Around Day 27 of my 30-day, 30-country mega-trip across continental Europe, my usual (and often exclusive) source of self-expression, i.e. Facebook account, suddenly was suddenly disabled without prior notice or warning. After contacting the customer service personnel, the account was not reinstated until this morning, nearly a week later from the mysterious suspension. In the mean time, there was a frantic effort to set up and expand other SNS accounts to replace the inflows of readers entering this blog from Facebook.
As much as the amazing power of the user-generated contents (UGC) in social networking is confirmed, the propagation of the UGC through cyberspace is by all means quite murky. One can share a link as many times as possible in as many places as possible to get maximum possible exposure of the link among the largest possible group of SNS users, but the fact the link pops up on the front page of everyone's favorite SNS all the time does not guarantee that the link is clicked on, no matter how interesting the content really seems to be.
In fact, sharing certain links, as one comes to find out over time, is pretty efforts in vain when targeting certain locations or segments of audience. The reason could be as simple as the fact that the link is blocked as "harmful" in the eyes of automatically set up filtering systems (especially in the case of China), or the audience that comes across the link would "mentally filter" out the content as inappropriate for the given destination. The latter is especially true for the many people taking advantage of active use of SNS by large populations for business purposes.
And whats most important to understand, if one tries to replace the power of one SNS with those of others, is that having a largest number of users or even a rapidly expanding membership does not automatically equal greater clout or potential dominance of a certain SNS. Increasingly, there is a trend of a netizen holding a "primary" and one or many "auxiliary" SNS accounts to boost online presence. However, the auxiliary accounts supplementing the main one would be used to communicate with a very small, well-defined, and most likely unchanging group of well-acquainted people.
Thus, one sees the continuing expansion of regional or country-specific SNS such as Cyworld in Korea or Mixi in Japan, as well as purpose-specific ones such as Linkedin for business despite the increasing dominance of Facebook and Twitter at a global level. Users, despite spending most of social networking time on Facebook or Twitter, need to at least infrequently maintain the auxiliary accounts to communicate with the holdouts, and increasingly, coerce the holdouts into accepting the mainstream dominant global SNS sites.
The limited purposes of the auxiliary SNS can easily be seen when the same link is shared across them and the dominant SNS. By monitoring the sources from the audience clicked on the link, one can easily determine, by the sheer disparity in number of entries, the differences of dominant and other SNS. The dominant SNS is the only place that the SNS user would go to leisurely browse new materials (as the content of the shared link) while they only head to the other ones to fulfill a specific mission or purpose.
Eventually, however, as more and more holdouts from smaller SNS joins the dominant ones to increase their own "social capital," or quit SNS altogether, it becomes less and less necessary for active SNS users to go back to their auxiliary SNS accounts. Ultimately, these accounts will remain in place but abandoned in reality with no more actual sign-ins. The global SNS arena, barring the few exceptions that do exist because of "country-specific regulations" (again, as in China), will be consolidated into one or two SNS, which will have increasingly overlapping memberships.
There may never be one SNS left standing (likely due to personal preferences for certain functions), but one thig is clear: the greater convergence of SNS means one's social capital is more and more concentrated within one SNS account, and if that account is blocked (as in the case of my Facebook), one's SNS presence may be drastically reduced immediately. Perhaps for that reason, it is better to actually maintain presence and constant updating within multiple accounts to reduce such "social risks."
As much as the amazing power of the user-generated contents (UGC) in social networking is confirmed, the propagation of the UGC through cyberspace is by all means quite murky. One can share a link as many times as possible in as many places as possible to get maximum possible exposure of the link among the largest possible group of SNS users, but the fact the link pops up on the front page of everyone's favorite SNS all the time does not guarantee that the link is clicked on, no matter how interesting the content really seems to be.
In fact, sharing certain links, as one comes to find out over time, is pretty efforts in vain when targeting certain locations or segments of audience. The reason could be as simple as the fact that the link is blocked as "harmful" in the eyes of automatically set up filtering systems (especially in the case of China), or the audience that comes across the link would "mentally filter" out the content as inappropriate for the given destination. The latter is especially true for the many people taking advantage of active use of SNS by large populations for business purposes.
And whats most important to understand, if one tries to replace the power of one SNS with those of others, is that having a largest number of users or even a rapidly expanding membership does not automatically equal greater clout or potential dominance of a certain SNS. Increasingly, there is a trend of a netizen holding a "primary" and one or many "auxiliary" SNS accounts to boost online presence. However, the auxiliary accounts supplementing the main one would be used to communicate with a very small, well-defined, and most likely unchanging group of well-acquainted people.
Thus, one sees the continuing expansion of regional or country-specific SNS such as Cyworld in Korea or Mixi in Japan, as well as purpose-specific ones such as Linkedin for business despite the increasing dominance of Facebook and Twitter at a global level. Users, despite spending most of social networking time on Facebook or Twitter, need to at least infrequently maintain the auxiliary accounts to communicate with the holdouts, and increasingly, coerce the holdouts into accepting the mainstream dominant global SNS sites.
The limited purposes of the auxiliary SNS can easily be seen when the same link is shared across them and the dominant SNS. By monitoring the sources from the audience clicked on the link, one can easily determine, by the sheer disparity in number of entries, the differences of dominant and other SNS. The dominant SNS is the only place that the SNS user would go to leisurely browse new materials (as the content of the shared link) while they only head to the other ones to fulfill a specific mission or purpose.
Eventually, however, as more and more holdouts from smaller SNS joins the dominant ones to increase their own "social capital," or quit SNS altogether, it becomes less and less necessary for active SNS users to go back to their auxiliary SNS accounts. Ultimately, these accounts will remain in place but abandoned in reality with no more actual sign-ins. The global SNS arena, barring the few exceptions that do exist because of "country-specific regulations" (again, as in China), will be consolidated into one or two SNS, which will have increasingly overlapping memberships.
There may never be one SNS left standing (likely due to personal preferences for certain functions), but one thig is clear: the greater convergence of SNS means one's social capital is more and more concentrated within one SNS account, and if that account is blocked (as in the case of my Facebook), one's SNS presence may be drastically reduced immediately. Perhaps for that reason, it is better to actually maintain presence and constant updating within multiple accounts to reduce such "social risks."
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