Meh! Not Everyone’s Into Social Networks

Meh! Not Everyone’s Into Social Networks:

A guest post by Sujata Ramnarayan of SMStrat.

Recently, New York Times columnist Tim Egan wrote an article titled “Please Stop Sharing,” in which he lamented the proclivity to over-share the banal and trivial on social networks and the negative consequences of saying something that lives forever in cyberspace.

What was interesting was the number and variety of comments it generated. I examined 113 of those comments that were available online (as of December 16, 2011), doing a content and sentiment analysis. The results reveal there are at least five different segments based on perceptions of social networks, with a sizable segment of non-users that see social networks as unproductive, degenerate, or encroaching on privacy. More details about each of the segments and implications for marketers follow.

The readers commenting could be segmented into five different groups as shown in Figure 1. There are those who defended over-sharing as not banal but as freedom of speech, or as what makes life. This constituted 16% of the sample of commenters. Here I could identify a couple of different segments.

There was a second group of users of social networks that I term “Pragmatists,” who saw the benefits of social networks and felt it was up to you how you used it or how you reacted to the banal, trivial, or “over-sharing.” There was a larger segment of non-users of social networks. These constituted those who had tried it and decided it was not for them and those who did not want to use it. Again this group could be segmented into those who would not use it because they were concerned about privacy (Privacy Aware). The second segment of non-users felt that social networks were either unproductive or represented degeneration of social and cultural values.

Figure 1 Perceptions of Social Network Segments

Table 1 shows these segments along with a sample of the comments made by the commenters.

The good news for marketers is that 42% of the people commenting were users of social networks seeing the benefits. The bad news to marketers and creators of Facebook and Twitter is that 58% see them as encroaching on privacy or as unproductive and de-generate. Only 16% of the “commenters” feel positive enough about these networks to defend it. This is close to the percentage that Facebook touts of 200 million active users out of a network worldwide of 800 million members. Most readers commenting automatically referred to either Facebook or Twitter with a single mention of Google and LinkedIn. This shows the pre-dominance of these two networks relative to others as is evident from other published data as well.

There are a number of takeaways from this for marketers:

• It is clear that a sizable segment of the general population favors and finds social networks useful. The majority (58%) though is still wary. Thus, you cannot reach all of your target market using only a social media strategy. Any resource allocation to social should consider these differences observed among users and non-users of social networks.
• At the same time, social media is not restricted to these large networks. One of the readers remarked that he/she would have “liked” to “like” the article but would not do it because it required him/her to do so through Facebook invading privacy. The person went on to comment that this was a loss to the publisher because they would never know how that person felt about the article. Of course, the publisher does get to know by reading the comments, and that is part of sharing on the social web as well. This shows the value of creating other communities or of blogs that still entail a degree of sharing mixed with openness, while preserving privacy as part of your social media strategy.
• Although the segment of unproductive/culturally degenerate aware was not separated earlier, those considering Facebook and Twitter to be unproductive constituted 17%. This could be due to lack of productive uses or applications. Most Facebook applications today are either games like Zynga or trivial. This segment could become a segment of “users” if they saw some significant benefits.
• According to Quancast, New York Times readers are highly educated, high income, and more male compared to the population average online. Therefore, this analysis might be weighted more heavily and reflecting a specific population. Facebook, on the other hand, has more females as active participants according to a Pew Internet survey. Regardless of the limitations mentioned which possibly have the greatest impact on the size of the segments, the differences and existence of these different segments are a key finding of importance to Marketers.

Sujata Ramnarayan, Ph.D. is the Managing Principal of SMStrat. Her background includes years in the industry as a Senior Analyst at Gartner where she managed the Digital Media Research program, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Humboldt State University, and an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at San Jose State University.