Facebook er ikke dødt, bare kjedelig

For tenåringer er Facebook blitt som epost: nyttig, men kjedelig.

Først publisert på BM-Bloggen. Jeg har altså blogget på jobben, for jobben. Kan jeg kalle meg proff blogger?

«Facebook er ikke kult lenger.» Det var forklaringen Blake Ross ga, da han sluttet i jobben som Director of Product for Facebook. Kanskje han bare tullet, men kanskje det var litt alvor i det også. Facebook innrømmer selv at de mister unge brukere til andre plattformer, for eksempel Instagram – ikke rart Facebook nå har kjøpt denne tidligere konkurrenten. ”The age of the brag is over”, skrev teknologimagasinet The Verge i mars. De mener at det rett og slett ikke er kult å skryte av seg selv og dele private detaljer på internett lenger.

I dag vil tenåringene heller legge ut bilder med Instagram, sende bilder med Snapchat eller til og med tvitre – de vil bare ikke bruke Facebook. Mister Facebook status som det viktigste sosiale nettverket?

Teknologijournalister og bloggere ser ut til å tro at de blir eksperter på ungdomskultur av å ha én samtale med én tenåring, og debatten har derfor vært preget av mangel på fakta. Nå har statistikk fra Pew Research Center ved Harvard gitt oss noe mer håndfaste tall for unge mellom 12 og 17 år. Deres tall er fortsatt basert på under 1000 respondenter, alle fra USA, men intervjuene med fokusgrupper gir interessante perspektiver. (Hele studien ligger her i PDF. ) Ser vi på tall fra TNS Gallup i tillegg, blir konklusjonen følgende: ro ned.

Det er ingenting som tyder på tenåringer har sluttet å dele bilder av seg selv og frokosten sin på internett. Og til tross for at de sier de ikke liker Facebook, blir de værende der likevel.

Facebook dominerer de andre plattformene fullstendig, målt i antall brukere. Nettstedet ønsker å være det ultimate altoppslukende sosiale nettverket, og de har i stor grad lyktes. Det er nettopp fordi Facebook er det mest omfattende sosiale nettverket, at det nå blir mindre populært hos de yngste.

Facebook er nemlig blitt en forlengelse av virkeligheten. Virkeligheten har mødre som trenger seg på, eks-bestevenninner som baksnakker, overlegne folk som er mer populære enn deg og reklame overalt. Det har Facebook også.

70 prosent av respondentene i Pew-undersøkelsen er venn med foreldrene sine på Facebook, og 30 prosent er venn med lærere.  De færreste gidder å dele Facebook-vennene sine inn i grupper med større eller mindre tilgang til informasjon. Vil de dele noe med en mindre gruppe, bruker de heller andre digitale plattformer som Instagram eller Twitter, hvor de har færre følgere.

I fokusgrupper klager tenåringene over hvor mange voksne som bruker Facebook. Men det er ikke aktuelt å logge seg av for godt – da går man glipp av for mye viktig informasjon.

Facebook har altså blitt som epost. Det er ikke spennende, og mange synes ikke engang det er hyggelig. Men det er fortsatt nyttig, og det vil det fortsette å være til det kommer et reelt alternativ. Foreløpig er det nemlig ekstremt upraktisk å arrangere fest via Snapchat.

Eller for å sitere en 15-årig amerikansk jente i en fokusgruppe:

“Honestly, Facebook at this point, I’m on it constantly but I hate it so much.”

 

Les også: Det eneste du trenger å vite om Facebook – en bloggpost fra gamle dager, eller 2007

The Dimes–and how they reached me

This morning, while taking the tram to work, I started listening to The Dimes’ album The King Can Drink the Harbour Dry using Spotify on my phone.

I did this because they were recommended to me in this blog post from the blog Confused of Calcutta, in which JP Rangaswami describes being followed by The Dimes on Twitter, and then being able to buy their album in any format he wanted – and to name his own price – from their website. He writes:

In 15 minutes before lunch, a band had managed to connect with me, let me check them out, get me to the point where I went and bought their music in my preferred vinyl (along with a free copy in the more “shareable” digital format). Every step of the way they ensured I only did what I wanted to do. Nothing forced. (…) Simplicity and convenience. At my pace, in my time. Where and when I wanted to. Giving me the free right to listen and not pay. If I chose to buy, to pay what I felt like paying. Thank you The Dimes.

In addition to all that, they’re on Spotify too, which is my preferred format, so to speak.

Furthermore, they have written an album about Boston history, and another one supposedly “based on stories singer–songwriter Johnny Clay read in Depression-era newspapers, which guitarist Pierre Kaiser found under the floorboards of his 1908 Portland home”. They also really do remind me of Iron & Wine.

So they got my attention this morning, but not just because they reach out to potential customers directly through social media – a lot of people are doing that. I started to think about why they got me to listen to their music when other bands who have followed me on Twitter have often been ignored.

I think it was because they reached me through a fairly lengthy blog post with time to quote other sources that referred to an album as a“sonic postcard to historic Boston”. That happened because they connected with a blogger who writes that he cares about both music and the spread of information. And they told him – in their Twitter bio – that their music is enjoyable to fans of Iron & Wine and Fleetwood Mac. So rather than yelling “Listen to us!” randomly, they told the right person why he should.

I generally don’t follow people who haven’t tweeted in a couple months, so Twitter isn’t the best way to reach me personally if you’re not actually tweeting. But my preferences are not always a good prediction for what works in general. As a consultant, it’s good to be reminded of that regularly. In this case, the lesson is that there are a lot of ways to use Twitter. But also, that old rules of communication are still true: Know your audience.

Related posts:

• A brief history of record industry suicide
• Illegal music is global music

Over to the dark side?

The day after tomorrow, I start work as a communications consultant with Burson-Marsteller in Oslo.

People have asked me if this means I am “giving up on journalism” or “crossing over to the dark side”. I answer that I am going to start a job that seems challenging and interesting, and well-suited to my talents. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to feel a single negative emotion about that.

Because I loved to read and write, I decided to become a journalist. It was the more sensible version of becoming an author. That same love of language could have made me choose to study law or literature. I originally wanted to be a librarian, back when I was four and thought their job was to read all day.

I absolutely loved my job as front page editor with E24. Putting together the combination of headlines and pictures on a constantly updating news page was challenging and exciting, especially because it called for an understanding of current events, journalism and esthetics at the same time. I enjoyed working as part of a team, and I loved that my job was about adding the finishing touches: taking my co-workers’ great reporting and turning the news site into a finished work, then changing it again when something new happened in the world. Editing for argument was another opportunity to add polish: I loved taking someone’s extended notes on something complex, and turning it into a finished article, with a catchy headline, and memorable opening and closing sentences. I was beginning to wonder if I found the process of editing more interesting than fact-collecting and actual reporting.  Despite being a complete geek about headlines and lay-out, I wasn’t so geeky about the news. Not that it wasn’t interesting. Typing bold letters across the front page as the news unfolded was a rush. I just didn’t feel that I knew enough about the world to make explaining it to thousands of readers my permanent job. At least, not yet.

So I got a Master’s degree. While at The London School of Economics, I started searching for a job that might put me in some happy medium between the hyperactive content production of online news and the meticulous snail pace of academic writing. I hoped that I might find a way to combine the information curating and analysis of the London School of Economics with the bold communicating of tabloid news sites. At an LSE careers event for economic history students, a consultant in the oil and gas sector told my class that consulting was a lot like my LSE classes: if you could collect and interpret information and then present it in a way that was as interesting as possible, you would be doing a good job. After some research, some luck and a few interviews, I had a job.

I don’t yet have a snappy four-word definition of what communications or PR is, and I am not 100% sure what I will be doing on a day-to-day basis. But that’s one of the things that appeal to me about this. If my luck continues, and if my instincts are correct, I think I can look forward to learning a variety of new skills, with a diverse group of talented people.

After spending some time in the insecure, temporary world that is the job market for young journalists, I am also looking forward to getting paid, consistently, because my contract doesn’t end when someone older than me comes back from maternity leave or travelling. The working conditions for journalists and other writers are a story for a different blog post, but I will say this: it feels good to hear someone say they want to pay me for what my brain can do.

All the reasons I’m a journalist are still true. I still believe that the world needs good journalists, and that I could be one of them. Norwegian journalism books are written in the first person plural (“We write like this…”), which makes it almost too easy to identify as one of “us” from the first day of school. But throughout my time at journalism school, I always said that if my job was writing (about something other than sports), I would be happy. I was there to get through the system so I could get my first internship, so that I could get the experience I needed to put me in a position where someone would pay me to write. I honestly believe that most real-world problems can be solved through good communication. This is a good philosophy for me, because it means I can, theoretically, save the world with words.

 

Answers to other FAQs: Burson-Marsteller was established in 1953 by Harold Burson (who, at 91, is still writing speeches, articles and blog posts) and Bill Marsteller. B-M is one of the biggest public relations companies in the world, with 67 offices and 71 affiliate offices, operating in 98 countries across six continents. That last fact is from 2011, but feel free to count the offices yourself. The Oslo office has been around for about 30 years, and there are roughly 35 people working there. I think. I’ll count them when I start.

Image credit: backofthenapkin (CreativeCommons),