Social Media & Visualisation
This should always be about the desires of the individual: their community, their communication, and their audience. We have a responsibility to communicate this as best we can.
It’s interesting to look back and see just how far we’ve come in terms of social media. Visualising the landscape has always been an important factor to help express this in a way that can be understood universally, whether you’re a web user, tech evangelist, marketer, client or agency.
Julian Cole recently posted “12 Historical Social Media (Marketing) Moments” and it was interesting to look back at some of the first instances of user interactivity, social networking, and viral videos. My input was the very first ‘beta’ invites used by the likes of GMail and more recently Ping.fm. It’s interesting to note just how much we’ve learnt about the way people want to interact with the web and where we see it heading.
So just how are we visualising the web right now? This is what web 2.0 means.
A brief history of social media however, looks something like this:
It’s interesting to see just how small Facebook is, as well as just where else the other platforms are today. This is actually an xdcd comic from 2007 (around the second quarter).
Nowadays, agencies and marketers alike are coming up with more and more visualisations to describe what social media is about. But these types of examples can sometimes lead to confusion – which is the last thing any social media enthusiast wants.
Sometimes it’s best to look at the landscape to get an idea of just how intricate this is getting. The key is delivering what people desire, and not bombarding them with irrelevant options.
It’s about the individual’s community, communication and audience.
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Great article. I am just getting into the social media thing and realising it is far far bigger than I imagined.
A part of me wishes, I admit, that it was not as varied as it is simply because this friend uses A, this one B, this one C, I have to join a zillion different ones to keep in contact with everyone.
Your article has shown me I have only scraped the surface with what I’ve come across so far *laugh*
You’re right! This is a very top view – check out my social media tag and you’ll see why hehe.
Don’t think about it as signing up to companies – you’re merely approaching more audiences. So the more passions you have, you will find yourself drawn to different communities and groups of people.
Embrace it and have fun.
Great, its make me realize that I just knew a little piece of social networking media in the internet world.
@hans In a way, that’s actually OK – this is a birds eye view of the social media world. But, the parts are only as good as the whole – it comes down to your interests and community – that’s what makes it valuable.
Hey Jye,
This is a great resource, I love the top graph of thing you can do and people you know…that pretty much sums up the whole play!
Jules
It should be the first diagram anyone looks at. Clients and marketers alike.
[...] Very happy to say my recent article on social media and visualisation received over 330 diggs and [...]
[...] great supplement to me recent post Social Media & Visualisation – which is still my highest rating post to date – and tracks the brief history of social media [...]