news, the government looked uncertain, the media were obsessed by the fraternal battle and the BBC gave it unjustifiable airtime.

If Ed doesn’t start to define himself, others will. And as the Economist points out he will be positioned with reference to Bob Crow, Vince Cable and Simon Hughes. And that would require a comeback of Istanbul proportions.

Axa Health: complaining via blogging

Matthew — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:38:29 +0000

A friend of a friend has had real problems with her Axa healthcare policy. She feels completely let down. As is often the case in difficult situations, the failure of the company to deal with her problems properly has only served to exacerbate the original complaint.

I helped her (in a small way) by creating a blog to record her experiences and notify others of the problems with complaining about Axa Health.

The latest I hear is that Axa are now delaying the ombudsman process so let’s hope that the blog can remind the company of its duties to protect its reputation better than it cared for this customer.

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I love my iphone but

Matthew — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:59:06 +0000

There are lots of great things about having an iPhone but it’s not ‘all good’ (as our southern hemisphere friends might say).

1. Terrible for classical music
Ok, so this isn’t exclusively the fault of the iPhone but Apples in general. iTunes is terrible for navigating through classical music. You’d normally search by composer but two pieces by Beethoven might be filed differently (under Ludwig or Beethoven). It doesn’t handle movements properly and gives unintuitive prominence to conductors and orchestras. And of course having classical pieces renders the shuffle function useless.

2. Reception
I’ve gotten used to having no reception at home – it’s always been a problem for o2 in Hackney. But what’s really frustrating is the wait to use the phone after coming out of an area of no reception. I had a 6 minute wait after exiting Liverpool Street last night before I could tell the nanny that I’d be late. And then it’s slow telling you there’s no reception. You can be on the tube and the display says you can make a call.

And it’d be easier to live with if the phone worked through wifi. Being able to browse but not call is bizarre for a phone.

3. No draft text messages / outbox
Because of the reception problems it’s all the more important that when you have none you can write an SMS, press send and know that when you have coverage it will go – like phones do. iPhones don’t. And as nice as the forward feature is, nothing beats a serviceable queue.

4. Auto capitalisation
After three months I still haven’t got used to the auto capitalisation feature. When you write something, delete and the press space, caps lock turns on. I can’t imagine ever finding that more useful than not. And don’t get me started on the auto contraction of its to it’s.

5. One sync lead
You get a plug and a lead when you get the iPhone. The plug will charge it with the lead and you can also use the lead to sync with you computer or play the phone through the stereo. Which means when you really need to charge the under- performing battery, you’ve never got the bits you need. Just one more sync lead would do it – or using a USB at both ends of the device. Come on Apple, don’t be cheap: I’ve bought a premium device.

6. Auto rotating
The auto rotating feature just doesn’t work properly – never has. It’s meant to rotate the display when you hold it horizontally. It does, but infrequently. And of course if you are using your phone whilst on the move, it does when you don’t want it.

7. Cut and paste
I’m really pleased that my iPhone has cut and paste functionality. And I can swallow not being able to use two applications simultaneously. But what’s really frustrating is not being able to cut and paste comprehensively. For example, if I want to put in my contacts the number of someone who’s just called me, I shouldn’t have to find a pen. And if I copy a phone number from webmail it would be nice to be able to paste it into an SMS.

8. The keyboard
I’ve got pretty useful fingers thanks to 25 years of playing the Cello. But even that isn’t sufficient for more than 60% accuracy on the phone. And the constant revert to querty is annoying if you are entering a number with spaces. That doesn’t fill me with excitement for the ipad (which the iPhone auto corrects as upas – go figure).

9. Done, Go, Login
When entering a password on a website you sometimes have as many as three options: done (top right in blue) go (on the keyboard) and login (on the browser). Only one of them has the desired affect whilst two others mean you have to re-enter your password, frustrating when it’s 11 digits.

10. No flash
Ok, so maybe developers shouldn’t use flash. But I miss out on vital news like Rafa’s teamsheet the minute it’s printed, simply because the lead story is published in flash.

This dull moan isn’t meant to be a damning indictment of Apple. But I’ve bought a premium product which needs work. And it’s only been revised once in 3 years (the 3gs).

The launch of the ipad is a useful reminder that Apple is great for first movers but once the company moves onto The Next Big Thing consumers of older products get left behind. If it was made by Nokia we’d be on version 7140 already.

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3 changes to the Bloggers Circle

Matthew — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:23:48 +0000

There’s been lots of debate about how to develop the Bloggers Circle. We’d like to make three changes to the way we work in November to see if it helps encourage debate and get more attention for your work.

1. No more generic digest
Instead of a daily email digest, you can see all of the submissions here: http://delicious.com/bloggerscircle
These will be tagged with keywords so that you can filter the submissions according to what is most relevant for your blog. I hope this can help grow the circle whilst keeping it relevant to your interests.

2. A discussion group
We’ve created a discussion group to debate ideas and posts and so you can collaborate with other bloggers more easily. It’s all available here: http://groups.google.com/group/bloggerscircle where you can submit your posts to the monthly digest, discuss themes / ideas for new blogposts and share ideas on how to improve your blog. I hope this will lead to a better sense of community rather than shouting into an email blackhole.

3. Blog of the week
We’d like to try a ‘blog of the week’ competition. To vote, just email your favourite post, putting the web address in the subject of your email, and email it to debate@bloggerscircle.net. The blog of the week will receive a small prize and be circulated to all the members. I hope this will encourage people to continue to take part.

So, what do you need to do?
1. If you want to submit your post, you can email me as before or post it in the forum: http://groups.google.com/group/bloggerscircle

2. Please vote for your favourite post of the week

3. Add http://delicious.com/bloggerscircle to your favourites so you can keep abreast of the debate

. . . . And if this doesn’t work for you, let me know.