Social media in government and enterprise

It’s been just over three weeks since my last blog post. What with being on vacation, visits from friends and deadlines at work, I’ve spent much of my time recently offline. I did spend some of that time reflecting on my increasing online activity level and on ways to get more leverage from it. And I’ve chilled out a little…I am just not worried about having 1000+ Google Reader items to action. More on that soon.

This posting covers some recent material on the actual and potential use of Web 2.0 applications such as social media tools by government (hence the ‘Government 2.0′ label) and business, and some insights into the Australian Government’s consideration of IT to enable continuous regulatory reform.

Social Media

In his speech to the e-Government Forum in May 2008, Lindsay Tanner (Minister for Finance and Deregulation) said that “the growth in recent times of collaborative platforms with potential application for government has been staggering…Web 2.0 platforms will have a dramatic impact on policymaking processes and the institutions of government”. Reference is made to an upcoming trial government consultation blog to “give the online citizen a chance to interact with the bureaucracy and make contributions to an area of government policy review”.

More recently, the Minister participated in an online forum ‘Better Regulation ‘ hosted by openforum.com.au (an independent & collaborative think tank hosted and moderated by Global Access Partners). I think it’s great that the Minister participated in such an open and informative way about the challenges of continuous regulatory reform and his interest in using Web 2.0 tools to experiment with crowd-sourcing (such as the use of wikis to aid the policy/regulation development process, including participation by government officials). Crowdsourcing – in the form of outsourcing – seems to be on a growth path in the SME sector as well.

Now on to the use of social media tools by business. Recent research in the UK (see Network Citizens by Peter Bradwell & Richard Reeves, Demos & Orange) into the relationship between social networking and organisational structures found that “the dynamics of the workplace are being reshaped [and that] the turbo charging of networks by certain forms of technological advance – in particular the rise of online ’social networking’ – is also clear”. In a more damning critique of institutional organisation (and partly in response to the global economic meltdown) Harvard University academic Umair Haque points to a deeper malaise – one of institutional decay. Haque claims that “the centuries-old institutions of orthodox capitalism cannot support the transition to a hyperconnected global economy” and consequently “are increasingly unable to allocate capital efficiently”. Haque goes on to proclaim that next-generation businesses are build on new DNA, or “new ways to organise and manage economic activities”. Social media tools provide the platforms for global hyperconnectivity…and apparently, a part of the new DNA of economic activity.

The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) is hosting a half day seminar in December 2008 on Web 2.0 & Government. AGIMO intends to further disseminate information about the use of Web 2.0 applications and best practice in government at the seminar.

Frustration Media

I’ve been an avid reader of newspapers since I was a kid…that’s a long time now. I’ve got to say that print media is losing out to social media in terms of my attention now.

Sure, I’m finding that blogging, commenting on other blogs, subscribing to news feeds and participating in microblogging and social networking is seductive. It’s interactive. It’s social. It’s creative. The knowledge networks that I can tap into seem limitless at times.

In comparison, I’ve got to the point now that I get frustrated when reading a print article that either gets things wrong or presents a view that I want to challenge…there and then… but of course, I’m not able to.  

On Monday, 29 September there was a critque by Matthew Mclean in The Age on social media. Just the print version. The article was on page 11, somewhat ironically headed the ‘Comment & Debate’ section. 

The article starts with “In the near future the worlds of Facebook and MySpace will suddently implode”. Why? McClean states that “Trying to entwine personality, and perhaps even one’s self-esteem , to something that does not actually exist [it's a virtual world] is a depressing and dangerous thing to do”. Mclean refers to unspecified ‘cyber-space’ critics claiming social network users are “subsuming their own reality as a consequence [of spending time in a virtual world]“. 

Mclean goes on to site some ’status updates’ of his former Facebook friends as evidence of “…a lack of orginality and serious contemplation”. One example used was ‘(Name) is full after a fairly nice tuna sandwich’. So what?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Fair enough. But McClean’s article takes just one element of the Facebook experience and condems the future of social networking. That is not balanced journalism. There was no reference to other elements such as news feeds, group action (that can be social, professional, educational or political) knowledge sharing or co-creation. At a basic social level, people like being able to make connections with others. Social networking provides many opportunities for connecting with others.

According to comScore, Facebook is now the most popular social network globally. But the storey is not all about Facebook or MySpace. The data also showed that social networking activity is popular globally, attracting 580 million visitors (an increase of 25% from the year before) out of a total internet audience of 860 million in June 2008. 

Social networking has come a long way (in terms of use) very quickly. Much of it is still experimental, and still at the early stages of development. According to a survey by Synovate, some people do seem to be losing interest in social networking. Apparently, 58% of the people surveyed did not know what social networking is. These are indicators of a nascent service – Facebook only went public about two years ago.

Here is what Steve Garton, global head of media research for Synovate, had to say about users having a balanced on- and offline existence. “Most people online, regardless of culture, have a very strong appreciation of being in the real world. Their attitudes and behaviour show us that the virtual world of social networking can complement relationships, but not replace them.  There is no substitute for real life, real friends and real relationships”.  That is a far cry from users subsuming their own reality. What’s more, forty percent of survey participants agreed that online communication can be just as meaningful as face-to-face communication.

So McClean’s perspective does have some validity, but no blance. To cast down social networking on such slim evidence and virtually no analysis – under a page header of comment and debate – and with no opportunity to interact, just leaves me feeling very cool about the experience and cool toward print media. 

That kind of experience is happening to me quite often with print media. So I’ve labelled it ‘Frustration Media’. No wonder it’ s in decline.

New influencers, new digital divides and Facebook

I’ve posted before about the emergence of social media as a new form of influence. Social media includes blogging, social network sites, wikis, web forums etc – anything that’s interactive and online. A few recent developments reinforce this trend and is indicative of new forms of digital divide.

Technorati has been tracking the state of the blogosphere since 2004.

By July 2005 there were 14.2 million blogs globally with 80,000 new blogs per day. By April 2007 there were 70 million blogs. By August 2008 there were 133 million blogs with 120,000 new ones launched each day. The number of blogs almost doubled between April 2007 and August 2008.

In May 2008 eMarkerter reported there were 94 million blog readers in the US in 2007 (about 50% of internet users). In August 2008 ComScore put the figure a little lower at 77.7 million or about 41%.

In Australia, the only figures I have available are those produced by Nielsen which indicated that 48% of internet users (7.1m) had read a blog and 16% (2.36m) had created one (source . I do not have other sources to check on the reasonableness of these figures – that is the only data I have. But the data in terms of blog readership by internet users are consistent with US data.

The figures do not take account of newer forms of blogging such as Twitter, FriendFeed (microblogging) and video blogging.

Is blogging mainstream?
Technorati claims that blogging is now mainstream. That seems to be so in the case of US newspaper industry – 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs.

ReadWriteWeb (RWW) concluded that reading blogs is becoming mainstream, but not writing them. The demographics are interesting (and may shatter a few myths) – 74% of US bloggers are college grads; 51% reported a household income >$75,000 US.

But here is an interesting point – only 1.5 million blogs around the world are updated as often as once a week. That indicates to me that blog readership is in the direction of a small number of bloggers (relative to total number of bloggers). I may be wrong and it would not be the first time. But it’s consistent with my research on social media participation – as little as 1% account for 90% of the activity. If my hunch stacks up, those 1.5 million bloggers are influential – the new influencers. Of course some of them are from mainstream media, but from my experience a good many of them are not.

It takes effort and skill to regularly update a good blog. Social networking and microblogging are less demanding in terms of written literacy skills. It’s easy to update your message status on Facebook or MySpace, upload a photo or whatever. I would say that regularly updating an influential blog will never be mainstream.

RWW say that blogging “may become centralized, professionalized and increasingly scarce”. Maybe, but the number bloggers continues to grow rapidly, even during a time when social networking sites and microblogging took off. So we shall see. Blogging, no matter how often they are updated, continues to grow significantly. In any case, the top bloggers have become influential in my view. I may be bias though – I spend more time reading blogs each day than reading newspapers.

btw, Facebook released stats on its growth by country in the first half of 2008. Australian Facebook user growth for 2008 (to 29 July) was 43% to a total of 3.4 million users or 18% of the population on Facebook alone). Outside of the US, Australia is the 4th highest in terms of user numbers after the UK, Canada and Turkey.

Digital divides
About one half of internet users read blogs, one half do not. Add that to the number of Australians that  use the internet largely for emailing and banking etc (not user content), it adds up to a lot of people not engaging in social media. My take on this is that internet use is segmenting – there are ‘digital divides’ within those classed more generically as internet users. Analysis of internet use segmentation is likely be of interest to policy makers, businesses, educators, health service providers and other service providers – just as much as who has an internet connection and who does not.