Internet=Information, social media=communication
I need to expand on the title of this post, which appeared in my last post, because I think it is a critical distinction. With the emergence of social media as a very different beast than the web, understanding how different is critical.
- The Internet is a storehouse of information contained in websites with distinct URLs, often relatively static content (information isn’t necessarily always changing) and structured navigation that can be indexed and saved.
- Social media is a river of conversations, often not associated with a location (URL) which means capturing its history is a totally different challenge than traditional search models. Rather than pointing to a source, social media monitoring indicates a zeitgeist* than is continually evolving.
*Zeitgeist (pronounced [ˈt͡saɪtgaɪst] ) is originally a German expression that means “the spirit of the age”, literally translated as time (Zeit), spirit (Geist) (Geist)“. In some countries it has a different meaning; e.g. in the Netherlands Zeitgeist literally refers to; the mind of the time(tijdsgeest), and mind is understood as the mental spirit (state of mind). The word zeitgeist describes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era.
from Wikipedia
This is important. Understanding a global conversation requires more than simply returning accurate search results. There must be analysis tools associated with the discovery tool. Why? To answer these questions:
- What are they saying?
- Who are they?
- Where are they?
- Is it good, bad or indifferent?
- What do they look like (gender, age, etc.)?
- How do I reach them?
Without analysis tools you’re forced to try and distinguish value in a sea of babble. That’s why we’re constantly working to improve both the data and the tools in SM2.