Social Media Users Are Migratory

Long time back, during the early days of Internet, I read a futuristic book called ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ which started out with a radical thought (at that time) - Markets are conversations.
If you look closely at most of our online activities, we can see that almost all the activities are some sort of conversations - from searching to shopping. Also, whole new businesses and platforms are built on daily basis in the digital space based on conversations - Social Media



My take is that digital technology has impacted a lot in terms of ease and reach of our conversations. However, its impact on the increased volume of conversations would be marginal. What I mean is that the amount of an individuals conversation has not grown drastically from what it was before the penetration of technology. Just because there is something better tomorrow does not mean that I will increase my individual capacity or change my inherent behaviour to speak more.

What has been driving the growth of Social Media is the increased number of new users joining the platforms, globally, either through geographies or through devices.

This phenomenon affects most in the users use of social media platforms, where most the activities are conversational in nature. Since we cannot increase the volume of our conversations substantially, we tend to pick platforms that are most popular at that point of time & which suits our requirement the best. As we pick and start using a particular platform, our usage of the previous platform decreases, and as time goes by completely disappears. This is a continuous process. Imagine, how we have migrated from days of using USENET>> IMC>> AOL>> Yahoo! Chats>> MSN Messenger>> Orkut >>to the current favourites like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc

While we might embrace new technologies, but as long as there is a limit in terms of our conversations and the time we have on hand for the same, we will keep migrating from one platform to another based on ease of use or reach of that particular platform

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Best Indian websites - 2007

Image
Hi, This was an article that appeared in PC World India Nice stuff Santosh ------------------------------------ Technology will dominate the future and the web is clearly one of its greatest manifestations. Forget the dotcom bust that many sceptics will remind you of The Web is going to become our way of life in India . There are enough statistics to point to the rapid growth of the Internet in India – number of connections, e-mail accounts, transaction revenue – all very convincing. But who needs statistics? Just a quick look around will reveal how web is fast replacing traditional brick-n-mortar operations. Be it picking new stocks or new friends, finding a job or a bride, there’s a web way to things that is proving far more effective, and rewarding. Websites today are built with robust understanding of users and available technology. They purposefully pursue fulfilling the needs of their audience but are grounded in strong business reality. And hence, unlike the fairy-tail era gone
Read more

10 Reasons Marketing Strategy should include the Internet

It may seem surprising but many companies, big and small, have yet to develop a rational Internet marketing strategy. Considering the Internet has now been used effectively by marketers since 1994, any organization without a strategy to utilize the Internet for marketing is probably making a big mistake. For any organization that still does not have a meaningful Internet marketing effort we offer 10 Reasons why you should. 1. The Go-To Place for Information Possibly the most important reason why companies need to have an active Internet marketing strategy is because of the transformation that has occurred in how customers seek information. While customers still visit stores, talk to sales representatives, look through magazines, and talk to friends to gather product information, an ever-increasing number of customers turn to the Internet as their primary knowledge source. In particular, they use search engines as their principle portal of knowledge as search sites have become the leadi
Read more

Teach Marketing, Yoda Can

Image
About 8 years back, I wrote an analogical article about Kung Fu Panda and digital marketing (you can read it here ). That time my kid was 3 years. Now my kid is 11 years old. As all growing kids do, he too has out-grown the Kung Fu Panda-The Lion King phase. His current fascination is The Star Wars. I guess, by now, he must have finished watching at-least 3-4 times….The Star Wars Saga - the original, sequel, and prequel trilogies, animated series, The book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian, and even the Thrawn trilogy books. The next on his wish list is to own an original lightsaber… Kids are demanding! Well, this article is not about my kid or his love for Star Wars. Working from home and watching these movies along with my kid, this is about my thoughts on what Star Wars can teach us about marketing, or more importantly what marketing tips Yoda can teach “Do or do not. There is no try.” We all know that planning is very important when it comes to any campaign/project. But every great pl
Read more