Take a look round Facebook, and you’ll find multiple examples of all the main political parties, and their MPs, making use of it to promote their wares and network with supporters. However, look at other social networking sites such as Bebo or Myspace and you’ll find only a relatively sparse party presence, with very few MPs around.
Is this concentration on Facebook justified? After all, it is only one of several social networking sites, and as recently as June last year it only got 16% of the UK social networking site traffic, lagging behind Myspace on 29% and Bebo on 34%.
However, Facebook has see its share of traffic grow very quickly, with the latest figures giving it 45%, well ahead of Bebo on 25% and Myspace on 15%. No-one else breaks 2%.
Conclusion? Whether or not the heavy concentration on Facebook was right in the past,* it is increasingly looking like the right decision, particularly when you factor in the higher proportion of much younger users on Bebo and the number of conflicting demands on politicians’ time, which usually means having one active social networking presence is the most they can squeeze in.
(Figures from Hitwise)
* Of course, in the case of the Liberal Democrats, I put that past decision down to quality forecasting of future trends đ
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My understanding is that the demographic profile of the typical Facebook user is more likely to be favourable (i.e. interested in politics) than that of the other sites…?
Dinti, that is my understanding too (or maybe it is just the status feature on Facebook that appeals to the self-publicising tendencies within the political class).
I think it’s a mistake to use facebook for anything other than arranging meetings and events, but for those purposes, it’s the best thing there is.
Yes, you must bear in mind that raw numbers are almost totally irrelevant, it depends on what sort of people they are!
Allow me to show you something which, I think, most people who read this will instinctively take an interest in…
http://www.campaignstrategy.org/valuesvoters/valuesvoterssurvey_1.pdf
This should hopefully go straight to the core of most LDV readers, who will get it straight away, whether Liberal Democrats or not, and then:
http://www.integralstrategies.org/envirocommunication.html
If I have done my softening-up work well, you will in particular read the bit about the Suffolk beetles, & apply it to your own campaigning business.
That is long. But I am presuming, probably very reasonably, that most people are of the type that is into it.
“Most people” reading this… but not the majority of this country, which is the first lesson y’ve got to learn đ
Politicians will have to keep an eye out for the next thing though.
These things are always changing, in a years time something else could have the numbers and demographics.
I don’t agree with Jennie’s point that Facebook is only good for arranging events and meetings, partly because any system which enables you to contact people who are shy about handing over their email address on a regular basis is a good thing and partially because in my experience it isn’t actually that good for arranging events and meetings! As a general rule the number of people who sign up to a meeting on Facebook compared with the number who turn up is anywhere between 3:1 and 5:1.
The “glory days” of Facebook when you could get people to instantly sign up to any Facebook group you happen to forward to everyone you know are long gone. I don’t blame people for not automatically signing up to anything I send them – I’m pretty circumspect myself these days. Like all things it has become a victim of its own success and what initially looked like a useful tool to order your interests has become information overload.
I also resent the fact that there are some useful tools on the “pages” function and some useful tools on the “groups” function but you can’t have the best of both worlds for no apparent reason (apart from, presumably, revenue protection).
So what you’re saying, James, is that it’s actually not good for anything?
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I must admit to hitting “block” on pretty much everything I get a request for now.
Whoever runs Facebook should just get rid of the majority of applications. Perhaps the more liberal way is to educate users so they’ll stop clogging up their pages with utter bilge, but that quite plainly isn’t happening.
I always try to vote “No” on the “Are you interested” thing, but it keeps telling me that I have to sign up, which I won’t do đ
It has limited uses for getting information out to people, and it can be useful for pushing a limited number of things out peer-to-peer, but it can only be part of a wider marketing strategy. A year ago I had hopes that it would become something more significant.
It was colonised by prospectors.
Thanks for that second link, Asquiff – added to my favourites.
“Most people reading this report are probably Pioneers.”
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Although: “Integral one-upmanship is a temptation to be avoided! ;-)”
Oh bum.
One of the things I don’t like about the motivational groups is that I get the distinct impression that the people writing the report think they’re pioneers and think that the “best” people are pioneers . . .
This is the innate problem. Pioneers give themselves the best write-up and place themselves at the “top” of the perceived tree. Obviously a Settler, were they creating such a system, would see “progression” differently.
The rub, of course, being that a Settler wouldn’t create such a system.
Similar things happen with the Kiersey Temperament Sorter with the INTP/INTJ write-ups indicating that those are the people who actually rule the world. Which in their own minds, I suppose they are, since they place far more importance on the power of ideas/words than on wielding practical power over individuals.
Those percentage figures are little meaningless in the abscence of any absolute reference point (45% of what?) but I think it’s safe to conclude that Facebook is now the leading site.
As well as the event co-ordination discussed above I think Facebook can be used to target several groups.
1) Party activists – which will help keep them motivated and involved.
2) Strong party supporters who have “befriended” an MP or councillor – in a similar way to activists
3) People with general interest in local issues – particularly if they befriend a local politician through their involvement in a particular campaign
4) Community leaders who may want to be kept informed of councillor/MP activity. This can be particularly significant as it can lead to “secondary communication” as they pass on information about what an MP/Councillor has said and done.
Involving and communicating to those groups can have benefits that are disproporationate to their numbers – ie you have a few hundred people but they are the people you need to work/pay for your re-election or who carry significant weight in their communities.
I don’t think they represent numbers that are, in themselves, significant in electoral terms.
Mark’s closing comment about active presence is I think crucial. Just about any internet activity needs updating pretty regularly – even weekly can look pretty out of date and it also needs to promoted a two way dialogue – that’s how you engage people. If it’s genuine and people are interested in politics and local issues I suspect they will come and find you whatever format it’s in.
The Conservatives in Glasgow East (Cllr David Meikle) claim they got round “its relative weakness in the area by using the networking website Facebook to get people involved.”
Silly claim really – but a bit indicative of the way the media swallow any social networking site nonsense. The Facebook group “Davena Rankin fighting for Glasgow East” claims a total of 192 friends – of which only a handful are in the Glasgow network.
By the looks of it it has been a good activist motivator tool but it’s impact on the electoral maths is going to be on the low side of nil.
Grammar Police,
I myself thought that this whole business suffers from what I dub “World’s Smallest Political Quiz Syndrome”. It seems heavily weighted towards pioneers, and to have a vaguely sneering tone towards other groups.
I said this to Alix, and she simply pointed out that this says more about my perceptions than about the actual Maslovian types themselves. Perceptions which she also holds and so, it seems, do you.
Because if you were a prospector, you’d be dismissive of pioneers. Look for example at the way Clarksonites (“the now people”) recoil from a certain type of prospector (“concerned ethical”). So in that case, you would have no idea whatsoever what it was all about.
Settlers are quite easy to reach (they are most likely to vote, presumably because they feel the need to stop the percieved threats to them and their way of life). But prospectoes aren’t, because they don’t seem to be interested in anything.
Also, I don’t much like the Kiersey Temperament Sorter, as it seems to me that the questions are vague, and I can imagine myself giving different answers on different days. No such problem exists with Maslovain types.
Without the slightest desire for self-plugging, I have blogged about the whole business. And though it may seem I’ve hijacked the thread, this is all about the campaigns business đ
“A certain type of pioneer”, it should have said in my third paragraph. Big mistake đ
@ Asquith, Grammar Police:
The underlying model the Value Modes model is based on does, indeed, assume that Pioneers are best đ
The basic idea, found in Maslow’s writings, is that humanity is progressing from survivalism to uninhibited love, transcendence, and self-expression. It was a major influence on the 60s. And very 60s it is – the hippy turns out to be the most developed form of human life.
I find all of this fascinating (and useful to think about) – but one can make many criticisms. My biggest reservation personally is with the idea that people operate on only one level at a time, which I think is implicit in the value modes stuff much more than in Maslow’s original work.
Hywel: the Hitwise site (linked to in the post) gives a lot of information on their traffic figures. It’s 45% of all website traffic to social networking sites from the UK.
I’ve found Facebook by far the easiest of the three to use – the proportion of people of voting age is the highest of the three, and you actually know who people are, which can be a bit of an issue on MySpace. Having said that, Adrian Sanders has put a lot of effort into MySpace and has found it worthwhile. Bebo is mainly younger teens, so you have to be doubly careful.
Steve W.
Steve, one of the reasons Adrian has found MySpace succesfull is demographics. Facebook appeals to young professionals/graduates/students disproportionately (I log in daily) but MySpace is more favoured by non-professionals and non-student younger people.
Torbay is, due to lack of a university and decent employment prospects, overwhelming a place that typical Facebook users leave (although they may return a lot later in life). I did.
Thus MySpace use works if you want to communicate with voters and locals within a ‘lower demographic’ community. It also helps that the blogging function is fairly easy and the bulletin feature does get to everyone that logs in regularly, without appearing spammy, whereas Facebook’s direct message feature can appear spammy if overused.
James, I think event attendance can depend on the event and how it’s doneâfor parties or local social events, attendance can be 100% of definites, but normally a reminder message needs to be sent out before the key time. But it can be much more useful than blogging alone to get the attention of those likely to respondâyour use of it during the FOI stuff I thought was very effectiveâlow membership, but disproportionate numbers likely to actually respond.
Now that they’ve brought in the privacy controls and similar that allows for granular control, I think it might actually have more legs than I expected. There will of course be the Next Big Thing at some point, and I suspect that’ll be more distributed in nature, but given the launch of Facebook Connect and the likely tie in to OpenID and similar, I think it’s value as a social aggregator will be there to stay for awhile.
We’ll see, I guess.
*goes back to rebuilding his local party websites*
(*cough Hywelâwanna help?)