I recently had one of those moments on Facebook that make you stop and re-examine your life, up there with your mom joining or your long-ago ex posting wedding pictures. This time it was my 12-year-old cousin, who I’d watched grow from toddler to teenager, sending me a friend request. I accepted (I was friends with my mom after all), but I was soon barraged with her updates on my news feed, many in a mysterious language of acronyms. Then I started learning new things that surprised me -- like that her favorite movie is “The Hangover,” that she already has as many “friends” as I do, and that she has a boyfriend who posts hearts on her wall.
So, when I saw a recent New York Times report that a majority of parents help their kids lie to join Facebook, I was intrigued. As it turns out, my 12-year-old cousin was one of these rogue Facebook members, sneaking in under the legal age limit of 13. This limit is set by federal law under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998, which aims to protect kids from organizations that would exploit them for commercial purposes. As Clara Shih's book "The Facebook Era" shows, businesses see immense opportunities for targeting audiences through social networks. But another reason for this law is that, as U.S. President Barack Obama succinctly put it in a recent Q&A with middle-school students, “when you're young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff... and then suddenly (you) go apply for a job and somebody has done a search.”
Of course, my cousin isn’t the only pre-teen breaking the law. According to a recent survey by Consumer Reports, over 7.5 million Facebook users are under 13, and more than 5 million are under 10. Whether they understand what they’re doing, these kids are offering up a huge amount of personal information, some of which may hurt them.
As 9 out of 10 teens have chosen Facebook as their social network of choice according to Pew, one would think founder Mark Zuckerberg might bear some responsibility for this situation. But it seems that Zuck is actually a big supporter of having young kids on Facebook. In an interview earlier this year he said Facebook is an “education” and should be used from “a really, really young age.” He also said he planned to “fight” to have COPPA reversed.
Facebook may or may not be educational, but worries still remain over the risks it brings to young kids. In addition to commercial exploitation and “stupid stuff,” there is also the threat of online bullying, which has become such a big issue that anti-bullying advocate Lady Gaga recently teamed up with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society to fight it. A recent Pew survey showed that while a majority of kids found that their peers were mostly kind online, a sizable 27% minority felt the opposite -- and many of these were among the most vulnerable groups which includes young, poor and mostly black girls.
So what’s a young kid to do? Perhaps this question should be directed more towards parents, teachers, and even older cousins like myself. If kids are going to be on Facebook, it may be up to us to help guide them through this social minefield with helpful advice and friendly wall posts. We are friends after all.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
How OWS is using WOM
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is now becoming a regular news topic, but it took several weeks for the movement to even get covered by the mainstream media. While the growing size, tenacity, and fervor of the protesters definitely caught many people's interest early on, another factor had a major effect on knowledge of OWS around the world -- the intersection of social media and word of mouth (WOM).
The OWS organizers have been actively using the Internet and different social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Youtube to get out information on their cause and prove their legitimacy. These outlets have earned huge followings and their posts, tweets, pictures, and videos have been spread across the country and around the world thanks to online WOM.
"A lot of times organizations talk about community," Crowdwise co-founder Robert Wolfe told The Huffington Post. "This may sound silly, but it makes people even more anonymous. It's really about individuals who affect change and build movements."
To learn more about the strength of this buzz, Attention USA decided to measure the online conversation in early October. The results, posted in a blog post by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, show that over 80% of of online buzz for OWS was generated through Twitter. In fact, daily mentions on Twitter rose from around 395 on Sept. 18 to over 2,600 on Oct. 8. The next most popular sources for information on the movement were blogs and Facebook, with mainstream media coming in at a low .06%.
So where was the mainstream media on this big story that everyone else seemed to be following?
TriplePundit blogger John Paul Chulliyil addressed the issue recently, comparing coverage of OWS with that of the Arab Spring.
"Unlike the mass amount of news and media coverage in the Arab countries that went on for hours on some news stations, I find it odd that the American media took such a long time to cover the recent demonstrations happening across the country, until after a few weeks of its existence,” he said. “
“Instead of the traditional methods of media we find a new generation of sources such as Twitter and Facebook and various internet sites providing a channel for new websites to pop up to inform the masses.”
It will be interesting to see to what extent people continue turning to online sources for the majority of information on OWS even as the mainstream media starts picking up leads. Just as Clay Shirky mentioned in his book "Here Comes Everybody," the OWS movement has shown that people don't need to depend on traditional news sources for their information anymore. With the help of social media tools and online buzz people can help define and disseminate the news stories of day themselves.
The OWS organizers have been actively using the Internet and different social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Youtube to get out information on their cause and prove their legitimacy. These outlets have earned huge followings and their posts, tweets, pictures, and videos have been spread across the country and around the world thanks to online WOM.
"A lot of times organizations talk about community," Crowdwise co-founder Robert Wolfe told The Huffington Post. "This may sound silly, but it makes people even more anonymous. It's really about individuals who affect change and build movements."
To learn more about the strength of this buzz, Attention USA decided to measure the online conversation in early October. The results, posted in a blog post by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, show that over 80% of of online buzz for OWS was generated through Twitter. In fact, daily mentions on Twitter rose from around 395 on Sept. 18 to over 2,600 on Oct. 8. The next most popular sources for information on the movement were blogs and Facebook, with mainstream media coming in at a low .06%.
So where was the mainstream media on this big story that everyone else seemed to be following?
TriplePundit blogger John Paul Chulliyil addressed the issue recently, comparing coverage of OWS with that of the Arab Spring.
"Unlike the mass amount of news and media coverage in the Arab countries that went on for hours on some news stations, I find it odd that the American media took such a long time to cover the recent demonstrations happening across the country, until after a few weeks of its existence,” he said. “
“Instead of the traditional methods of media we find a new generation of sources such as Twitter and Facebook and various internet sites providing a channel for new websites to pop up to inform the masses.”
It will be interesting to see to what extent people continue turning to online sources for the majority of information on OWS even as the mainstream media starts picking up leads. Just as Clay Shirky mentioned in his book "Here Comes Everybody," the OWS movement has shown that people don't need to depend on traditional news sources for their information anymore. With the help of social media tools and online buzz people can help define and disseminate the news stories of day themselves.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Will Facebook’s “Social Apps” help spur or or sideline WOM online?
When it comes to WOM, social media holds exciting opportunities for marketers, and this week’s announcements from Facebook show how their taking advantage of the technology whether we like it or not, literally.
This week, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook unveiled some dramatic new changes that will make sharing online a “frictionless” experience. Basically, through “social apps” for things like watching movies, listening to music, and reading articles, users share what they’re doing with friends without intentionally choosing to “Like” it. Facebook users will get the opportunity to see almost everything their friends are doing. Meanwhile, Facebook and the organizations involved will keep all this information and learn more about what products we choose and how we are influenced by our social networks.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out for WOM via online social media. In this week’s readings, we learned more about how to use social networks to increase WOM. In “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited,” for example, Rosen told us that one of the best ways to create buzz was to understand how it spreads through common nodes and how the net can strengthen weak ties. Berger & Schwartz, meanwhile, discussed how WOM will thrive if it is accessible and visible to the public, whether the content or product is interesting or not.
In this regard, Facebook seems to have improved the platform for spurring WOM for marketers. More and more of the things our close friends and even weak-tie acquaintances do will now be visible and accessible to us online. We will also have more opportunities to comment on our activities as more organizations create apps integrated into Facebook.
However, the quality of the WOM that such sharing starts is sure to be debated. Not everyone is thrilled about the new changes. As Farhad Manjoo of Slate writes, “sharing is fundamentally about choosing.” If we are forced to share everything, it could potentially lead to information overload, anger over privacy, or even declines in active participation -- none of which would be good for WOM.
Of course, as Keller & Berry from Advertising Age showed, 90% of WOM conversations occur face-to-face or by phone and only 7% online. This is a pretty amazing statistic, but could become less relevant as Facebook becomes more integrated into our day-to-day lives. As the young Facebook founder famously says in what has now come to be known as “Zuckerberg’s Law,” the amount of stuff people share on the site roughly doubles every year -- and right now its at about 4 billion things a day. With the new changes to Facebook, that number is sure to grow. What is unknown is how much good WOM it will create.
This week, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook unveiled some dramatic new changes that will make sharing online a “frictionless” experience. Basically, through “social apps” for things like watching movies, listening to music, and reading articles, users share what they’re doing with friends without intentionally choosing to “Like” it. Facebook users will get the opportunity to see almost everything their friends are doing. Meanwhile, Facebook and the organizations involved will keep all this information and learn more about what products we choose and how we are influenced by our social networks.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out for WOM via online social media. In this week’s readings, we learned more about how to use social networks to increase WOM. In “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited,” for example, Rosen told us that one of the best ways to create buzz was to understand how it spreads through common nodes and how the net can strengthen weak ties. Berger & Schwartz, meanwhile, discussed how WOM will thrive if it is accessible and visible to the public, whether the content or product is interesting or not.
In this regard, Facebook seems to have improved the platform for spurring WOM for marketers. More and more of the things our close friends and even weak-tie acquaintances do will now be visible and accessible to us online. We will also have more opportunities to comment on our activities as more organizations create apps integrated into Facebook.
However, the quality of the WOM that such sharing starts is sure to be debated. Not everyone is thrilled about the new changes. As Farhad Manjoo of Slate writes, “sharing is fundamentally about choosing.” If we are forced to share everything, it could potentially lead to information overload, anger over privacy, or even declines in active participation -- none of which would be good for WOM.
Of course, as Keller & Berry from Advertising Age showed, 90% of WOM conversations occur face-to-face or by phone and only 7% online. This is a pretty amazing statistic, but could become less relevant as Facebook becomes more integrated into our day-to-day lives. As the young Facebook founder famously says in what has now come to be known as “Zuckerberg’s Law,” the amount of stuff people share on the site roughly doubles every year -- and right now its at about 4 billion things a day. With the new changes to Facebook, that number is sure to grow. What is unknown is how much good WOM it will create.
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