The Myspace Report - Never Ending Friending
Posted 4/24/2007 05:53:00 PM |
Let's get the obvious out of the way - this survey was constructed to glorify Myspace, which is actually not that hard of a thing to do. That said, I didn't find any major red flags - I actually found it somewhat interesting (as long as you take it for what it is). Here are two nuggets I enjoyed.
The first question examines the effect of social networking on alternative media consumption. Assuming a margin of error of 3.5%, there are significant negative effects for video games, but significant positive effects for the internet, email (weird? possible misleading wording leading to conflation of 'messaging' with email), IM and cell phone (also a little surprising, seems spurious). Put simply, this means that social networking leads us away from a solitary activity like video games, but it makes us engage more with social technologies such as a cell phone.
I'm most interested in the significant negative effect for video games. Assuming that most video game play is not a social experience (in gross hours played), it is interesting to see social engagement winning out over non-social engagement (in the time-wasting space). Not that this is surprising, but, cool to see.
This is reinforced by another question "If you had 15 minutes of time, which activity would you most like to do." This was interesting to me because I think it illustrates our complicated relationship with social networks (especially Myspace). Again, assuming a 3.5% margin of error, social networking is significantly preferrable to video games, IM, and listening to an MP3 player or the radio (mostly solitary experiences, exception IM). It is not significantly preferable to chatting on a cell phone, generally surfing, or watching TV. With the exception of TV, which is a pseudo-social experience, those other experiences were social.
Let's not demean the value of social networking - I think it's incredible that social networks are as favored a time waster as TV or talking on a cell phone. I just think that we're seeing a canary in a cave mine here - given a choice, we are ultimately more interested in engaging in social experiences in our time wasting than non-social experiences. We're social beings, and the technologies we use allow this engagement - and we prefer them.
If I were a marketer reading the tea leaves from this report, I'd pay very close attention to the value of social engagement. As technology allows us to interact with each other, we're seeing a halo effect carrying over to other social technologies. Myspace (and social networking) is currently the most important place because it enables social serendipity, but there are certainly other innovative ways to spread the effects of a social networking campaign to other media.
Download the report here.
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6 Comments: (Post a Comment)
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At April 24, 2007 9:16 PM,
jkd said...
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"Assuming that most video game play is not a social experience (in gross hours played)..."
Can we assume that? Definitely a lot of gaming is video games are not social - but between people playing, e.g., Halo on XBox Live, the various competitive Wii games and most sports games, I think there's definitely a strong social component to gaming. But, maybe not - nevertheless, I'd like to see data that says one way or t'other.
"If I were a marketer reading the tea leaves from this report, I'd pay very close attention to the value of social engagement."
Or a game designer - even if, say, most video games are solitary experiences, this would suggest a possible positive effect on game-playing were more games to incorporate social elements, or be generally socially based. It wouldn't surprise me in the least, in fact, if the Wii's outrageous success were due in some part to its appealing outside of the traditional stereotypical solitary gamer demographic (whether or not that's actually the majority or plurality of gamers). -
At April 24, 2007 10:04 PM,
fstutzman said...
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"Can we assume that?"
Keep in mind I said gross hours. Luis Von Ahn estimated that in 2003, nine billion human hours were spent playing solitare (a video game indeed). I think its a nice fantasy to think that we play games together, but I'd wager gaming is largely solitary (bad pun).
"this would suggest a possible positive effect on game-playing were more games to incorporate social elements"
Absolutely. I'd bet that social games are consistently ranked as more fun (of course, the main effect is from the human, not the game). -
At April 24, 2007 10:44 PM,
fstutzman said...
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Another interesting thing about the report is how much overlap the findings have with generic "social network" studies. For all intents and puropses, when we study "all" social networks, we're really studying myspace.
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At April 25, 2007 4:15 AM,
annie said...
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This past fall (pre-PS3 and Wii), Nielsen released their Active Gamer Benchmark Study with a lot of interesting figures.
It says that "active" gamers spend 5 hours a week participating in social gaming (and teens lead the way with 7 hours a week). It also says that an active gamer spends 13 out of 55 leisure hours a week gaming. Sounds like a little less than half the time is spent on social gaming.
It gets confusing, though, because the report also says: "Active Gamers generally average about 14 hours a week on their consoles, while they often play as much as 17 hours a week on handhelds." I guess it could be taking into account other uses of the devices (say, watching videos). Does a single active gamer spend 14 hours on a console and 17 hours on a handheld?
Anyways, just passing along the info. -
At April 25, 2007 9:34 AM,
fred said...
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To be an active gamer means you have to own a gaming console, which really limits the population.
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At April 25, 2007 10:11 AM,
jkd said...
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"I think its a nice fantasy to think that we play games together, but I'd wager gaming is largely solitary (bad pun)."
Yeah, I mean, maybe we can assume solitariness.
"For all intents and puropses, when we study "all" social networks, we're really studying myspace."
Yeah, in an unrelated context, Ezra Klein made a similar point about Wal-Mart:
"The company's sheer size means that relatively minor decisions in Bentonville can transform whole sectors of the economy... Wal-Mart is almost a de facto central planning vehicle; not because that's their ambition, but because that's their size."
Now clearly the effects of Wal-Mart on the economic landscape are far more broad-reaching and tangible than MySpace's impact on...anything, whatever metric you're using. But I think there are useful similarities, and that it opens up some good ways of looking at research questions - that basically, questions should be asked first in the context of MySpace and then applied outward if necessary [with contextual exceptions for, e.g., Facebook use on college campuses].
