E-Media Tidbits

On Jan 14., the Pew Internet and American Life project released a report on Adults and Social Networking Services. It said, "The share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from eight percent in 2005 to 35 percent now."

On the Knight Digital Media Center News Leadership 3.0 blog, Michele McLellan wrote: "It appears that American adults are moving into social networks more quickly than top 100 news organizations."

The Pew report defines social network sites as "spaces on the Internet where users can create a profile and connect that profile to others (individuals or entities) to create a personal network." MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn are classic examples of this model, and they're useful to research. But this research leaves out other powerful services that enable people to easily self-organize into social networks: Twitter, Ning, Meetup, Delicious, Digg, Slashdot, LiveJournal and even news communities such as Newsvine and NowPublic. As such, I suspect Pew's research vastly underestimates the proliferation and growth of online social networking among U.S. adults.

McLellan cited recent Bivings Group research, which found that only one in 10 major news organization sites offer social networking features that let people "friend" others, create profiles, etc. According to McLellan, "This suggests news organizations are limiting their reach to being familiar destinations or findable on search -- both of which are valuable, but not enough. ... I fear the problem is cultural, and perhaps less tractable than technical constraints."

Furthermore: "The old, still powerful culture of the newsroom may suggest that there is 'one way' to get readers just waiting to be discovered, a quick fix that will build audiences and create revenue. Now. That fix used to be home delivery. Now it's the Web site -- if only we can figure it out. That's a fallacy: It's not the site, it's the links, the connections and the network. It's trial and error and trial again."

I think McLellan is on to a couple of interesting ideas here. First, that mindset and culture -- not resources and technology -- are the key barriers to news organizations benefiting from social media. This is especially true since most social media can be leveraged for no cost at all. Second, she notes that the willingness to continuously experiment is the most likely path to success in media. This includes not just trying out new technologies, but learning how to value engagement other than page views on your site.

Right now, in the midst of industry-wide retrenchment and even despair, it can be hard to put energy into opening up, reaching out and making connections. But trying to hold on tight to a shrinking piece of the action is no way to move forward. As Pew, and McLellan, indicate, social media can be one of the more rewarding ways news orgs can connect more fully with their audiences and communities. Investing in this particular mindset change, and treating social media as a priority rather than an afterthought, might yield surprising advantages.