Explore Posterous

Who does the most social media? Some data. Maybe.

I keep hearing how great Birmingham is at blogging and social media. That's a subjective thing and anyone can say it but I also keep hearing people saying or suggesting we do it the best, we do it the most, and that we're at the centre of it. That's a bit more problematic and I keep saying we need data.

Jason Navon tweeted me about this:

@jonhickman re claim the we do more social media in Brum - evidence in this report doesn't support it: http://bit.ly/1U4e4L #bigdebate

I've only skimmed the report so far (embedded below from scribd), but I'm sure some keen eyes will have concerns over the overall design of their survey and will want to ask what measures are being used to determine if a blog "is highly regarded by other, relevant influential sites". Scholars of network theory might like to ask if the personal networks of the London-based authors lead to a skew of influence to London. We might be concerned too about unevidenced assertions such as:

Consumers who originally used forums and chatrooms as discussion shops in the early days of online communities have graduated seamlessly to writing or consuming blogs on issues close to their hearts (p.6)

I'm pretty sure I've read literature and seen conference papers that suggest the forum is alive and well, so this doesn't make sense. If there's some evidence I'd love to see it. We might also wonder what the value is of a stat such as "London has the highest share of Twitter users in
the UK with 11%". What does that mean relative to city size?

Inevitably my main concerns about the whole thing will be about not the data, but the discourse. This is written from a marketing and communications position, and is measuring things relevant to that audience. That is fine, but it is presented as empircal and conclusive data about social media. In fact it's an interesting attempt to explain the blogging ecosystem for predominantly London based PR and marketing organisations. It's done that job pretty well, so it should be pleased with itself. It shouldn't pretend to be something else.

I still need to get my data.

Social Media Insight 2009 Low-res

(obtained from http://socialmedialibrary.co.uk/index.php?option=com_report_left&Itemid=57 - there is no copyright notice on the document so Im assuming it's OK to embed)

Better do the assign task- Social Capital

Don't worry folks, I haven't forgotten that I have a blog. Before, I
update everyone on what is going on in my life, let me just throw this
out there. In the coming weeks, you may see me post some stuff, that
is what some people call "academic work". The reason being, I figure,
I should start including some of the interesting stuff we have been
talking about or at least stuff that I have been thinking about.

The last time, I wrote up a post was about two weeks ago. I attended
couple of conferences and whatnot since then. One of which was "Hello
Digital". This event was big enough to make it on twitter trends.
Below are some wonderful images taken from my iPhone at that event!
This event was pretty much talking about how Birmingham is the most
active social media city in the world and how great it is. It also
talked a little bit about how you can use the social media tools to
create communities, run businesses, get engagement from the public to
make government efficient.

Last week was more of the lectures and thinking, rather than attending
fancy conferences. We talked about some very interesting concepts,
which I had never heard of before. It was all related to my favorite
topic Culture. Mostly. we talk about the, effects of Social Capital,
what it is, is it good, how can you gain social capital and all that
fun and exciting stuff. We had some interesting debates in class. What
made it more interesting was having the lecture with the undergrads.
Where we the MA students got to pretend like we were better than the
undergrads since we knew more! So I leave you with one question figure
out what Social Capital is post your response as a comment if you feel
like doing so. How much social capital do you have? if any?

I think doing this specific masters has gotten me to write more and
more about my thoughts. As everyone knows, I am a pretty bad writer. I
got through Juniata by having others read and proofread most of my
papers (keyword most! ;).) While doing the undergrad, I hated writing
even a page long reflection paper. Here, the other day, I wrote about
three page long reflection on one of the readings. Why? Just because I
felt like taking it to my class and pretty much summarizing that
instead of making up some bull crap on the fly, without actually
thinking about it. Call this being mature or call this being more
academic, I call it self progression!

End of last week, Friday, I went to one of the, end of the month
Social Media Cafe meet ups. I must say, that was probably one of the
best things I did. The reason being, I got to meet some very
interesting people, as well as got myself into some interesting
projects, which I will post about later on. But regardless, the
upcoming two week are probably going to be overwhelming for me, you
will find out later why.

Anyways, Friday night, I was attacked by a deadly fever, which lasted
for about 2 days until Sunday evening. Then again it came to harm me
on Monday morning. I have been deploying my DayQuil regiment & NyQuil
forces all three days hoping to take on the offensive side and defeat
this thing before the week is over. We shall see how good they are.
That is all for now! Oh and before I leave you off, here is a brief history about the internet, as it celebrated its birthday!

Thank you for coming to #bsmc

(download)

BCU sponsored the social media café so it fell to me and Paul Bradshaw to say thank you.

Semi-weekly update!

Its been awhile since I have written a post, but I have a good reason for that, so please bare with me. This is going to be a short post so just don't expect a lot. I really haven't been doing much so far; however, this week consisted of going to the local pub directly at the main entrance of the university called, "Hare of the Dog". Also called "hotdog" for short. My friends and I have gone to that every single day this week. Which equates to some pretty exciting stories.