Collective Thoughts

Social Media Rigor Mortis: How Behavior Kills Value

We’ve all seen it. What once worked in social media six months ago doesn’t work now. Why, for instance, does a large following on Twitter no longer indicate influence? Or why is blogging no longer as impressive as it was in 2003? Both these examples follow a predictable economic formula:

As “x” social behaviour multiplies, its social value approaches zero.

Let me break that down for you. The more you do the same thing, people’s appreciation of it lessens. The more you do the same song and dance, don’t be surprised if your audience dwindles. This should be obvious, but it’s not.

LiveJournal: An Example

Most of us think of LiveJournal as the walking corpse of the social media world, but it wasn’t always so. It was one of the first platforms to combine blogging with social networking. More fascinatingly, people who had a LiveJournal felt it gave them status: in order to have one, you had to be invited.

Then it happened. Danga Interactive, LiveJournal’s parent company, removed the invite requirement. Soon everyone who wanted one could have one. This was the beginning of the end.

The problem was everyone wrote about the same things: breakfast, cute kittens, and favourite movies. LiveJournal succeeded in the task of being a journal, but as the novelty of public journalling wore off, so did its perceived value. Soon, users left LiveJournal for the unique feature set of MySpace — and we all know what happened to MySpace.

State of the Social Media Union

Most popular social media tools have their time in the sun then go through a slow rigor mortis. Usenet was once the reason people paid for Internet. Chatrooms were how people dated online. MySpace was a “place for friends”. What happened?

Everyone was doing it, and everyone was behaving the same way. Usenet became so burnt out over flame wars, the term “troll” was coined and “Godwin’s Law” became a law. The acronym “ASL” became such an overused greeting in chatrooms, their very purpose became sexual gratification. As for MySpace, “making friends” became the basis of many a Catch a Predator episode.

We are seeing the same pattern of behavior happen on Twitter, Digg, and Facebook — and if people keep doing the same things, those social networks will soon have less social value than they currently have now.

How Can We Add Value?

The social media slide into rigor mortis is not inevitable. The only way to reverse the lessening of social value is to give your audience value. That is to say, behave in a different way from everyone else. If a platform is flexible enough for innovative forms of communication, and if communities are courageous enough to move beyond their own cliches, social media can thrive.

Want to remain relevant in social media? Behave differently.

Posted in Social Media, Tips & Tricks | 11 Comments »

Open Web Awards: Judge’s Choices Winners!

Hello everybody who voted in the Open Web Awards hosted by Mashable.

Back in November Mashable presented their Open Web Awards and invited Collective Thoughts to be one of the Judges. The Open Web Awards is the first ever online, open collaborative awards event, to recognize the best online communities representing web 2.0

We would like to anounce the overall “people’s choice” winners.

Mainstream and Large Social Networks = Facebook

Applications and Widgets = Flock

Social News and Social Bookmarking = Digg

Social Search = Mahalo

Sports and Fitness = ESPN

Photo Sharing = Flickr

Video Sharing = YouTube

Start Pages = Netvibes

Places and Events = Meetup

Music = Last.fm

Social Shopping = Woot

Mobile = Twitter

Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks = FilmCrave

Thank you to everyone who participated with us in this event.

Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

Open Web Awards – Lets Have Some Action

Nominations are now closed! – To vote for your favourite see here

The Open Web Awards are now open for nominations until the 6th December, and this stage of the proceeding is quite open plan.

The current 30 blogging partners (increasing daily) have been provided with a list of categories to accept nominations for, and it is down to each blog to decide how to proceed with collecting nominations, whether to make individual posts for each category, or to handle things from a single post.

Voting will take place in a much more refined manner.

1. Mainstream and Large Scale Networks
2. Applications and Widgets
3. Social News and Social Bookmarking
4. Social Search
5. Sports and Fitness
6. Photo Sharing
7. Video Sharing
8. Start Pages
9. Places and Events
10. Music
11. Social Shopping
12. Mobile
13. Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

I have already posted about this on my solo blog with an emphasis on blogging tools and widgets, but so far I have had a very lacklustre response.

Emphasis here is going to be placed on other categories, but that doesn’t restrict you nominating in multiple categories and you are allowed to make nominations on multiple blogs taking part, so you make the same nominations here, on my solo blog, and on the other 28 blogs taking part, though some may have less friendly guidelines.

• Has the exponential growth of Sphinn impressed you?
• Are you a Stumbleupon addict?
• Are you Stirring it up on Mixx?
• Are you a devout (or immoral) Digger?

We just can’t stick to social news however, don’t forget how important Facebook, Twitter, Pownce etc are becoming in your daily online lives

How do you fire up your day?

• IGoogle
• MyYahoo
• Netvibes
• Pageflakes?

How To Nominate

We are going to make this easy to avoid multiple comments

I am going to allow up to 3 nominations for each category, just add an additional line with a nomination if you want to nominate say more that one widget or niche social network.

Just because someone else has already nominated a site doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also nominate it. If they end up with nominations for 100s of different widgets, I am sure there will have to be some filtering, so your additional votes will be important.

<b>My Nominations</b>
Name of Service - URL - (Applications and Widgets)
Name of Service - URL - (Social News and Social Bookmarking)
Name of Service - URL - (Social Search)
Name of Service - URL - (Sports and Fitness)
Name of Service - URL - (Photo Sharing)
Name of Service - URL - (Video Sharing)
Name of Service - URL - (Start Pages)
Name of Service - URL - (Places and Events)
Name of Service - URL - (Music)
Name of Service - URL - (Social Shopping)
Name of Service - URL - (Mobile)
Name of Service - URL - (Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks)

I have made it easy to copy and paste the code.

If you don’t want to nominate a service for a particular category, then just delete the line.

Don’t forget you can also nominate again over on my solo blog, and elsewhere.

Posted in Social Media | 34 Comments »