Following regular conversations in the office and down the pub about the whys and wherefores of social network usage we decided we should investigate both sides of social networking (or social not-working as it is often known...) and whether there was a relationship between people's activity and their feelings on privacy.
It appeared to us that even in a digital agency such as ours, people seemed to be poles apart on their views on privacy and usage so we thought we’d try and measure it!
And so a Tinnovation session was born... Social Media - Activity v Privacy
We began by taking up front marks out of ten from our team of Tinnovators and special guests, Jamie Sweeney (FOC Magazine), Grant Gilchrist (Manic Films):
How active do you think you are?
How worried about privacy of your information are you?
This gave us a benchmark of people's initial perception, but what we needed to do was try and work out a scale that people could mark themselves against. This would allow us to open it up to a wider group and canvas some opinion.
So firstly Activity – what do we mean?
The world’s leading social network, Facebook seemed a good place to start...
What kind of user are you?
Do you just sit there and spectate, maybe update your status occasionally or Like the odd post?
Do you check in everywhere you go, upload your entire photo collection, tag all of your friends in and share every last YouTube video experience?
Do you use Facebook Answers, Deals, IM and Credits?
Quickly we began to see that everyone had their own level of activity and were generally consistent with it.
Then there is Twitter...
Do you tweet? If so, how often?
Do you just read or retweet?
Do you use apps or aggregators to monitor multiple feeds?
Do you have multiple accounts?
Do your posts propagate across all platforms?
We then discussed forums and the “anonymous web” – which as a result of some heated debate we decided to leave out of our rankings and revisit in a seperate Tinnovation session led by Dave and Spencer.
So then on to Privacy...
What are we talking about here? What and where are the concerns?
Do you mind getting tagged in people's photos?
Always nice when someone you haven't seen for ages mentions how drunk you look at someone they've never mets wedding!
Do you mind getting checked in by other people?
Location information generally... Do we really want people to know where we are?
Do you know what is happening to all this personal information data, pictures, videos?
Do we (even as digital professionals) know how to manage our privacy settings and know what's happening behind the scenes?
Do you think personal and work social usage should be split e.g. Facebook for personal, Linkedin for work?
Yes, you can manage it if you take time to curate your posts via Friends Lists but does anybody actually do that? (Google+ is targetting this specifically and will be interesting to see if they finally get some traction in the social space – more to follow in a later session)
Interestingly everyone was in agreement on one key thing... Value – even the most cynical amongst us agreed that if this information really gives us what we want then we are willing to waive some privacy concerns.
For example, if a salesman jumped out of a bush with some extremely rare and highly discounted Omega watches – certain Tinnovators may be willing to overlook the privacy invasion to snap up a deal.
Hypocrisy or realism – the future after all is about appreciating the value of your own personal profile and how to manage, control and to a certain extent monetise it.
We concluded the session by re-visiting our scores and these were the results:
So where would you be on our graph?
Let us know by commenting below and we'll include your results in later sessions.
We are following up this session with a view from the “anonymous web” and also Google+ and the way it will affect the social web to see if this changes our results.
Drop us a line if you'd like to get involved!
