Social Platforms Aren’t Really Legitimate Media, Are They?

Like many my age, I struggle to comprehend the popularity of social media. Having studied and worked in and around the media for forty years, it also seems blasphemous to consider these social platforms as media vehicles.

The world of social media seems incredibly overhyped and it’s unfortunate that the popular press initially dubbed Facebook and Twitter as media. In my view, they are not legitimate media. Not even close.

Many of my students have tried to make me a social media convert. We did a couple of assignments during the first week of class this semester and I’m starting to better understand the appeal.

Class Selfie Resulted In 1,000+ Likes

As an initial icebreaker, our class took a selfie and posted it on Facebook to see how many likes, shares and comments we could accumulate. We topped 1,200 likes in the first day including a large number from former students I haven’t communicated with in years.

The second assignment two days later was to investigate the dynamics of Instagram. By the weekend, the class had created an online narrative that stretched across a number of platforms using #myprofessorstie as a thematic featuring my old ties in a campus setting. (The hashtag title was not meant to be provocative. It was inspired by the fact that I’m the only one ever wearing a tie.)

The results were equally as exciting. Most students received over 50 likes on their Instagram posts. Plus the campaign extended into Twitter and Facebook. The business school even re-tweeted a post on their feed.

These assignments finally made me a believer. The experience was engaging, fun, and extremely rewarding. It was an entertaining week that I can’t wait to replicate through additional assignments during the remainder of the semester.

Social media analytics are at best hard to comprehend. Are all likes created equal? Are comments worth more than likes? Do re-tweets have the same value as a comment? Is video critical to improving gross impressions? Exactly what is an engagement?

Facebook and Twitter Not Audited Like Traditional Media

To make it even more absurd, the only available analytics are coming directly from the medium: there is no independent auditing of the data. For example, Google and Facebook provide you with their own numbers for impressions, views, and clicks. There is no Audit Bureau of Circulation, SMRB, or Nielsen to keep the platforms honest.

While working in a circulation department at a national magazine, I found the internal data sometimes inflated an audience, whereas outside auditing groups seemed to more accurately verify circulation and audience.

When a medium is as engaging and fun as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the other social platforms, it’s even harder for advertising to be effective. Viewers are much too involved to pay attention to advertising distractions.

College Students Want Their Middle School Facebook Back

These platforms used to be advertising free. When today’s college students were in middle school, Facebook was devoid of ads. My students find advertising or messages using creepy contextual following downright offensive. They have headed to Instagram (owned by Facebook) and other platforms where they can interact with fewer but close friends, focus more on visuals, and enter a comfort zone in which the advertising is less blatant.

Migration is the biggest fear of those who engage in traditional advertising revenue models. Advertising models work only if the audience is stable or increasing. Viewers left network television for subscription cable with higher quality programming without advertising. The moment an audience declines and the media can’t sustain the revenue, it’s curtains. Remember Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post or more recently local newspapers and the newsweeklies.

Technology is a curse to media brand loyalty and audience growth. There could be a student right now hiding in a dorm room creating a new social platform that displays photos better than Instagram, allows for even more selectivity of friends, and possesses filters to prevent contextual snooping. Eventually companies like Facebook and Google won’t be able to acquire every new platform.

Social Media Is About Relationships, Not Advertising or Data Mining

No matter how hard I try in classes, students reject the idea that social media platforms are an advertising venue. To them, these platforms are a sacred part of their entitled lives and leave little room for commercialism. They will inevitably reject these efforts, instead seeking new venues that are truer to their values.

If social platforms want to be media, they need to start living up to more traditional media standards. They need to give marketers the opportunity to independently audit their data, they need sales people who will actually work with you by telephone or in person, and most of all, they need to realize the product they’re selling is genuine human connection, not editorial insight. It’s hard to put a price tag on authentic friendship before people wise up to what is going on inside those black boxes of multivariate technology.