Shouldn’t we be more careful
…of social media? Have we become too much in awe of social media and aren’t we forgetting to take some (a lot? most?) of the comments on social media with a pinch of salt? Haven’t we become slaves to the opinion of social media, instead of viewing most of it as noise?
I am saying this apropos response in the social media on the release of the iPhone 5. Much the same as when iPhone4S was released, ” incremental changes,” not a ” wow!” And yet despite the luke warm reception of 4S it then went on to unprecedented blockbuster sales. Much the same this time around. In a summary of responses this morning I read that bloggers remark, that the company that gave us such remarkable new products as the iPod and the iPhone went on giving more of the same. I am amazed. Clearly we are in a phase of incremental change. Have these guys never heard of the S-curve in innovation? If you are covering tech you should of course have now better.
The ordinary ” twitterees” simply venting under the guise of avatars are not expected to know better. Is there perhaps a wisdom of the crowds hidden in so much of the inanities? Perhaps it is time that some of us reread the ” WIsdom of crowds.” (?) I tend to think that much of it is simply noise with little or no influence in real word behaviour – as witnessed last time around by the sales of the 4S. Let’s see what happens this time.
When I started this blog three and a half years ago in May 2008 my first entry was about the unreliability of focus groups. Experimental testing revealing that the opinions vented in focus groups are more prone to misleading than to accurate insight. I am beginning to think that our obsession with the opinions expressed in social media may lead us down the garden path of a giant, amorphous, anonymous focus group.
That research on the value of focus groups revealed that there is a disjunct between expressing an opinion and actually acting predictably on that opinion. A verity well worth remembering, when next you quote twitters and facebook comments as the gospel truth.
Griekwa:
September 14th, 2012 at 10:00 am
I fully agree Bertie, but remember in the Wisdom of the Crowds it is highly unlikely that any single individual gets it right! Rather, it is the group that gets it right through the average response! So I fully agree that all the twitters etc is just noise. The real art I suppose is to determine the ‘average’ response…
Chris:
September 14th, 2012 at 10:05 am
Aren’t prolific twitter users known very appropriately as ‘twits’
Ike Jakson:
September 15th, 2012 at 10:18 am
Bertie
Two good comments you have above. I like the humour in the one from Chris.
IkeJ
Aynon Doyle:
September 17th, 2012 at 11:03 am
I agree Bertie – it will be a sell out, but not because it is a clearly better phone than other smartphones. As many have indicated it is simply evolutionary, not revolutionary. The phone is thinner, lighter, longer, has new software, better camera, better resolution, etc. However, I think the social media discontent is not really about the phone itself. In my opinion, as the first major release from Apple since Steve Jobs died (the 4S still passed under his eye in development), people wanted something revolutionary to show the company still possesses the innovative flair it had under his leadership. This discontent is about perception and not really linked to the development path of the device itself. People in the Apple ecosystem are likely to remain and new people likely to enter as its still has the largest app store for the foreseeable future and that fact will continue to drive sales. The danger of continuing an incremental approach for to long in this market of course is revolutionary innovation by a competitor.
Bertie:
September 18th, 2012 at 6:38 am
Hi Griekwa, yes the group, but then randomly estimating figures, not opinions about events, issues. Here some would argue that the aggregate of twitter opinion would give the truth of the matter. It would be if you asked them to guess at the weight of a blue whale. Opinion is sometingh different.
Bertie:
September 18th, 2012 at 6:39 am
It’s valuable if you follow opinion, or build a group, but it is a poor indicator of action.
Bertie:
September 18th, 2012 at 6:39 am
So, do I, Ike! Keep visiting!
Bertie:
September 19th, 2012 at 8:26 am
Hi Aynon, great to see you here! The discontent to which you refer, is by some media pundits (such as Wired) and then from the anonymous public on Twitter. Please page to the next blog on the topic where I address some of the issues you touch on here. Point is it would have been a bad business decision by Apple to radically innovate the phone. Users want familiarity. Apple needs to market for this to fully exploit the top of the S-curve of adaptation. Most importantly the point I want to make here is about market research: There is a huge gap between opinion and actual user behaviour. Keep on reading and above all engaging in conversation, please!