Only last week the 500th Million user joined Facebook - with 85% of the UK population now online, what opportunities does that present to us as Business Analysts?
Earlier in the week I watched three fascinating presentations from Clay Shirky on TED (links below). Without a doubt Social Networks via the web are revolutionary - for the first time in history communication can occur both ways via the same medium (One to One & Many to Many). Today communication is becoming more about convening likeminded supporters rather than creating and controlling content centrally.
Social media and networking is growing extremely fast in the UK. Eighty-five percent of the population are now online; they spend more than six hours on social media sites every month, nearly 60% of them read blogs and 64% have their own profile on a social network.
Through his three presentations Shirky shares examples of both profound (like social tracking of violence in Africa) and frivolous (LOLcats.com!) cases of groups of unconnected people coordinating themselves to create 'cooperative value'. It's interesting to think about what's motivating people to take part. What is that drives people to stop just consuming media and start publishing content? Shirky attributes it to 'cognitive surplus' - it's an important part of intrinsic motivations for people to be able to share and help others so two way media is our natural preference. It no longer becomes the defacto position to spend spare time watching TV.
So how can we use Social Media to support ourselves as professionals and create 'cooperative value' for others;
- Register for www.Linkedin.com - a business networking site with some great discussion groups on there (recommend IIBA, IIBA UK, ModernAnalyst) that issue a weekly email digest of what discussions are trending.
- Register for www.modernanalyst.com - a useful source of news and discussion.
Sources & Credits
Clay Shirky at TED
Mashable shares Simply Zesty research
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