Social Media Analytics: Marshall Sponder Provides Social Media Proof - Page 5
Some services such as Google Okrut seem to do well in certain places such as Brazil, but not elsewhere, don’t know why. Google is not the dominant search engine in China, either – Baidu is, and has been all along. Some of that is dealt with in Chapter 3 but the real thrust of it is that our lives and thoughts are shaped by our surroundings, not just physically, but culturally and historically, as well. I suspect social media usage will be refracted on the lens of history and popular culture, and as that differs from place to place, so will the habits and usages of people who use Social Media.
I’m not sure Facebook has addressed those differences any better than Google has, or hasn’t – but the ability to target people within your network or associated networks is much better in Facebook than Google, and Facebook works on different stages of a person’s journey to find fulfillment whereas Search works on immediate needs or lacks.
Social Media works more on affinity and interest anyway. Time will tell how well Facebook or Google + ends up doing in disparate cultures and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens as there are too many wild cards at play here to predict the future with confidence.
Are people too focused on Facebook for marketing?
Just the reverse – I don’t think people are focused enough on Facebook Marketing; since I covered the advantages of Facebook in my previous questions so I won’t repeat them here.
I wrote in an article that the Netflix Outrage was a façade. What can one do to separate real concerns from all the chaff out there?
I think we need to do some investigative work to segment the sources of negative opinion as much as can, and see if they lead back to the same people or not. More likely, a diffused, widespread response to the Netflix Outrage would be indicative of real discontent if multiple people were reacting to an event independently. On the other hand, if one or two influencers ultimately drive most of the conversation, then we can conclude, with some degree of certainly the concerns may represent the needs of the few, not the many.
Mor Naaman over at GIGAom covered this topic in Twitter recently with a post on Some Trending Topics are More Equal Than others where two types of trends that take place on Twitter, endogenous and exogenous. If a trend is endogenous, it spreads virally, and probably originates from an influencer or influentials and propagates out to the greater network. Once a hashtag like #intenyears becomes a trending topic, it may spread like wildfire and we can conclude probably didn’t happen naturally – and I’d look at the Netflix Outrage that way (if the analysis suggests that one or two individuals spread the message).
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