Notes from one of the best presentatiosn, I have seen for many weeks.
We're also seeing a much bigger shift in how people spend their time online. People are spending much more time interacting with other people, and much less time consuming content from websites. This shift is not about any one particular social network. It's about people connecting to each other online.
The social web, and all social media that operate within it, is a way of thinking as opposed to a new channel. Its not about sales, or ads, or click-through rates. Its about pursuing relationships and fostering communities of consumers. Its about rethinking how you make plans when your customers are in the center and in control.
The first is that people often don't know what they are going to do with the things they build. There are so many Facebook fan pages with hundreds of thousands of followers yet nothing is happening. So 100,000 people became a fan of yours on Facebook. Now what? This is the fan page for the magazine seventeen. There are 174,000 fans but no conversation. You need to look at things like Facebook fan pages and think: “How is this going to fundamentally improve my relationship with my customers?”
For decades, people have spoken about strong and weak ties. There is an abundance of research on strong and weak ties. Strong ties are the people you care about most. Your best friends. Your family. People often refer to strong ties as their “circle of trust.” We rely on strong ties for emotional support throughout life. Research has shown that maintaining our strong ties is important for our wellbeing. People with strong friendship bonds have lower incidents of heart disease, and get fewer colds and cases of the flu.
A study of 3000 randomly chosen Americans showed that the average American has just four strong ties. Most had between two and six. Another study of 1,178 adults found that on average, people had about 10 friends they meet or speak with at least weekly. Many research studies have shown that the vast majority of usage on social networks is with small numbers of strong ties. The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, and many users have many more. Yet despite having hundreds of friends, most people on Facebook only interact regularly with 4 to 6 people.
Strong ties often wield the most influence over people's decisions. For example, they are often the biggest factor in purchase decisions. Think about the last time you consulted a friend on whether to buy something. Chances are, it was quite recently.
Most of us can only stay up-to-date with up to 150 weak ties. This is a limitation of our brain. This number has been consistent throughout history. Neolithic farming villages tended to separate into two once they reached 150 inhabitants. The Roman army was split into groups of 150 so that everyone in the group knew each other.
Paul Adams
http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/
