Comments on: Levels of social web engagement

By: links for 2008-08-27 « Joanna Geary

links for 2008-08-27 « Joanna Geary — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:32:37 +0000

[...] Levels of social web engagement | DavePress I have been reading Li and Bernhoff’s Groundswell just recently, and I came across an interesting division of levels of interaction with the social web. I’ll type it out here for your edification. (tags: participation) [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 09:47:17 +0000

Hi Tom, thanks for stopping by.

I see what you mean, that the overall picture that there are a few people who do stuff and lots that don’t isn’t exactly new. But the granularity offered here is useful, I think, so that any social media project can think about how these different groups interact how how the project can try and offer something to them all.

My main use of Groundswell has been to pull out interesting stuff like the above, and also harvest it for exampe of social media success, rather than pay too much attention to the overall message of the book, which is, as you say, rather marketing dominated.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:32:40 +0000

Isn’t this just restating the argument that in any community, there are a small number of people who do most of the work?

I read Groundswell and felt they were trying to turn a phenomena (social networking) into a science (marketing).

The taxonomy of their “creative ladder” is useful but it doesn’t provide more insight – other than to encourage me to respond to comments more often!

Hope you’re well.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:09:31 +0000

Good points all – thanks for joining in! David is absolutely right that just thinking about this stuff in terms of online media is not enough, especially when we are coming at it from the perspective of the public & third sectors. We need to be blending different media together.

Still these roles (accepting Neil’s discomfort with ‘critic’ as a label) are a useful starting point. What I am feeling is that a set of useful tools are emerging with which we can really start thinking this stuff through.

By: Neil Williams

Neil Williams — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:31:19 +0000

I agree it’s broadly right, and definitely interesting. Especially if you read it from bottom to top as a journey of discovery – that pretty much records my route from reading to blogging.

However I HAVE to pick at this one thing…

“Critics” isn’t right I don’t think. Contributors? Participants? Commenters? “Critics “suggests these people aren’t originating content – which they are, especially if we include wiki editing in this list.

By: David Wilcox

David Wilcox — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:35:43 +0000

This is interesting when the whole experience of the business/project/community is online. But shouldn’t we also look at situations and participants and analyse Creators inactives taking account of f2f, phone etc? Is there a danger that we overuse the web as a model for human activity … and put those who prefer to use other media at the bottom of the pile?
Just a little gentle provocation:-)

By: Alice Casey

Alice Casey — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:24:46 +0000

This is v.useful way of thinking about these things – also reminds me of the ‘typology’ work done by PEW in the US. Would be good to know more on UK use profiles so we can better understand how people interact. (Of course part of that is ethnographic too…)

Find out your typology- I took the test here!: http://tinyurl.com/63wo49

By: Mike Amos-Simpson

Mike Amos-Simpson — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:06:45 +0000

I did something the other day on young peoples use of the internet and for them I’d guess it would be a triangle with a thin base (not many inactives), a very wide lower middle peaking at the ‘joiners’ and then getting very thin towards the top although I suspect there may even be more ‘creators’ than ‘critics’ – for example it wouldn’t surprise me if there are more people on facebook that upload photos than pass comments on other peoples.

Be interesting to see if different age groups had different patterns.