Serendipity35

I saw that today is the anniversary of the start of Facebook back in its undergraduate days of 2004. An old post on the now-defunct Writer's Almanac did a nice job of summarizing that early history, so I am using most of it here.

The social networking site Facebook was launched from a Harvard University dorm room on February 4, 2004 by  sophomore Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room (Suite H33 in Kirkland House). He was aided by three other 19-year-olds.

Zuckerberg was a smart, middle-class kid from Dobbs Ferry, New York who started writing computer software when he was 12. In high school, he created a program called Synapse Media Player and was offered millions of dollars for the product and job offers by both Microsoft and AO. But he passed on them in order to attend Harvard instead.

The program he created at Harvard was called Facemash. It displayed two student photos side by side and asked people to rank who was hotter. It would later be duplicated in various forms as a "hot or not" game. In the site’s first four hours online, the photos were viewed 22,000 times. The site was shut down by Harvard a few days later. It so popular that it overwhelmed their server, but also because there were privacy violations since Zuckerberg had acquired the photos for Facemash by hacking into Harvard’s photo directory.

A couple of months later, Zuckerberg began writing code for a site that would allow students to view each other’s photos and some basic personal information. This site, TheFacebook, was launched on this day in 2004 at www.thefacebook.com.

More than a thousand students signed up within 24 hours, and after a month, half of Harvard’s undergraduates had signed up. Zuck was in trouble again, this time with three seniors who claimed that they had hired Zuckerberg to create a similar site, but that Mark had stolen their idea. Several years later, they reached a multimillion-dollar settlement.

When I first started consulting on social media in 2005, I was introducing blogs, wikis, podcasts and the newly -emerging social networks such as Facebook. Both with my academic colleagues and with clients, one of the persistent questions was "How do I know I'm getting any benefit from these social tools?"

Seeing the impact of your social marketing relies on attribution, which is similar to the older metric of ROI (return on investment). Both are sometimes difficult to quantify.

As someone who taught writing for many years, when I first heard the term attribution I thought of giving credit to the original source of information, ideas, images, or language used in a piece of writing. Attribution in writing is important because it shows respect for the work of others, helps to prevent plagiarism and those sources often provide additional information. (see my attribution at the end of this post)

That ROI (return on investment) is a much older dollars-and-cents measurement used well before the Internet and social media For example, you invested $1000 for an advertisement and it produced $5000 in sales. (Some might call that ROAS - Return on Ad Spend - but I'm being simpler here.) Or perhaps, you spent a $1000 on an ad and saw no increase in sales.

Attribution in the social media sense assigns value to the channels that drive an outcome. That might mean dollars but it coukd also be a measurement of a purchase, web visit, download, or subscribing to the site or a newsletter.

It is a bit of reverse engineering or backward design in that you are looking at the effect and trying to determine the cause.

My own tracking of the referring sites for posts on this site allows me to see if traffic to a post came from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, one of my blogs or just a search engine. When someone finds me via Google, I can see what search terms they used. Those results can be surprising. I might get a surge of traffic from a search that found the mention of "Erik Satie" or "flat web design" or "social media attribution."

I have little control about search engine attributions, but I can control what I post on social media and how I word the posts.

Attribution is generally broken down as being in three modes:
Last-touch,
First-touch
Multi-touch attribution.
(Take a look at this diagram from digitalthought.me about more on multi-touch models called Even, Time Decay, Weighted, Algorithmic, etc.)

The first-touch attribution credits the first marketing touchpoint. For example, you run an ad and monitor how many contacts came from that ad.

 

Last-touch attribution credits the channel that a lead went through just before converting. Maybe you ran an ad on Facebook which someone later tweeted and the lead came from the Tweet that linked to your site for a purchase, so Twitter gets the attribution.

Last-touch is easier to measure, but both single-touch models fail to show the complete and sometimes circuitous customer journey. That's why multi-touch attribution is used. This gets much more complicated and more difficult to track. More complicated than the scope of this post. But as an example, the time decay attribution gives more weight to touchpoints closer to the final conversion event. If your original ad is the starting point but the final purchase came after a tweet that was retweeted and then posted as a link in someone's blog a week later, the blog gets more credit (as a personal endorsement) than the ad although obviously none of this would have happened without the ad.

Back to that question I started getting in 2005. It is important to remind clients that social media used for marketing and as engagement and brand-building may not always generate leads or sales directly but rather indirectly. Getting visitors to your site alone is a kind of success. It may not lead to sales (ROI) immediately, but it increases awareness of your brand for the future.

I will crosspost this on my business blog, Ronkowitz LLC, and measure which post gets the best results.

Attribution is more complicated than this primer, so you might want to check out these sources:

• A Comprehensive Guide to Attribution
• The Complete List of Marketing Attribution Models
• What is Marketing Attribution?
• Social Media Attrbution,

Following my last post about how social media is bad for your health - an idea that I think most people would agree with  - I also feel that social media has undeniably transformed communication and society in numerous ways. If you assume that is true, then you should ask why and when social media went wrong. This is a cross-post from my Weekends in Paradelle blog.

Despite lots of media attention about the negative effects of social media. it is still widely used. I started thinking about when social media became unhealthy. Any answer is subjective and complex and probably depends on individual factors such as personal experiences, societal norms, and technological advancements.While it offers many benefits, there have been turning points that have contributed to negative perceptions of social media.

Here’s my list of some turning points:

Privacy Concerns: As social media platforms evolved and became more integrated into people’s lives, concerns about privacy and data security emerged. High-profile incidents, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook, raised awareness about the potential misuse of personal data collected by social media companies. This eroded trust among users and led to increased scrutiny of social media platforms’ privacy practices.

Spread of Misinformation and Fake News: Social media has facilitated the rapid spread of misinformation, rumors, and fake news. The ease of sharing content on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp has made it challenging to verify the accuracy of information, leading to the proliferation of false narratives and conspiracy theories. This phenomenon has had serious consequences, including the exacerbation of social divisions, political polarization, and public health misinformation.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment: Social media platforms have provided avenues for cyberbullying, harassment, and online abuse. The relative anonymity afforded by the internet, combined with the viral nature of social media, has enabled individuals to target others with hurtful or threatening behavior. This has had particularly harmful effects on young people, leading to mental health issues, social withdrawal, and even suicide in some cases.

Impact on Mental Health: Research has highlighted the negative effects of excessive social media use on mental health, including increased feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Factors such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and the pressure to present a curated and idealized version of one’s life contribute to these negative outcomes. Additionally, the addictive nature of social media platforms, characterized by endless scrolling and notifications, can exacerbate feelings of stress and overwhelm.

Erosion of Civil Discourse: Social media was once seen as one way to “democratize” the web. But it has been criticized for contributing to the erosion of civil discourse and the rise of polarized and hostile online environments. Echo chambers and filter bubbles, where users are exposed primarily to viewpoints that align with their own, can reinforce existing biases and prevent constructive dialogue across ideological divides. This has implications for democracy, as it hampers informed decision-making and compromises the ability to find common ground on important societal issues.

So, when and why did social go wrong?

When I was teaching a graduate course in social media, we talked about its timeline history. That was 2016 and we were only talking about the negative effects as a fairly new point on that timeline. If I were teaching that today, I would need to add developments in the history of social media that mark shifts toward negative effects:

Here is a start on that list:
Proliferation of Platforms: Social media platforms began to gain popularity in the early 2000s with sites like MySpace and Friendster. As more platforms emerged and gained widespread adoption, the sheer volume of social interactions online increased dramatically.

Introduction of News Feeds: The introduction of news feeds, where users could see updates from friends and pages they followed in real-time, marked a significant shift in how people consumed content on social media. This change led to increased time spent on platforms and potentially unhealthy comparison behaviors.

Rise of Smartphones: The widespread adoption of smartphones made access to social media constant and ubiquitous. People could now engage with social media anytime, anywhere, blurring the boundaries between online and offline life.

Algorithmic Changes: Social media platforms began to implement algorithms to curate users’ feeds based on their interests and behaviors. While these algorithms aimed to increase engagement, they also contributed to echo chambers, filter bubbles, and the spread of misinformation.

Data Privacy Concerns: High-profile data breaches and scandals, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook, highlighted how social media platforms could compromise users’ privacy and security. These revelations eroded trust in social media companies and raised concerns about the ethical implications of their practices.

Overall, while social media has brought about numerous positive advancements in communication and connectivity, its negative effects have become increasingly apparent over time. The exact point at which it became “unhealthy” is difficult to pinpoint, but these developments have collectively contributed to growing concerns about the impact of social media on individuals and society.

"Too much social media is bad for your health," wrote Amber MacArthur recently in her newsletter. "This is true for adults and especially true for kids. Almost a decade ago I wrote a book exclusively on this topic, endlessly worried about how tech companies saw young users (including my son) as a goldmine for data and dollars. My 2016 book (don't buy it, it's out of date) focused on how tweens and teens were spending time on social media apps - and how parents could help them stay safe."

I used her book in 2016 for a graduate course I was teaching in social media design. Not even a decade later and almost everything I used in that course is out of date. Amber notes that a recent survey of thousands of people in 142 countries and territories found that one in four people are lonely (Source: Statista). Perhaps, fewer face-to-face relationships are to blame?

on another blog    One area I addressed is the impact on mental health: Research has highlighted the negative effects of excessive social media use on mental health, including increased feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Factors such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and the pressure to present a curated and idealized version of one's life contribute to these negative outcomes. Additionally, the addictive nature of social media platforms, characterized by endless scrolling and notifications, can exacerbate feelings of stress and overwhelm.

Are there any possible solutions or at least some ways to improve social media use - especially with younger people?

Many suggestions are controversial from age verification to smartphone bans. Take age verification, which seems reasonable but opens up privacy issues.  In the book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt suggests that there should be no phones before high school, no social media before 16, and no phones in school. Sounds good but they are all very difficult to enforce, at home or in school. I was always told that kids shouldn't be watching screens until age 3. Good luck with that.

A social psychologist, Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

In my next post, I'll try to figure out when social media went wrong.