WTF is Online

 Growth

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I have spent a good amount of time looking online for an accurate and fact-based forecast on social media properties. Unfortunately, most of what I have found is conjecture, trends and/or opinion-based information with little or not historical or empirical data to back it up. So how do you forecast something that doesn’t have much of a history or hasn’t even matured enough to build a model around? You start by looking at what has gone full-circle and then step back and look at how the current properties trend against historical data.

Let me put this into context; I am not going to actually forecast specific dates, times or outcomes of companies. I will give you access to the data for your interpretation, opinion, feedback and maybe your predictions.

My numbers are based on Google Insights. I opted to use this method because using the number of subscribers, page views or unique visitors can all be misleading (yes, I know, so can Insights). But I am a member of almost every single one of these sites and I regularly visit only about five of them. I also wanted a metric that skewed away from geeks and I know we don’t type URLs, search terms or sites into Google to find something and a lot of lay-people do.  Debate-away but it is a solid trending metric, although from a single search engine.

Here is what I noticed, it’s fairly obvious, from the data; which all started when I noticed the similarity between the Technology Adoption Lifecycle (developed by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal and Everett M. Rogers at Iowa State University) and companies like Digg, Meebo, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster and the once behemoth MySpace.

1.  Social networks are not the only online properties that tend to follow the Technology Adoption Lifecycle. I selected a few major properties to see if they trended similar to social networks and although most of the ones I selected did not follow the bell-curve, they did have similarities (coming up…)
2. The Technology Adoption Lifecycle, for unsustainable companies spans between 5 and 7.5 years. “Unsustainable” is a subjective term and can be debated, as can why or how they became such.
3. The Technology Adoption Lifecycle standard curve does NOT apply to those companies providing a value-added service as long as they remain competitive or host content that is of value to it’s users.
4. Sustainable companies seem to have a 30-40% drop from peak and then plateau into a sustainable, longer-term business.
5. There are a substantial number of companies continuing to climb or who are at their peak, including but not limited to:
   • Engadget.com
   • Mashable.com
   • Google News
   • Foursquare.com
   • YouTube.com
   • Yelp.com
   • Twitter.com
   • Facebook.com
   • Tumblr.com
   • Reddit.com
   • StumbleUpon.com
   • LinkedIn.com
   • MailOnline.com
   • GoWalla.com (they may be on decline but I think it’s too early)
   • MyLife.com (current business model seems to put them in decline but too early to tell)
6. A double-peak is possible (see Google Orkut, likely a result of globalization)
7. Size doesn’t matter; MySpace is the most obvious example but it isn’t the user-base that determines destiny. The product, user-base, value added offerings and demand are also large factors.
8. It’s still early. I tend to think that social networks will ebb and flow in 7-10 year cycles. No teenager wants to use or be on the same social network as their parents but everyone tends to hold on to those things that work and tend to improve to their liking.
9. Jumping the shark is bad but not devastating – sites that drop 30-40%, usually due to something they did or had done to them, either results in finding a niche or dropping off the map.
10. Google Plus is too young to start planning for its future. I love Google Plus but I also know that it’s too young to forecast it’s future at this time. Let’s talk when it turns one.

 SustainingClick to view animated image

Declining

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For those of you who enjoy doing math in your spare time, feel free to hit WolframAlpha and plug in your normal distribution forecasting estimates to predict the future or longevity of your favorite social network or sites.

I have been an internet professional for over 16 years and I have learned that the growth and maturity of the internet is cyclical, often predictable and continually becoming more refined. The longer the internet exists and is a part of our culture, workflow and method of communication, the less we tend to ebb and flow between what is new and shiny and the more we tend to attach to what works and is  ’standard’ among us.

Much like our dependence on Microsoft; online, we have come to accept some inferior solutions for our online experience simply because the masses have adopted them. Fortunately, and unlike our operating system and office productivity bond, our online bond seems to have a much looser grip and tends to be largely a generational and (content) hosting preference.

Download an excel doc. containing some of the chart data.

ComScore came out with a great study on Social Media penetration and consumer brands along with other great stats, facts and figures.

They were busy crunching numbers when Google Plus came out and didn’t have time to add it to their market growth chart so I took the liberty of adding it…

As a side note, their study is pretty tight, go register and download it.

Most of you have seen this chart showing the time, date and moment that the world shifted from an email centric society to a social media standard. Much like the role of David Morse at the end of the movie 12 Monkeys, those who have been around for a while simple took a deep breath to satiate our global (time) killer and continue our lives. (click image for source)

I think everyone can agree that social media and texting has take some of the market share and usage time away from email. So I ask, is it really taking time away from email or is it simply a shift in market and consumer usage patterns toward a more streamlined workflow?

I’m not sure of the validity of the chart below but it does show email still has a lot of love (click image for source) and I tend to think it’s somewhat close.

https://plus.google.com/112418301618963883780/

If our usage of texting and social media truly are a shift in workflow, more than simply the trendy thing to do, then I think sites like Google+ are on to something.  Not because it’s social media, cool or the new kid on the block but because it supports the centralization of our workflow.

Google tried to do this before and failed like with Orkut, Google Wave (which I thought was great) and Google Buzz, which I still use, just a lot less. Unfortunately neither of them stuck and they didn’t really complete solve the problem.

So what makes Google Plus different from Orkut, Buzz or Wave? A better job of centralization.  Think about how and why you use Twitter, Facebook and email and ask why can’t I just use one of them for all of my digital communications.

• Email - still the standard of communication especially for business and more personal or private long-form conversations. It isn’t going to go away but it will likely continue to deminish until it settles into it’s place, likely as a more archival, long-form, personal method of communication, much like the U.S. mail use to be. Keep in mind, this is also the place where most of our real contact records reside. For example; my Gmail contacts list is over 2000, My Yahoo 800, Hotmail about 300 and Facebook is 880. Almost all of the 880 were already in my other contacts lists, except for the high school folks I remember but only really follow on Facebook.
• Facebook – not the first “social networking” site but by far the largest. With over 750 million users, FB is where we have all gone to social network. Why are we here though? Facebook isn’t the best social network, is run by a douche and hasn’t figured out what privacy means to the average consumer? Because everyone is doing it!  I joined because my long-lost co-workers and college / high school friends were starting to pop up. Now we are all there, although I notice that after the first 3-6 months most FB users stop or drastically reduce their frequency. Even when I buy ads on FB, it takes weeks to reach even 70% penetration of a market (at a high bid rate) which means people aren’t logging in as frequently as we think or as FB wants us to believe. I’d love to see some stats on the average U.S. consumer usage after 6 months, I think advertisers and FB-advocates might be surprised. Most of their growth is outside of the U.S., in fact 70% of FB users are not in the states, so when FB says 50% of their users log in daily, I wonder what that percentage is in the U.S. and what the average time on site is for U.S. vs. international.
• Twitter – the social sharing site where you can spew whatever you want to the world as long as it’s within the 140 character limit is a U.S. fun zone. Celebrities, the media, bloggers and the throngs of wanna-be celebs are using it to gain and communicate with their fan base. It’s fast, succinct, easily searchable and has a decent chunk of users.  For those who don’t care about celebs, 70+% blogger audience or media trying to attract new readers with their real-time updates, it is just a wasteland of absurdly abbreviated words and phrases.

So does G+ meet all of these needs and will it take over the reigns as our communications solution (not social media solution because that is simply a form of  contact management and one form of communication).

• As a social network – Google+ works, resolves some security concerns and does what we expect for the most part, it still has room to grow.  It doesn’t have the user-base though and even when Google ties it directly into Gmail, they still only have about 300+/- million subscribers. There will have to be plug-ins to other email or social networks to truly entice people away or to use in conjunction with FB.
• As an email solution – Gmail rocks, is solid and has both enterprise and mass-consumer acceptance. G+ is not (yet) tightly integrated into Gmail and until it is, there is a gap in workflow. I have already found myself wanting to send an email but just posting a direct message to someone on G+ because it’s faster and easier. I look at G+ as the middle-tier between email and twitter (which I’ll talk about next). When I can click a button and drop down a window, then select Email, G+, Huddle or Hangout then my dreams come true.
• As a micro-blog – huddles work, as do hangouts but until there is a search tool, a page with the global stream of consciousness flowing like a river of sewage through our lives and a  massive audience to care about it…who cares?
• As a blog – one area that I don’t see (yet) is the integration of blogging, which Google has a strong foothold on with Blogger / Blogspot. This fills the public form of archival, long-form, mass-communication.

When I can click a button, drop down a window and select Email, G+, Blog post, Huddle or Hangout then my dreams come true. Why? Because that covers the full-span of communication that I use online.

What about Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, YouTube and other social sharing sites?  Honestly, I use them within my posts and content on all of the above methods of communication, I don’t see that changing. Although, Google does have a direct channel to market and communicate  G+ to over 500 million people because of their ownership of sites like YouTube, Picasa and even Orkut.

What do you think?

So you are broke, going off to college, getting married, and probably solving the equation to the dynamics of the Earth’s rotation. You have one HUGE dilemma and short of winning a lottery, you are probably screwed. But wait, social media network can save your life. All you need to be is the sole followee of Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) on Twitter who decided on random to pick one person to follow. Conan picked Ms. Lucky contestant otherwise known as Sarah Killen (@LovelyButton) who was getting ready to go to college and getting married. Now she’s appearing on Good Morning America, receiving a free Apple iMac from a stranger in Florida, and free wedding dress from a designer in New York. Sarah’s life is completely changed all because of one person following her on Twitter. How powerful is a tool that can make one person more lucky that winning a lottery. Now that is power my friend.

So when you kick back tonight and put on your Twitter status that you are reading wtfisonline.com, you can appreciate the power that is behind your fingertips.

tram@wtfissocialmedia.com