Social Media Food Chain

The Social Media Food
Chain
Kevin Lawver | Refresh Savannah
May 19, 2009
http://uplaya.com

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Intro Slide

• Hi, I’m Kevin Lawver: giant nerd
• I’ve built social sites big (26 million) and
small (15k), some of them even won an
award or two
• I’ve been building web stuff for over a
decade, speaking about best practices in
building it for six.


Social
adjective: Pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by
friendly companionship or relations


Media
the means of communication, as radio and television,
newspapers, and magazines, that reach or inﬂuence
people widely


All Media is Social


The web just makes it
easier to share our
social objects and
gather feedback.


Social Objects
• Every social network contains primary
“social objects”: the thing that powers
socialization (drives comments, ratings,
links, etc)
• Every social object is created by an Author
and used or acted on by Users
• We’ll talk more about these later, but they
are the plankton of the food chain.


Types of Social
Networks


Meat Markets
• They rely on their ability to represent
human relationships
• They’re all about getting your data and
presenting it back to you
• They sometimes have a hard time giving
you anything to do once they have all your
data.
• Examples: Facebook, MySpace

Meat Market’s Primary
Social Object?


Aspirational
• They’re built around art of some kind
• Powered by Authors creating more of
whatever the prized social object is.
• The best inspire people to reﬁne their craft
and participation fuels a virtuous circle
of activity
• Example: Flickr

But what’s this ‘food
chain’ thing?


The Social Media Food
Chain
• Platforms and their Creators
• Authors
• Users
• Symbiotes
• Archipelagos
• Parasites and Predators

Platforms & Creators

• Social Platforms invite participation and
dialogue
• There are as many different types as their
are types of people, but they almost all fall
into Meat Markets or Aspirational


Platforms & Creators
• Platforms inﬂuence how people interact
with each other
• We usually have no idea how people will
use the platform
• The best respond and build features that
support how the community uses it, they
don’t force users to change behavior


Authors
• In Aspirational Communities, they provide
the objects for curation. In Meat Markets,
they are the most talked about, most
engaged users.
• They are the most vocal when things go
wrong.
• You have to cater to them or you have
nothing to build around!


Users
• They may not take the pictures, but they
post the comments, tags and trafﬁc that
support the site.
• They’re your secondary audience - you
have to make it easy for them to begin to
participate.
• Ease them from passive participation
to active.


Symbiotes
• They add value to the platform by
extending its capabilities
• They provide services on top of the basic
service - making the platform better
without changing it.
• Examples: Tweetie, Flickr Export,
TweetDeck


Archipelagos
• Outposts for otherwise non-social entities.
• They may not be social by themselves, but
may serve as aggregators or the voice of a
single entity meant to guide the discussion
in the social media world.
• Example: Blogs, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn
Groups, Tumblr


Parasites & Predators
• They add no value to the platform, authors
or users, just add noise and confusion
• Usually just looking to broadcast, not
join in the conversation
• Come in without understanding the
community culture or norms
• They usually end up talking to themselves,
selling nothing to no one.

This is a lot of fancy
talk, Mr. Food Chain


But where do I ﬁt in?


Well, let’s look at
where you can start if
you’re not here yet.


First, you need to
decide where home is.


What’s Home?

• A place where you’re comfortable
• Where you can talk freely about your
passions
• Where you can make the most difference


Start Small

• Get a blog.
• Write about what you know.
• Build karma by giving freely of
something that’s of value: advice, art,
knowledge


Beneﬁts of Blogging
• It’s yours, so you get to decide on the
voice, culture and content
• There are no pre-deﬁned rules
• It’s a good way to dip your toes in and
slowly build an audience
• You can always augment it with other social
pieces later


Twitter: The Web’s
Dinner Party
• Join as a human being with a face, not a
thing with a logo
• Follow people you know or want to know
• Don’t just broadcast. Think of twitter as a
dinner party: encourage interesting
conversation
• Don’t be too noisy

Facebook
• The meat market to end all meat markets
• Join, ﬁnd groups that interest you
• Lurk for a while and ﬁgure out the culture
before diving in
• Start a Facebook Page for your product
and encourage feedback and conversation
• http://www.facebook.com/advertising

General Rules
• Be human
• Participate, don’t preach. People have highly
developed BS detectors
• If you wouldn’t say it with your mom in the
room, don’t say it online - it will come back
to bite you
• Have fun!

Read More!
• The Whufﬁe Factor by Tara Hunt
• Here Comes Everybody! by Clay Shirky
• The Cluetrain Manifesto by a bunch of
people (also at http://cluetrain.com/book)
• Creating Passionate Users: http://
headrush.typepad.com/


Questions?
• I covered a lot very quickly
• Any questions about:
• social objects?
• virtuous circle?
• anything else?
• This could just be the beginning of the
discussion

Social Media Food Chain

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