Last week, I talked about socialmaterialism and the new (emerging) social media. I’m interested today in how companies are going to start exploiting that data.
First, though, what do YOU think of when you think of social media? A couple of years ago, I gave a talk to the Carolina Girl Geeks Dinner group on social media. Imagine my surprise when we had somewhat different definitions of social media or even web 2.0. Actually, I was not surprised at all. Much of my research has started with an explicit definition of what technology I’m talking about so that the reader can figure out where to place it in his or her own conceptualizations (e.g., what is a virtual community and what is not).
So I do NOT include blogs or YouTube in my definitions of social media. For me, the definition of social media includes an explicit connection between users of the technology. Facebook friends, twitter followers, and Google+ circles all have explicit connections between users that one can objectively see. (I love that these media make explicit the social connections/social networks that we’ve all had forever on FACE-TO-FACE interactions). Some people may have groups that interact on blogs and/or YouTube, but they are not social media per my definition. Your definition may include them, which is why you should always state what it is.
ANYWHO, companies are starting to exploit those connections and one interesting (disturbing?) company ranks you on your “influence” on twitter and Facebook. Actually, there are three companies doing it, apparently: Klout, PeerIndex, and Twitter Grader. What is bizarre is that according to this NY Times article, people who have a high klout index can get perks at hotels. According to the developers, this makes our society more level because we are no longer depending on the amount of wealth or beauty someone has to make them more influential. I would have imagined that “leveling the playing field” means everyone gets the upgrade, but that’s just me, apparently!
I honestly cannot imagine that these technologies are going to create a social media caste system (as the article claims) of people who get perks (a la Paris Hilton, currently) and those who don’t (like me, the vast majority of the time). But I make no claim to predicting the future of technology: I was the one who said that no one would ever use the World Wide Web because we already had FTP and Gopher. Use Gopher much these days? Yeah, me either.