Probing my Social Network - what came back?

What  is your topmost reason for using Social Media? 

Search? 

Sales? 

Relationship? 

Build credentials? 

Recruiting? 

POV? 

Helping? 

Other? 

Two weeks ago, I posed these questions across my Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and LinkedIn.  I wanted to see what my network and reach was like for a random question.  The rest of this post illustrates some of the dialogue that arose in each of the channels.  

From FaceBook: 

Hey again everyone. Thanks again for participating. To answer Kevin's question... What is My Topmost Reason for using SM? 

To embrace my humanity more fully.

From LinkedIn:

Thanks to all of you for your responses. I have responded to most of you directly, although I didn't get a chance to respond to Steven T. Smith yet... which I'll include here. Steven called me out on this - and I agree that the question was deliberately vague. By leaving it vague, I was hoping to get a bit of an "ink-blot interpretation" response to the question... and each person had a unique take on the question. 

I also ran the exact same question across Yammer, Twitter, my blog, Facebook and here on LInkedIn. It was meant as a quick experiment to help me flesh out some some frameworks I'm putting together about human communication. (I think my friend Rick might have been running a similar experiment concurrently and hope to hear his findings!) Thank you for your insights and participation.

The early results are shared below. However, the responses not only helped to identify the wide range of potential uses of Social Media, but highlighted the different nature of some of the channels. For example, I received 3 Twitter responses in less than 30 minutes and then nothing. LinkedIn and Facebook responses continue to roll in after 24 hours. The LinkedIn responses were the most detailed and nuanced. I didn't receive any responses on my blog :-/. The size of my personal reach is different across each of these mediums - as is the strength of my relationships. While I personally know all 14 respondents in Facebook, I only personally know 1 of the LinkedIn respondents. 

Where am I going with all of this? I'm pursuing the perspective that "Social Media", Social Networking, Professional Networking, etc. all fall under the umbrella of Human Communication. The Social Media umbrella is just a set of "conversation extenders". If we start to look at them from this perspective, we can map out how the different media relate to each other, serve different purposes for different audiences - so that we can each create maps tailored to the demands of our most important conversations. 

So... here are the initial results of my little experiment. 

Twitter - 3 responses (all within 30 minutes) - relationship (stay in touch), listening, learning, sharing loves/gripes, sharing ideas, building company brand (FB, Twitter, Blog)

Yammer - 1 response (relationships, POV, credentials, search, drive sales, branding, thought leadership, listen to clients)

LinkedIn - 5 responses (recruiting, sales, promoting awareness, event notification, sharing resources, tracking business network, (email, YahooGroups), job leads, connecting with partners, market testing, feedback, recruiting, credential building, search)

Facebook - 14 responses (relationship, cheese, gossip, dating, reconnecting (FB), follow influencers, broadening relationship, family relationship/updates, deepening business relationships)

Blog - 0 responses

With gratitude to those who already participated!

How about you?  What would you add to this list? 

Comments

[Skip Shuda]

I'm doing a little research for a "human communications" framework - and this will feed into it. Trying to see if we can get any blog responses in 24 hour period. So C'mon blog readers... even 1 word counts! Facebook and LinkedIn are leading the pack in my response count.

[Michael Chermside]

But unlike some of the other media you listed, blogs stay around for a long time, and people may read them later.

Like this.

[Skip Shuda]

Michael, Great to see you on the blog! Yes... there is a "half life" associated. with the different social media formats. Another notable characteristic is the idea of "fast twitch" and "slow twitch" (as in muscle) to refer to the speed and frequency of interaction/updates/etc. Some media is for sprinters, others for distance runners. Does this make sense?