Social media and communications

Lara Carim
Editor, UCL Communications
21 January 2010

Purpose of this talk

Introduction to social media

Characteristics of social media
Examples of key players/platforms
Exploitation for communications purposes
Issues to consider
Best/worst practice
UCL corporate communications activity

What is social media?

Content creation by web users, the people

Contrast with top-down model of official or professional
media
Web returning to original purpose:
the idea was not just that it should be a big browsing
medium. The idea was that everybody would be putting
their ideas in, as well as taking them out.
Tim Berners-Lee (1999) address to MIT Laboratory for
Computer Science

Social media vs Web 2.0

Better, user-friendly, free software +

more powerful computers +
high-speed connections =
true multi-way interactivity online (Web 2.0) e.g.
chatrooms, online dating (Match.com)
online gaming/virtual worlds (Club Penguin)
cloud computing (Google Docs)

Social media content creation

Web 2.0 has facilitated amateur media creation

and promotion
Creation of content: editorial, podcasts, films,
Wikis, blogs, recommendations...
Social bookmarking brand management and
marketing aspects of communication
Overlap: technologies/communities/content
Facebook, Amazon recommendations, del.ici.ous

Characteristics of social media

Speed: rise, acceptance of citizen journalism - Mumbai

Democratic: Iran and Twitter
Informal, direct vs subjective, lack of authority/quality
Anonymity of creator - no holds barred
Context out of your hands
Club feeling
Free to access
Addictive

Key types of social media: blogs

Diary format, reverse chronological order

20 years old, now can add video, images
Key software providers: Blogger, WordPress
Personal or group blogs
Seen as many-to-many publishing, but..
Most people read but dont write blogs
Very subjective
Influential in niches:
26% parliamentary staffers use blogs every day to research policy
(PR Week)

Key player: Guido Fawkes

http://www.order-order.com/
Campaigning journalist against political sleaze and
hypocrisy
Britains most popular blog 2008 (Economist)
Unprofessional look - part of its brand?
#1 independent site outside a mainstream media
organisation (May 2007, Hitwise)
Widely read in Westminster
Other top blogs: Tech Digest, Gizmodo

Microblogging: Twitter

www.twitter.com
44m users (June 09 - TechCrunch)
140 characters, including links
Single idea, alert vs reflective nature of blogs
Text messaging meets chat meets blogging
Adoption by celebrities and corporations
Used to support actual events in real time
Things once said now published - most informal yet
Developments: Twitpic, :) for positive comments

Key types of social media: video

Broadband, powerful PCs/Macs, cheap hardware + software

Short, video diary quality (co-opted by professionals)
Sexiest form of AV - but use with caution
Viral possibilities: Invisible Children
Broadcast Yourself but now professional channels
Key players: YouTube, Vimeo (creative professionals)

Key player: YouTube

www.youtube.com
Varied subject matter
Ease of upload and management, v reliable
Copyright issues - deals with major content publishers
Channels for organisational presence
Ease of promotion: embedding, links with social networks
Comments, playlists
Purchase by Google, full-length shows

Image sharing

From organisational tool to money-spinner

Early adopters: travellers
Removes need for mobile memory, email sharing, back-up
Organised by albums
Sharing options
Comments, ratings, folksonomies
Online editing, re-use, video
Key players: Flickr, Picasa

Key player: Flickr

www.flickr.com - photos and videos

6,000 uploads per minute (5 ways)
32m users (May 09)
Free basic account, paid-for optional extras
Groups and privacy controls
See photos taken near you/yours, annotation
Cards, photo books, framed prints, DVDs
Folksonomies + Creative Commons = photo research tool

Podcasts

Series of digital files downloaded via web syndication

Audio generally meant, though can refer to video
No portable player needed - misnomer
Programme-driven, mainly with a host and/or theme
Natural extension of publishing brands: BBC, Nature,
Guardian
Podcast.com, Podcast Alley, Audioboo - no single dominant
open web player
Key platforms: iTunes

Key player: iTunes

www.apple.com/itunes
Specific (free) software, now supports range of file formats
Podcasts, music, TV, videos, audiobooks, iTunes U
Strong marketing, existing creative audience, compatibility
with Apple hardware + software
Revenue model - from 79p per track
11m high-quality music tracks
Apple TV, App Store, HD films

Communities

Facebook: 350m registered users (Dec 09)

MySpace: 125m (Dec 08)
LinkedIn - business: 53m (Dec 09)
Bebo: 40m (2007)
Friends Reunited: 19m (2008)
Friendster - popular Asian site: 90m (2008)
Last.fm - radio: 30m (March 09)
List of social networking sites
Consolidation trend
Strength: content distribution/recommendation

Social bookmarking

Content recommendations via bookmarking or tagging

Effect on reputation, and audience
Many signposted at foot of articles
Tags or DIY descriptions
Key players: Digg, Reddit, Newsvine (news focus),
del.ici.ous, StumbleUpon (9m users),
Wikipedia (social online encyclopaedia) - some editorial
control, very influential

Key player: Digg

www.digg.com
33m monthly visitors (Jan 2010, Compete)
a place to discover and share content from around the
Web, from the smallest blog to major news outlets.
Everything is submitted and voted on by people like you.
Eclectic/random - but can customise
Submit link, categorise (medium, subject matter)
Innovations: can add Friends, Facebook links, Digg TV

Engaging with social media:

Why, When, What, Where, Who?

Aims?
Measures of success?
Active vs passive approach
Proactive vs reactive
Right medium for right message - etiquette, dynamics
Fit with brand/audience(s) - DIY?
Time-consuming to do and monitor - resource!

Further considerations

Moderation: anonymity encourages extremes

Privacy: can you store what you learn?
Workflow: volume of contacts/technologies
Commitment to dialogue
Spokesperson authority
Returns
Going off-piste: the crowd is in control

Monitoring

Tracking services:
DIY/Free: Google Blog Search, Technorati, Twendz,
Twitter Vision/Search/Fall, Icerocket, Yahoo Pipes,
BlogPulse, BoardReader/Tracker, Xefer
Paid for: Social Media Library, Radian6, Market
Sentinel, LiveBuzz, Dow Jones Insight, Precise Media

Take action?

Good, bad and ugly

Good

Starbucks - customer support

SkyNews - enhancing journalism
Tate Channel
Bloggers vs British Chiropractic Association
Intel employees social media guidelines

Bad
HabitatUK + Moonfruit: Twitter misuse
PC World and Currys: Facebook/blog gaffe

Ugly: MI6 chief and the Speedos

On the horizon...

Google:
blogs and tweets to feature in results
Google Wave consolidation of platforms/technologies

Augmented reality: overlaying images with data

More noise Web 3.0 or semantic web

UCL Communications activity

Podcasts: ucl.ac.uk/multimedia and iTunes U

www.youtube.com/ucltv
www.twitter.com/uclnews
Social bookmarking - specific stories
Blogs by centres, staff, students
Monitoring Wikipedia, blogs
Research