online behavior

I’ve been thinking recently about how the evolution of social platforms has changed the way that people are participating with content on the web.

In late 2007, Forrester presented a well-researched and organized perspective on the different kinds of participation online as part of their Social Technographics protocol.

The change in participation levels between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2008 was striking. However, a core discovery was that a small group of participants were active content creators, and a somewhat larger group were active participants in what Forrester calls Critics, who post comments to blogs, contribute to forums and participate in ratings and reviews.

The growth of Facebook and Twitter has created a new kind of content interaction — the Sharer. And, it appears, the elegant integration of content production tools into the Facebook platform has created a new sort of Creator, who is sharing and commenting simultaneously.

This activity becomes clear in looking at Facebook’s most recent usage statistics. Overall, the company claims more than 200 million active users around the world, of whom 100 million log onto the service at least once every day. They are spending more than 5 billion minutes on the service every day, up 70% from February 2009.

As usage has grown, the amount of content and interaction has exploded. 30 million users are updating their status daily, double the amount in February. And more than 1 billion pieces of content are being shared each month.

The same sort of activity is occurring on Twitter as well in terms of content sharing.

This is driving a seismic change in the way people are interacting with and creating content online. The simplification of the tools and the easy integration of content sharing into the platform is making Sharing a prominent feature of online behavior.

Within that context an informal poll that I ran recently on this blog is interesting.

The vast majority of respondents (only 29 in all, of course, because the polling tool broke!) participate on a social networking platform, like Facebook. And more than two-thirds participate on a micro-blogging site, like Twitter. Half are bloggers themselves. About 40% participate in a vertical social networking platform. And very few use tools like Digg, the Collectors technographic that Forrester identified.

This explosion of Sharing is a powerful force in how people are going to find and consume content in the future. The annotations that accompany that content help to identify and define it. They add credibility to the content and to the Sharer.

This opens the door for much more content creation. Most of us aren’t interesting in committing to the work of “publishing.” But a large number of us are interested in committing to “Conversing.” The activity of Sharing is a catalyst to conversation, and is driving increasing adoption of the social platforms.

Here are the results of my little survey:

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