Social Media: Enabling Users to Only Trust Eachother
I found the above YouTube video on social media to be interesting, overwhelming and inundated with facts that I've lately suspected to be true but have yet to find confirmation of their truth (that would be quite a research job!). Yet with the internet becoming such a fantastic facilitator of free information, it's hard to know where to turn to discover valid sources. According to the below video, people generally trust user recommendations much more than they do advertisements--but what does this mean for social media? Will there someday be a review page for social media pages? And then a review page for the review pages? Will it never end?! Perhaps I've gotten carried away, but so much readily available information simply makes me think about what the end result will be (or just what the social media scene will look like five, ten or fifteen years from now... can we even begin to imagine it?).
Regardless, my point is this: people trusting user recommendations much more than they do advertising is not a new thing! It's simply that the internet makes it easier for users to connect and share their opinions. Social media is a giant facilitator and the world wide web is its stage. Think of the possibilities!
Lastly, on an unrelated note (but still related to the video), I found the tidbit interesting about the U.S. Department of Education study revealing that students taking online courses significantly outperformed those receiving face to face instruction. Is anyone else as surprised as I am about this? What are your thoughts?
However, the online versus F2F performance tidbit from the D of Ed is just that: a tidbit needing elaboration. Taken out of context, facts can be so easily manipulated to send a message on any agenda we care to create. Do the makers of this clip have a hidden agenda? Maybe, maybe not. This version of the Social Media Revolution gives a trademark credit at the end. Interesting, because I don't remember that from the version we saw in class last Tuesday. (Hey, the music in last Tuesday's version was better, too!) I do not necessarily doubt the numbers and comparisons flying over the screen , and certainly the repeated message about Soc Med being here to stay is true. It just evolves in ways that make clips like these obsolete more rapidly than expected, and it "migrates", like "Twitter"ing birds!(Groan! See my retweet about teens "flocking" to Twitter as their parents take over Facebook.)
I would love to actually read that Department of Education report, wish there was a link to the bibliography of where that information came from. I know there was a link to socialnomics, but when I went on that site, the information was not easily found (I didn't find it at all).
I have read similar studies that have found that there was no difference in the performance of students who take online classes versus traditional face-to-face classes, so I would love to read that report and to put into context.
Lucy, that's exactly what I was thinking throughout the entire video--"do the makers of this have a hidden agenda?" and then at the end there was an advertisement for a book about the social media revolution! And after the video even explained that users trust user recommendations more than ads... this was a slightly veiled ad! Oh, the irony!
Stefanie, I feel the same way... I'd love to have some more information on that Department of Education report and other similar reports, but I, too, couldn't find the specific report that the video refers to (and because the video's reference to it is so vague, that makes finding the report that much harder)!
The thing that I've thought about recently is that there really is a disparity between the number of people that have/use computers v. ones that wouldn't even know the first thing. So, social media maybe an important part of the lives of computer owners, but what about everyone else in the world who isn't computerized?
The reason why I posed this is that in years to come, social historians will be researching us and how we communicated. Will all of the Social Media Revolution videos and writings prevail over the writings of ones that are against the revolution, or even the writings of those who are indifferent?
This almost compares to what we know about the American Revolution. During the Revolution, about 1/3 of colonists were for the war, 1/3 were against it, and another 1/3 were indifferent. However, when we all learn about it as children, a rosy picture is painted about how all of the colonists were either for or against - they never mention the in-betweens.
However, the online versus F2F performance tidbit from the D of Ed is just that: a tidbit needing elaboration. Taken out of context, facts can be so easily manipulated to send a message on any agenda we care to create. Do the makers of this clip have a hidden agenda? Maybe, maybe not.
ReplyDeleteThis version of the Social Media Revolution gives a trademark credit at the end. Interesting, because I don't remember that from the version we saw in class last Tuesday. (Hey, the music in last Tuesday's version was better, too!)
I do not necessarily doubt the numbers and comparisons flying over the screen , and certainly the repeated message about Soc Med being here to stay is true. It just evolves in ways that make clips like these obsolete more rapidly than expected, and it "migrates", like "Twitter"ing birds!(Groan! See my retweet about teens "flocking" to Twitter as their parents take over Facebook.)
I would love to actually read that Department of Education report, wish there was a link to the bibliography of where that information came from. I know there was a link to socialnomics, but when I went on that site, the information was not easily found (I didn't find it at all).
ReplyDeleteI have read similar studies that have found that there was no difference in the performance of students who take online classes versus traditional face-to-face classes, so I would love to read that report and to put into context.
Lucy, that's exactly what I was thinking throughout the entire video--"do the makers of this have a hidden agenda?" and then at the end there was an advertisement for a book about the social media revolution! And after the video even explained that users trust user recommendations more than ads... this was a slightly veiled ad! Oh, the irony!
ReplyDeleteStefanie, I feel the same way... I'd love to have some more information on that Department of Education report and other similar reports, but I, too, couldn't find the specific report that the video refers to (and because the video's reference to it is so vague, that makes finding the report that much harder)!
The thing that I've thought about recently is that there really is a disparity between the number of people that have/use computers v. ones that wouldn't even know the first thing. So, social media maybe an important part of the lives of computer owners, but what about everyone else in the world who isn't computerized?
ReplyDeleteThe reason why I posed this is that in years to come, social historians will be researching us and how we communicated. Will all of the Social Media Revolution videos and writings prevail over the writings of ones that are against the revolution, or even the writings of those who are indifferent?
This almost compares to what we know about the American Revolution. During the Revolution, about 1/3 of colonists were for the war, 1/3 were against it, and another 1/3 were indifferent. However, when we all learn about it as children, a rosy picture is painted about how all of the colonists were either for or against - they never mention the in-betweens.