Consumption Only Social Media is Just Fine, Apparently

This quote from a recent Dick Costello appearance is telling: 

As far as the future of the service, Costolo feels like there’s a lot of room for growth. Battelle asked him what he felt was the biggest misconception about Twitter and Costolo quickly replied: “That you have to tweet to use Twitter.”

I feel like if certain forces within Twitter – and other social networks, it’s by no means alone in this – would be fine if their network became TV. By that I mean they want a passively consumed platform that is filled with primarily professional content and which people are simply asked to watch and, if they absolutely have to, interact with in some form. But please don’t produce anything original, thank you very much, that’s harder for us to sell ads against. 

Now I’ll admit that’s probably a drastic interpretation of the text. All he likely meant was that people shouldn’t feel the burden to be writing all sorts of pithy stuff of their own but instead are welcome to follow the profiles of their choice and feel more connected to those who they do choose to connect with and maybe click through every once in a while when a retailer offers a sale that’s that’s attractive to them. 

It doesn’t change the gut feeling I have, though, that all of overtures the company has made to big media companies are indicative of Twitter’s desire to be a channel for those media companies as opposed to a peer social network. Again, other companies are going down similar roads but this comment is, I think, indicative of that bigger trend. 

Photos, photos, photos

This goes for brand publishing programs as well.

The importance of photos in Facebook engagement raises the importance of getting good photos with as many stories as possible. When staff visual journalists are not shooting photos with a story, reporters need to either shoot photos or obtain photos (and permission to use them) from sources.

via Facebook news-feed changes mean newsrooms need new engagement strategies « The Buttry Diary.

When Fans Just Want You To Be Quiet

A new study from PageLever shows that when fans are tired of hearing from a brand they’ve Liked on Facebook they’re more likely to simply hide updates from that page than they are to Unlike the page. Here’s what that looks like based on their study: 

I’ve talked before about what I call “positive actions.” Those would include anything where an individual takes some sort of deliberate action to receive inputs from a brand online. That could include following them on Twitter, subscribing to an RSS feed or anything else along those lines. But this story uses the term “negative action” for exactly the opposite type of behavior. 

What is truly disturbing about the “hide” figures though is that this is a massively under-counted metric. While there are all sorts of studies about the fans who unfollow a brand page on Facebook and what can be done about that there’s very little attention paid to the folks who hide updates from that page. 

In essence what these people are saying is that they still are alright with publicly associating themselves with that brand as part of their online identity, the equivalent of putting a patch of the company’s logo on the sleeve of their jacket. But while that continues they also essentially want the brand to be quiet. They’d like to go back to it being a passive relationship, where they can check in occasionally if they want but otherwise they’d like not hear from them unless it’s on their terms. 

This is a number that needs to come to the forefront more. I’m sure it’s buried somewhere within Facebook’s Insights tool but it’s certainly not one that’s been the focus of many conversations up until now, something that will need to change as program managers evaluate what impact it – along with the other changes Facebook has made that have impacted the reach of the messages published with the intent of reaching the social network audience.