Bruce Nussbaum writes an interesting post on the demographics of social media based on some BW research. What jumped out at me was the following:
INdata shows that there are 6 types of social media participatants--Creatorswho publish web pages, blog and upload videos; Critics who comment onblogs and post reviews and comments; Collectors who use RSS to tag andgather information; Joiners who use social networking sites; Spectatorswho watch, read and listen; and Inactives, folks who are online butdon't participate in social media yet.The demographics are very interesting.
Each slice of the populationparticipates differently in social media. Some 34% of online users aged12-17 still do not participate in social media. 42% of people 27-49online do not. Some 5% of seniors--62 plus--are social media creators(compared to 34% for young teens 12 to 17. That strikes me assurprisingly high. Only 7% of boomers are creators
The question I have is what is the overlap? For example, I'd be classified as a Creator, and a Critic, and Collector, Joiner, Spectator and Inactive, depending on the circumstance and conversation. Bruce actually poses the question, "Who Controls the Conversation?" Its situationally dependent isn't it? I mean when I'm at a party, talking to friends, some folks are conversation starters (creators), some are joiners who occasionally, chime in (Critics) and some are just wall flowers (Inactives). I for one am all of these depending on the situation.
Maybe, I'm thinking too literally here but can conversations be controlled? They can certainly be dominated but then that's not much of a conversation is it? One tends to actively participate in the conversations they are interested in... what about this post though? Is it an act of a Creator or a Critic? I'm not exactly delivering an original post but am "commenting" on Bruce's post... which we see a lot of in the blogosphere so to get an truly accurate picture of conversation dynamics would require a more granular view - one that looks at the actual content components in the conversations and the dynamics among separate posts in different web geographies.
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