valence

the capacity of one person or thing to react with or affect another in some special way, as by attraction or the facilitation of a function or activity.

Jungian Archetypes and social media

Posted on | November 2, 2009 | Comments Off on Jungian Archetypes and social media

People involved in online social media are certainly not that different from people involved in any other group activity. We are each a unique individual but we still tend to statistically fall into a few loosely defined categories. Understanding some of these categories can benefit us in effectively designing our approach to integrating social media into our lives or businesses.

I am going to describe what I consider to be (and I am supported by various surveys) these loosely defined groups. I say loosely because most of us will exhibit traits from more than one of the groups but our activity will gravitate more towards one particular group. We do tend to be a pretty complicated species so generalizing about our behavior runs the risk of being too simplistic, but you have to start somewhere.

1. People that create content. Blog, articles, podcasts, videos, etc. The percentage of folks in this category is not real high but I would insist that their influence greatly outweighs their numbers. Producers – in the US about 18%

2. People that respond to, comment on, media being produced online. Commenters – In US about 25%

3. People that collect, organize, and rank all the diverse media that is available. These folks are important even though there are few of them. THere is this huge amount of data that for most of us is way to daunting to sift through to find what we want or need. These folks, the Gatherers, are the librarians of our online media. About 12% of users in the US.

4. People that join the social networks and sites like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, etc. These folks are active but tend not to produce or organize content. I think of them as folks that just like to come to the party and actually they add an important element, dynamic energy. Joiners – 25% in the US

5. People that come by to watch the show. Some folks call them lurkers but I don’t like the connotations of that word and I prefer observer or watcher. These folks comprise the largest number of Social Media users. It is fun to watch and watchers are important because they read the posts, watch the videos, etc. Observers – in the US 48%

6. People that are not really doing anything with their account(s) on social media networks or sites. Sadly the second largest number in our groupings. Inactives/Sleepers – In the US 46%.

Of course these numbers are different in different parts of the world and are also subject to the changing landscape of this very young and vibrant neighborhood of the internet.
ken

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