Social Media with personality
Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 7:40PM So what's one of the the biggest challenges facing social media over the next few years?
I think it's all about personas.
We all have multiple personas, we wear different hats, some more than others, but everyone amends their behaviour when in different groups of people, out of familiarity, respect, or necessity.
After some consideration I think I have 4 personas, or attitudes, which are probably the most common 4 in many people.
1 Work ... At work
2 Home ... Relaxed at home on my own / with my partner
3 Friends ... Out with my friends / partner
4 Family ... With my family
I feel that my personas don't differ greatly, but there are things I just wouldn't say or do when in any one of these situations that I would in others.
So how does social media help me express my different personas?
Well it doesn't...
I had to create two twitter accounts, one for business, one for friends / family, but find even this frustrating because again, some things I might say to one audience I wouldn't say to another.
Facebook doesn't help me, I can create groups there, but it's a complete pain to administer these and I can't send one status update to one group and one to another.
Flickr,YouTube, et al, have something akin to folder security, a clunky and unfriendly way for me to try and categorise everyone and then try and keep all my videos / pictures in the right folders.
Some social networks get round this problem by developing their entire business about a single persona, linkedin is a great example of this, it shares much of the functionality of many other social networks, but bases it's business model around solely targeting the "Work" persona.
I feel this has to change, most people get round it by just not adding work colleagues or family to their networks, or separating accounts, or using different platforms, which just doesn't seem right.
Here's my vision of the future,
On twitter, facebook, flickr etc, when I sign up I can create a persona...
Or a few, so I create,
Rob@Work
Rob@Home
Rob@Friends
Rob@Family
Now when people follow me they can choose, which facets of me to follow, except they can't follow Rob@Home Because that's a restricted persona, only me and my partner can see that content.
And when I post on any platform, it checks a couple of things, am I at work, at home, with friends, with family?
And makes an educated guess as to which persona to use, of course I can change it, but as it learns the kind of things I say, it gets better at recognising who I'm posting as, Rob@Work tends to use Squarespace to post long rambling blogs, Rob@Friends tends to post short tweets with geotagging on and often including pictures. You get the idea.
So now I'm not managing multiple accounts, and it's really easy for me to post anything I want without boring / offending / upsetting anyone...
And my followers can choose which part of me they're interested in, without getting swamped.
It's a developing idea, but I think it has merit? Thoughts anyone?
Reader Comments (8)
Thanks very much for your comments on our post! This is a mysteriously prophetic post. Maybe this'll mean we're actually able to log in and use the Google+ network as something incredibly personalised rather than a see-all-or-nothing option as we have now. Here's hoping! (and waiting for the invites to come..)
Yes, it's certainly a step in the right direction, I'm excited to see it in action, and even more excited to see what Twitter and Facebook's additional features that will no doubt be released in response are.
Have a look at the work of Paul Addams - he was at Google when he wrote an excellent paper on social networks, using the concepts you outline above. His papers are on slideshare or visit his blog:
http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog
Think Google+ is built on these aspects - see his Twitter comments - @padday - about it "bearing a striking resemblance" to what he was working on when he left.
Tellingly, he's now at Facebook.
Thanks for the comment David, checking out Paul's blog now, inspiring stuff, and yes, I think you're right, it's going to be really interesting to see what he brings to facebook!
Rob, I am finding the same problems - as you say unless you are very lucky with your job you won't have the freedom to express yourself in the same way in both arenas. Also, why would my friends that aren't techies be interested in a post about cloud adoption, and vice versatile when it comes to me prattling about cricket to my business contacts!
From the tone of some of these comments it appears that Google+ could be a step towards the answer?
Thanks for the comment Chris, it's frustrating isn't it :)
I've just been invited to the google plus beta, so I'll have a play tonight / tomorrow and see if it addresses any of our issues :D
I'll keep you posted...
Lucky man :) when they extend the invites again I would love to give it a try...
Cheers
Great post Rob. I have had the same concept for over 3+ years now. I was tired of Facebook, and thought "Hey, I can make this better". I did the layout, the design, the key concepts that would keep people coming back, the business plan the financials of the business plan. I then sent Google executives at Google Inc and Google Ventures all proposals with key insight into what people wanted. (This was before Google Wave came out). I continued to try to get let me help Google create a great social networking site. They did not listen, neither did Microsoft or Yahoo. But Google was who I really wanted at the time. Did they read the proposals I sent them. I think so. According to this interview from AllthingD "..So we’re going to continue to make Google dramatically better and reward you for spending the few minutes it takes to say this is my family, these are my real friends. And we think the process of creating circles is a breakthrough. People don’t like cumbersome processes..." These 3 things are completely part of what I put into my proposals to Google 3+ years ago. I sent proposals to both the people being interviewed.
Anyways, maybe Google will get it right this time.
Take Care and check out what I have done to try to make http://www.7slocal a reality.
Sincerely,
lance damon bliss