She posted on three social media sites- Twitter, FB, and Instagram every hour. This included re-posts, likes, and original thoughts and pictures.
Looking over her great notes that she gave me here are some things I noticed.
Photos of food, mention of her cats, and her posts about Mildred Howard (Bay Area artist) got the most "likes and comments." My favorite of her posts was "Social media is tiring." This was posted on Sunday early evening. It got 5 likes and 2 comments.
Another observation is that the posts that were not mentioned earlier that did get likes were posted in between meals. Also, the Monday posts did not get the same "attention" that the Sunday posts received. This could be because they were not about food and cats, or it is because people are back to work and not on social media as much.
Her notes were interesting as well, below are some excerpts.
This is like being on a diet, I am always thinking about it. I hardly ever think about social media in my daily life, but today it's either "what's next?" "Nothing interesting happened so what do I post ?" "How and why are people so obsessed with putting everything out there" "Do they really need the validation?" Ugh, what a chore.
No wonder social media obsessed people don't seem motivated outside of their relationships with technology, it's a full time job.
She also quipped that the way to build a following on social media, besides being interesting (or a celebrity) is to post a lot of material.
I was going to do the same as my friend, but decided that I would probably have a similar experience. So, I decided to pick some of my followers and see what kind of social media persona they have, and I also spent an entire lunch hour looking at friends, friends. I will explain later.
First, I wanted to define myself.
I am a creator (duh, I have blogs), a dipper (someone who does not post daily to any social media), and a lurker (someone who goes on social media, but does not post anything, just looks at other people's posts).
Since I am the most active on FB, I decided to check out my friends and see what they were up to...
I chose 3 people. One is someone that requested my friendship after seeing them at my high school reunion (FBA), one I did a one project with years ago (FBB), and the other is a family friend who is older than me, and I have known for awhile (FBC).
Okay.
FBA likes to post a lot of stuff. I mean a lot of stuff! In the week I checked in on this person, they had posted an average of 10 posts a day. No reposts, all original thoughts. Some of the statuses were that they had a headache and cryptic messages that if you knew them better would probably understand. I would call this person a quizzer (someone who asks questions not for answers, but to start conversations), and maybe a mild ranter (opinion only posts). Will like a lot of other people's posts.
FBB uses Facebook to promote their activities. This individual has quite a bit going on and uses this avenue to let others know what they are doing. I would say a definite promoter, and maybe a little bit of a approval seeker (posts things that are trending first, I often find if this person comes up in my feed first and there is something trending (like the plane almost missing the volcano) that this person will have shared the information already. Not so much into giving out "likes." And really likes selfies.
FBC this person likes to share/re-post. A LOT. Some of it is regional, national news, cat videos, you name it.
Also, this person is a liker. Not so much a commenter, but definitely likes the like button. Not big on posting photos, but I suspect that much of the liking and such is on their mobile phone. Which in some cases could result in lots of photos or none.
So, there are definitely different ways people use social media and I am making my observations from one week of data. This could have been a fluke week and this is nothing like how they typically behave on social media. I am just saying.
The second task was kind of creepy, but whatever.
I recently started playing music with some new folks and they all friend-ed me on FB. We were complete strangers when we met, so there was no so and so said you play guitar kind of thing. So during my lunch hour I looked through their friends to see if we had any common friends.
There were of course music people. A total of 6 or so between the three of them. My favorites though were an old co-worker from Southern California, someone I used to pet sit for in the early 2000s, and someone I went to grad school with, who lives in the south. One of the new band folks is friends with someone who is friends with my really good friends. But that is as close as they got. Surprisingly the person who has lived here the longest has the least 6 degrees of separation to me.
Yeah, I know a little creepy. But get over it.
Not sure what my next social media step will be. I will keep you posted.
No wonder social media obsessed people don't seem motivated outside of their relationships with technology, it's a full time job.
She also quipped that the way to build a following on social media, besides being interesting (or a celebrity) is to post a lot of material.
I was going to do the same as my friend, but decided that I would probably have a similar experience. So, I decided to pick some of my followers and see what kind of social media persona they have, and I also spent an entire lunch hour looking at friends, friends. I will explain later.
First, I wanted to define myself.
I am a creator (duh, I have blogs), a dipper (someone who does not post daily to any social media), and a lurker (someone who goes on social media, but does not post anything, just looks at other people's posts).
Since I am the most active on FB, I decided to check out my friends and see what they were up to...
I chose 3 people. One is someone that requested my friendship after seeing them at my high school reunion (FBA), one I did a one project with years ago (FBB), and the other is a family friend who is older than me, and I have known for awhile (FBC).
Okay.
FBA likes to post a lot of stuff. I mean a lot of stuff! In the week I checked in on this person, they had posted an average of 10 posts a day. No reposts, all original thoughts. Some of the statuses were that they had a headache and cryptic messages that if you knew them better would probably understand. I would call this person a quizzer (someone who asks questions not for answers, but to start conversations), and maybe a mild ranter (opinion only posts). Will like a lot of other people's posts.
FBB uses Facebook to promote their activities. This individual has quite a bit going on and uses this avenue to let others know what they are doing. I would say a definite promoter, and maybe a little bit of a approval seeker (posts things that are trending first, I often find if this person comes up in my feed first and there is something trending (like the plane almost missing the volcano) that this person will have shared the information already. Not so much into giving out "likes." And really likes selfies.
FBC this person likes to share/re-post. A LOT. Some of it is regional, national news, cat videos, you name it.
Also, this person is a liker. Not so much a commenter, but definitely likes the like button. Not big on posting photos, but I suspect that much of the liking and such is on their mobile phone. Which in some cases could result in lots of photos or none.
So, there are definitely different ways people use social media and I am making my observations from one week of data. This could have been a fluke week and this is nothing like how they typically behave on social media. I am just saying.
The second task was kind of creepy, but whatever.
I recently started playing music with some new folks and they all friend-ed me on FB. We were complete strangers when we met, so there was no so and so said you play guitar kind of thing. So during my lunch hour I looked through their friends to see if we had any common friends.
There were of course music people. A total of 6 or so between the three of them. My favorites though were an old co-worker from Southern California, someone I used to pet sit for in the early 2000s, and someone I went to grad school with, who lives in the south. One of the new band folks is friends with someone who is friends with my really good friends. But that is as close as they got. Surprisingly the person who has lived here the longest has the least 6 degrees of separation to me.
Yeah, I know a little creepy. But get over it.
Not sure what my next social media step will be. I will keep you posted.
