Visualizing Social Media Fatigue
Our attention is stretched so thin these days that there are times when I have actually tried to register for what I thought was a new service only to realize later that I already had an account -- it just got lost in the shuffle. With so many new web sites and services vying for our attention it is easy to feel the effects of social media fatigue. Andrew Shuttleworth, a social media junky living in Japan, thought it might be helpful to try to map his social media usage. The result is a staggering view of how information we put on the web flows.
Using Mind Manager flow charting software, Shuttleworth created a diagram detailing how information flows through the social networking and media sites that he uses. Shuttleworth told us that he created the map because he was struggling to figure out how to best manage and share his social media. "I surprised myself," he said. "It is amazingly complex. Although your average user will only be using a small number of services, they will still face the same issues in terms of how services link together and which services are worthwhile to use and which are not."
Below is a copy of the map Shuttleworth came up with (click on the image for a full sized version):
Shuttleworth's diagram is probably not an uncommon view of information flow for many readers of this blog. And it's still not done: the map has a large "to-do" section.
To begin creating the map, Shuttleworth broke his online information flow up into twelve categories, events, text content, videos, photos, microblog content, bookmarks, web sites viewed, software used, lifecasting, location, comments, and blogroll. He also has a similar tree for content that originates on a mobile phone. That's a heck of a lot of things pulling at Shuttleworth's attention, but I'm willing to bet that it's a familiar situation for many of us.
The growing importance of attention is something we've often written about on this blog (see Alex Iskold's excellent overview of the attention economy), and there are a number of different approaches to how to deal with it. In the social media space, one of the approaches that is currently gaining steam, especially in the area of social networking, is data portability.
Data portability will allow users to theoretically mashup and interact with all of their social media information from a single place. While that won't cut down the number of sites and services tugging at our attention, it does promise to make managing that attention vastly easier. Shuttleworth points to services like Profilactic and Plaxo Pulse that are already attempting to bring our online social lives under a single umbrella.
"Overall, it was very helpful to see an overview of how my online information flows. I managed to get rid of some redundant channels along the way and am in a good position to consolidate and make sensible decisions about how to share information from now on," writes Shuttleworth on his blog, saying that the map also demonstrated how complex our online lives are.
Shuttleworth released the map on his blog as a pdf, png (graphic), mmap, or xmmap xml file, for anyone wishing to explore it further or use it as a basis for creating their own online information flow chart.
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'generation-overwhelmed' (with information :)
give it two-three more years or less and it will become
'generation-bored' (from too much information)
too few innovatively-thinking bloggers, too many ad-hungry blogs simply repeating what the thinking heads already wrote...
too few creative sites, too many 'social'-networks,copying each-others features and loosing their identity, where you have the same people in your network as everywhere else, so much cr@p, so much business-as-usual when the big corps buy the lively fish so to turn it into another baked salmon fillet...
:)
Who in their right mind will continue to populate user profiles and create new user names and passwords for all of these questionable services. Now, me, I am a long time service provider working in the on-line world, albeit, in verticals.
So, I have, for the past year or two, been very diligent about trying as many of these services as possible; Linkedin, Facebook, Spock, and so many that I haven't even re-visited once I enrolled.
Who, for the love of G-d, in the 'normal world', would ever go to these lengths? Maybe a new, younger generation will make one or two services the predominant destinations?
But, I warn you, if even folks like me, on-line savvy, hard-nosed consultants,start to tire of these disparate services and just stop using most of them, then monetization will drop off precipitously.
There are too many already, and they serve no mission critical use cases, and are not sufficiently vertically targeted. When I do my sales pitches for new clients, I always make the case for serving verticals and 'hard' skilled trades with today's social technologies.
It's been a cool reception so far, and I'm afraid that as the economy declines, and ad spend with it, these horizontal YASNs will see a dead-pool bloodbath in 2008-9.
This diagram would become exponentially more complicated if you also added in every single kind of online account or identity that we use, not just the social media stuff.
This is a very important topic for future consideration.
Something like OpenID could minimize the number of logins one has to remember, but you still have to remember all of the services that you signed up for...
I thought about using Plaxo, but then heard how vulnerable an application it is. I think I'll stay away from Plaxo Pulse.
The next 'pagerank' like algorithm is in there somewhere...hmmm ...let me get right on that... :-)
Andrew is obviously geeking out. Is there really a hard cost benefit for being part to all these social media networks?
I understand true social network fatigue for nongeeks: people who get annoyed on having to sign-on to 3-4 difference services just to talk to friends. But Andrew has to apply an old-fashioned GTD rule: finding the top 20% of the services that he finds most effective 80% of the time.
I'm not out to criticize, but I'm very curious how he feels about it and if he feels like he's being more effective by belonging to so many services. When do we hit the law of diminishing returns?
In any case, "Social Network Fatigue" and "Social Media Fatigue" is going to be the popular catchphrase of 2008 for Internet experts. As I've written last week, there already has been a rash of articles on the topic:
"The average length of time users spend on all of the top three sites is on the slide. Bebo, MySpace and Facebook all took double-digit percentage hits in the last months of 2007." From the Register.Co.UK
"We have found that social networking inventory is not monetizing as well as expected." George Reyes, CFO of Google. From the Financial Times
"All of the top 10 leaderboard applications have seen substantial drops in daily users since peaking in November and December,"
From Read/Write Web
See more here:
http://www.emergence-media.com/2008/02/social-network-fatigue-expect-to-hear-that-alot-in-2008/
The complexity of linkages here suggest DataPortability can help, as you point out. DP can help cut down the dimension/distance of this graph. Good work.
Mike
Looking at that ridiculous graph made me tired.
all commenters are unanimous.... you hit a nerve with this post...
take it further in the next days....
fragmented attention is a disease in the real world, looks like it is going to be an economic disease in the online world
their are lots of implications, write about them please, in fact, this is a book, you could call it the very short tail...
All I really see here is that a large number of entrepenuers have built social sites of one sort or another, as is typical when a new idea hits the streets. Here the new idea is 'social graph'/web2.0/whatever. The cost to enter this entrepeneurial market is extremely low, so of course a lot of people have.
I notice that a lot of these social sites focus on function rather than market. Flickr stands out as a tool that's good at one thing: photo management. del.icio.us is good at keeping and sharing bookmarks. YouTube handles video clips. And so on. When someone manages to put together a good combined functions approach for one or more markets, we'll see another tectonic shift. Imagine a truly great interface to a combined YouTube/Flickr/del.icio.us/podcast/RSS/blogger/forums service aimed at brokers, or artists, or snowboarders ...
As is usual, sooner or later it'll settle down into a handful of players who can make it pay. Then there will be less entrepeneurs vying for our attention, and we'll breathe a sigh of relief.
Until the next wave builds.
Josh,
I can relate to your social fatigue. One of things that I find interesting is requests to join social networks where I I registered just to see what was happening but never participated.
I think it is sheer wastage of time to participate in so many social media and networking websites. They are mostly for teenagers, and Internet marketers and bloggers jump into the fray to generate more exposure for them. Eventually they spend more time promoting content and less time generating it.
Great write-up and summary Josh. Responding to a few comments in one post:
"Who, for the love of G-d, in the 'normal world', would ever go to these lengths?"
AS: That's what I'm trying to emphasize. Normal users who want to make use of the full spectrum of social media services currently have to go to these lengths ... and that's simply not practical!
"Is there really a hard cost benefit for being part to all these social media networks?"
AS: Short answer: No. The point is that anything close to an ideal solution at the moment is an unaffordable time-cost for most people (unless you are someone like Robert Scoble or Chris Pirillo and have everyone clamoring to follow you on whatever service you choose). Things certainly can't continue this way, but services like Facebook help and we can only see more positive developments in the data portability space so that we get to the stage where there is much less cost and it's easier to benefit. The whole space is real immature at the moment but it's exciting being part of an information revolution.
Another related point is that it usually makes sense to spend your time with the service that is the current winner in it's category. Why do you think I'm using del.icio.us not any other bookmarking site, Flickr not another photo sharing site, YouTube not another video sharing site ... even though some of the alternatives out there may even be better?
"I'm very curious how he feels about it and if he feels like he's being more effective by belonging to so many services"
AS: One of the main reasons I did this map was to work out, "should I just belong to one service or is it worth spending the time being part of many services and how can I do this most effectively?". Currently being part of many services is the only way to be effective. I think we'll have to be part of many services going forward but the effort required to share information across all these services will have to decrease.
The thing is that you can't currently find all the people in your network in one site. So you have a choice between:
a) Sharing information with only part of your network (which is not effective)
b) Posting to multiple networks (which is not efficient)
c) Working out some way to post to one site and automatically get the information out to others, without causing too much duplication or an information loop. That's what I'm doing and I needed the map to help ensure I'm doing this in the best way.
As an example, I'm beta testing a new www.zooomr.com feature which automatically posts my Zipline to Twitter. I want my content on Zooomr as there are some people in my Japanese network who I'm not connected with on other sites and I expect this audience to grow. Zooomr's mobile site is also developing fast and this could be useful going forward. Of course, I also want my micro blogs on Twitter. Now I have to ask do I really want Zooomr's Zipline auto-posting to Twitter, or should I just add it as another information outlet for www.utterz.com or www.shozu.com. It's got to the stage where I just can't figure that out in my head, but with the diagram I can work out the best choice.
"But Andrew has to apply an old-fashioned GTD rule: finding the top 20% of the services that he finds most effective 80% of the time."
AS: The objective of doing the graph was in the same direction. But also I wanted to to find out how to get more results for the same amount of effort. For example, just one simple email with a photograph attached will get that photograph on Utterz, Flickr, Facebook, have it Twitted, linked on my web site in my Plaxo Pulse widget.
(That photo could also go on many other photo sites I may choose to post on, but I currently deleted many of these as I decided to focus on one specialist site for each content type plus the best aggregator sites such as Facebook, Spock, Profilactic, Plaxo, MyBlogLog as we as my own site (www.andrewshutleworth.com).
"The complexity of linkages here suggest DataPortability can help"
AS: Definitely :-)
"When someone manages to put together a good combined functions approach for one or more markets, we'll see another tectonic shift."
AS: Is that not what Facebook has done? No one site will be able to dominate though. Facebook is never going to be as good as Flickr for photos, del.icio.us for bookmarks etc. And all our interests are weighted differently. If you spend a lot of time with photos but not a lot with bookmarks, it's natural you'll want to focus your social media activity and network building with a group of like minded people on a photo centric social media site.
"I think it is sheer wastage of time to participate in so many social media and networking websites. They are mostly for teenagers, and Internet marketers and bloggers jump into the fray to generate more exposure for them. Eventually they spend more time promoting content and less time generating it."
AS: There is a lot of trash out there, and I've registered for those sites and never been back. But there are a great deal of excellent, value-adding sites out there for serious business people as well. The best sites (www.linkedin.com being just one good example) have done a great job of maintaining the quality of the network and content, and are thriving with a user base of professionals and people looking for true value because of it. Don't dismiss social media just because of the sites trying to abuse the phenomenon.
As Andrew's colleague, social media buddy AND friend here in Japan, I certainly share in his frustration in trudging through the social media forest. I'm blown away by his approach to try to "map" this miss and give him full marks for attempting to bring order out of chaos. Way to go Andrew!
Andrew,
Your mapping is indeed a great way to sort things out! I canceled one network when all of sudden mysterious charges appeared on my credit billing. I still don't remember having ever signed up, so I mmediately cancelled after taking a look at the terms of the policy. I realized I had to be more careful in my selection and not just join thinking everything is a free service by having my friends inviting me in. This has been one of my recent experience. I join one for social networking and the other for business networking, though the line between the two can become very thin! Ann
To take this in a slightly different direction....
I'm a fervent user of MindManager. This exercise reminds me of recent attempts to identify (or create?) a tool that makes it easier to map one's online existence. What to use? The Brain? Visio? OmniGraffle? Thing is, all these tools require you to do roughly the same amount of manual work/data entry. If anyone out there is aware of a tool that could be used to simplify this type of graphical/multidimensional mapping/tracking, please advise. I know that IDM/IAM solutions would eventually make this more viable, but I'd like to engage on this topic prior to ubiquitous IDM....
I feel as though I've probably seen or read about something that could do this, but my head's all mucked up by reading this thread! Time to neti pot.... Thanks for any ideas.
I have to agree with the "hard-nosed consultant" who needs to sign up with all of these damn services, but I'm in a different boat. In my family, we work hard to keep control over our "real names" and our family information, so I have a tendency to sign up for new services using a (pen) name (or just one that I made up for the occasion), often attaching it to a new (free) email account that I also made up for the occasion.
Yeah, yeah, considered (horrors!) unethical, I suppose, but if I want to take a detailed look at how companies deal differently with new users with different profiles (e.g. phone contact, emails, offers) and so forth, it works. And how much do I owe a company I don't know? Not a plug nickel, as far as I'm concerned.
I'd love a visualizer that will include layers for each of my "pen" names -- except oh! I can't tell those to anyone!
So I'm back to my damn post-its.
:-)