Social Networks: The Big Players
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Oct 27, 2009
At the ESOMAR Online Research conference, Tom Anderson of Anderson Analytics moderated an interactive panel featuring Daniel Shapero, director of enterprise solutions with LinkedIn, and Sean Bruich, monetization analyst with Facebook.
According to Anderson Analytics, the top 10 buzzwords that senior marketing executives are tired of hearing are Web 2.0 (19.4%), social networking (12.2%) and social media (11.3%), all up dramatically in 2009 from 2008, but concede the importance of these media. An estimated 60% of the U.S. online population uses a social network, primarily either for fun or for business, though convergence is happening. Nonusers are time-starved, concerned about privacy or are "social media pessimists". Social media is ubiquitous under the age of 24 but the rate declines by age group, down to 20% of the 65+ demographic. LinkedIn is a bit more male, and Facebook is a bit more female. The average user logs in five times a week and is less active on other types of media than a non-user.
The four biggest social networks are Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn. A quote from the absent Myspace representative: "LinkedIn is the office, Facebook the backyard barbeque, and Myspace is the bar." Facebook wants to be the backyard barbeque as well as the church and school. From a myopic MR perspective, Facebook has the potential to be the ideal B2C panel and LinkedIn to be the ideal B2B panel.
Ten percent of respondents admitted to creating a fake social network profile, according to Anderson research, but maintaining a fake profile is tedious and time consuming-can social networks be a solution to low online panel quality? The speakers said that social network sites have much deeper understanding of their members than most other websites. Bruich argues that the network has counterincentives to limit people from misleading one another (e.g., unfriending, calling people out) leading to high authenticity. LinkedIn discourages "promiscuous connecting" and wants a true representation of your professional social graph.
Bruich says that Facebook leverages its market research tools, "eating its own dog food" to determine product features, provide fast feedback for advertisers and conduct traditional and less traditional ad research. "You can't always rely on what users are asking for but have to overcome barriers they identify" to find new opportunities, said Bruich. LinkedIn uses in-depth interviews as well as its own tools to decide what few selected things to go test. "One of the advantages of social networks is that you can be really precise about the audience you want to test," according to Shapero.
For market researchers, Shapero says that LinkedIn has very accurate, very high quality data; LinkedIn knows who people are and that they are who they say they are. That's a problem for today; in the future, leveraging the social graph to understand people in context will be more important. The MR industry is much more excited about listening to ongoing conversations on social networks, looking at comments by detailed demographics such as occupation and managerial role. Facebook is primarily driven by advertising influence tracking today but is doing more looking at social and consumer trends in the future. For instance, Facebook is a great place to study a movie, if users are going to go see it, what they thought; you can predict a movie's opening weekend gross from the level of activity on Facebook.
If you're researching CPG, you need to complement text analysis with opportunities to solicit feedback about products that aren't being extensively talked about. Some Facebook users share everything they post, and an API provides access to that, but the vast majority of Facebook conversations are private, shared only with the social network. Facebook does a lot of text mining in house so that no PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is shared. Nothing LinkedIn or Facebook does will be allowed if it breaks the users' trust with their site; LinkedIn in particular is concerned about the survey experience given the viral nature of that experience. Facebook correlates with Rasmussen and Gallup results more closely than other sources.
Third-party applications on Facebook can be important sources of information, sharing movies watched, books read, etc. "A survey inside a box on Facebook is still a survey, so people haven't really leveraged the platform yet for feedback," said Bruich. LinkedIn gets asked for surveys of respondents where none of the respondents are in each other's first level social graphs. According to Shapero, LinkedIn finds high survey rates across its user base, though small business owners have lower response rates than software developers, for instance.
For both firms, market researchers are an important target market for future business offerings.