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Aggregators and Sources: People or Content?
I don’t know if this bespeaks a major trend, but I’ve noticed that of the slew of news and friend aggregators, services seem built on a choice between aggregation of content around people (as sources) or aggregation of people around content (as sources).
The distinction between contributors and contributions is at the core of social media in general. Design limitations, including allocation of screen real estate, navigation schemes, actions and features/functions, and the resulting social content and practices these limitations produce, would seem to suggest that any aggregation tool will stake a preference on either the person or his/her content.
I don’t know if this suggests that there’s a corresponding division among user preferences and interests: to prefer people over content, or content over people. As users, do we fall into two camps? Are there two types of social media users — those drawn to the social face and those drawn to the media face? Those who relate to people first, and those who relate to content first? Those who pay attention to the person, and whose trust and interest aligns with personality, relationship, authority, etc? Versus those whose interests connect with content, statements, news, and talk — over and above the people posting and doing the talking?
But between friendfeed, digg, stumbleupon, socialmedian, twitter, facebook, and scores of others now in the business of assembling audiences around social content, it does seem that some are more conversational (twitter and feed aggregators like FF) and some more topical (digg, socialmedian, the new strands).
Perhaps, indeed, some of us are more attentive (in general) to who’s talking, and some to what’s being said.
Adrian Chan is a social media experience expert and analyst. You can follow him on twitter at gravity7.
I think you have posed a very good question about how each of us finds our content. I suspect most people would opt for a combined format, but if I had to choose I would prefer content over people. The people format typically needs more filtering/screening than any of the existing sites provide. If I am interested in VC I don’t care about the guys dog, wife or mountain climbing.
Maria,
Thanks for the comment!
I’m with you on the fishbowl — and of course part of what we do is follow what each other is thinking and saying — but I that even outside the fishbowl a lot of useage is clustered around chat/im/friend talk activities.
It’s the social content category that struggles the most to show value add (in the mainstream). anonymous commenting, on mainstream news media, for example, really isnt that compelling and does little to foster relationships. It’s easy to understand why a lot of people simply don’t see what the fuss is about.
It would be interesting to know if people are divided over flow and lifestream apps vs apps that organize social content more taxonomically. Where lifestream flows = time-oriented, activity and talk-oriented users; and social content = browse, read oriented users?
cheers!
a
There is definitely a divide between what people are paying attention to, the content pushers or the content itself. It seems to me, it depends entirely on the audience at hand. Those of us in the “fish bowl” of online marketing and social media “experts” tend to focus on the content from our favorite content pushers, but the general masses, I don’t think, have even come to a place where they are able to delineate between the two. Perhaps out of sheer overwhelm, or perhaps out of ignorant bliss… in either case, you’ve definitely highlighted a core “discussion” in larger social media strategies.
Thanks for your insightful thoughts.