Is social media a fad?
Video showing the latest statistics of social media usage.
I showed this video at Tourism Futures conference on the Gold Coast yesterday – it went down a treat!
Cameron Reilly has also blogged it. I thought I better point that out before we get into another Me First war. Heh.
Classic youtube video – lots of facts, numbers thrown without much evidence trying to justify the existence of many social meida jobs.
There are some insane stats in that video that needs some serious backing in evidence. But because its on a social media site – its deemed true…
Is social media a Fad? Yes It is, just like the .com boom – we are just going through another phase.
Will it live on – Yes it will, just like .coms are still important, social media will be important
Is the video cool? 🙂 Yes it is – but seriously we are just going through another fad, that will be important, but the hype will eventually die down like the .com bubble. Wake up peoples, look at the history of the internet – the evolution of the web – HTML – wow look at the Hype on that, CGI, .com bubble, video on the web …
Isn’t the definition of “fad” something that is cool then dies off? Are you implying that email, HTML, CGI have died off? Or do you mean that they were cool then become normal?
I think the video is trying to tell people to wake up and that social media is not a “fad” i.e. it won’t die and isn’t just for geeks and kids.
I’ve seen most of those stats before – Gartner, Forrester, PEW, World Internet Project (Berkely), Comscore and Facebook, MySpace and others.
Just trying to understand your point 😛
The video is excellent – one of the best applications is to use with audiences that you want to win over. It’s for getting buy-in and ‘early adopter’ migration by companies sitting on the Social Media fence
I was excited by this well constructed video the first time I saw it too – over on mUmBRELLA. But on deconstructing it, it invites far more scepticism of the stats pushed out there because there’s little citation or info to back these claims up. 80% of businesses use LinkedIn as their primary recruitment tool? I think not. If the points came with corroboration and citation it would be much stronger. As it is, my SM sceptic boss is now using this video as a stick to beat me with, saying it just shows how the ‘converted’ will evangelise bodgy stats that support their position.
.-= Kimota´s last blog ..Marketing: Lies, damn lies and statistics =-.
Jobvite study – 80% of those surveyed said they use social media to recruit. 95% of those 80% will use LinkedIn with less looking at Facebook, Twitter etc.
http://www.jobvite.com/Recruiting/Jobvite-2009-Social-Recruitment-Survey.aspx
Actually, what the report says is…
“The survey results showed that 80 percent of companies use or are planning to use social networking to find and attract candidates this year. Among those using or planning to use social network sites for recruiting, LinkedIn use grew from 80 percent in 2008 to 95 percent of respondents in 2009”.
Now, call me old fashioned, (my daughter does), but it’s a bit of a leap from, “80% are using or planning to use” to “80% use LinkedIn as their primary recruitment tool”. This is what I mean about overstating the stats to the point they become questionable and unrepresentative of the truth. And then we look like we’re preaching from unsafe ground, unable to stand up to challenges from the sceptics out there.
The video is great for whipping up passionate SM fervour amongst the converted, but we need something better than hyperbole and exaggeration when we try to shift the opinions of the cynics – as I discovered when showing this to the boss.
.-= Kimota´s last blog ..Marketing: Lies, damn lies and statistics =-.
Not sure I agree with your reasoning:
“66 percent of respondents using social networks for recruiting reported that they had successfully hired a candidate who was identified or introduced through an online social network, showing that the channel is not only being used, but also producing quality results. ”
… no it’s no great stretch to say 80% are using it to recruit and 66% did it successfully. That would leave 14% who tried SM but found the applicant thru other means. Not an unreasonable figure.
“… no it’s no great stretch to say 80% are using it to recruit and 66% did it successfully.”
But that’s not what the video said – you’re twisting it. The video said 80% use LinkedIn as their PRIMARY recruitment tool.
I’ve recruited through social media – got recommended people from Twitter once, for example – so I would fall into that 80% and 66% you describe. But I certainly don’t use it as my primary source and don’t use it every time – not by a long chalk. It would be wrong to take my answer and then claim that I use LinkedIn as my primary recruitment tool.
The issue isn’t with saying that 80% of businesses have used social media for recruitment – alongside other methods like newspapers and job sites – because I’m sure that’s true. The issue is with saying that they use LinkedIn as their primary tool. The stats just don’t say that.
If you follow the video’s logic, there would be a similarly high number of job seekers who have found their jobs on LinkedIn. And I’m willing to bet right now that if you polled a hundred people, you wouldn’t get anywhere near 80% who got their job that way.
Even if you take the genuine stats, 66% have successfully hired someone from social media – that doesn’t mean that happens every time. A business that hires fifty people a year may have only successfully hired someone from SM once, but they would still be entitled to answer yes to that question – even though it only makes up 2% of their recruitment success.
So yes, the video did take a significant liberty with the report and misrepresented what the numbers really tell us.
😉
.-= Kimota´s last blog ..Marketing: Lies, damn lies and statistics =-.
I saw this on mUmbrella and commented, not so much on the presentation, (which I think delivers to a broad audience), but the immediate challenge that it provoked.
Pretty quickly a majority of the claims were challenged with justifiable arguments. Similar to the debate here.
To me this itself was one of the most interesting illustrations of social media and the phenomenon of “peer review” and accuracy. Blogs and social media are rightly criticised for their accuracy and lack of editorial control. Some posts are blatantly biased or woefully wrong. But when the major sites and sources publish, the inaccuracies are invariably pounced on and corrected, when review is enabled.
This peer review is the very principle of Wikipedia with over 17 million pages, but a staggering 327 million edits. As the presentation suggests, Wikipedia is now more accurate and current than the Encyclopedia Britannica. And all as a non-commercial not-for-profit organisation.
Just like the “real world” of printed and broadcast media, trusted sources, with accurate journalism, become trusted sources for the social media consumers. The most trusted sources could well be those which invite the “citizen journalists” themselves to contribute.
An alternative, slightly US centric, but interesting presentation can be found at:
http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-is-social-media-one-year-later
.-= Sully´s last blog ..Maximum Ride – The Kids Who Could Fly / Standing on the ledge – New Zealand =-.