An article in last week’s Wall Street Journal showed how Linkedin is struggling to compete with Facebook. It pointed out that for the month of October, Linkedin visitors spent about 13 minutes on the site, while visitors to Facebook spent about 213 minutes. (MySpace visitors spent about 87 minutes.)
This is a problem for Linkedin. A problem of money. That’s because membership (and therefore profitability) is a function of time spent per person. The implication is that for Linkedin (53.6 million users) to attract members the way Facebook does (350 million members), users need to be given reasons to spend more time there. (More apps. is being suggested as the solution.)
Funny how in social media is measured by time spent. For me, social media is a technology (though not only a technology) – and I’m more likely to gauge its success in terms of time saved rather than time spent. Obviously using social media takes time. But I expect that, at some level, I’m getting more for my minute using social media than some other means of achieving the same goal.
On the other hand, TV is a technology and the more time spent (and wasted) the better. Which makes me wonder: Is social media more like TV than it is like Word or Google or even calculators or typewriters or printing presses?
It’s all got me thinking about the relationship between social media and time. How much time does social media consume? Where does that time come from (what are people doing less of)? What is being achieved in that time? And how is social media affecting our actual experience of time?
How much time does it consume?
In a blog devoted to exploring the use of social media by museums, the author – Nina Simon – suggests in a post called What can you accomplish in one week of web 2.0? that about 1.5 hours a week gets you participant status – looking around, checking things out, perhaps doing a basic Facebook page and Twitter feed. For 5 to10 hours, you can be a “content provider”– writing a blog or doing podcasts. And at 10 to 20 hours per week, you’re a full-fledged “community director” – someone who undertakes online projects that are bigger and more sophisticated than simple blogs. (A recent Neilsen report found that Internet users spent an average of 6.7 hours per week online.)
This is probably a conservative estimate at the heavy usage end. While the following estimate is about institutional rather than individual use, Amber Nasland’s article Social Media Time Management: Resource Allocation (in Social Media Today) suggests a pretty significant investment is needed to run a social media program. She forecasts 4 and 9 full time equivalents to cover the spectrum of listening, engaging, and measuring. That’s between 150 and 337.5 hours per week.
This is probably a conservative estimate at the heavy usage end. While the following estimate is about institutional rather than individual use, Amber Nasland’s article Social Media Time Management: Resource Allocation (in Social Media Today) suggests a pretty significant investment is needed to run a social media program. She forecasts 4 and 9 full time equivalents to cover the spectrum of listening, engaging, and measuring. That’s between 150 and 337.5 hours per week.
Is it television watching (as one would probably think)? Apparently not. The same recent Nielsen report found that television viewing time has actually risen – to about 140 hours and 20 minutes per month in the U.S. That’s about 35 hours per week or 5 hours per day. (People are also spending about 3 and a half hours per month watching videos online.) It represents a marked and fairly steady increase over the last 20 years.
What about reading books? According to a 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, book reading is indeed in decline. Fewer than half of Americans over 18 read ANY novels, short stories, plays or poetry. It found that Americans between 15 and 24 spent about 7 to 10 minutes a day on voluntary reading. (That’s about a half hour or so a week – compared with 35 for TV.)
What is being achieved in this time?
Since most of this blog is devoted in some form to exploring this issue, just a few questions rather than conclusions. Is social media making people smarter? Is reading online doing for us what reading books does? (That same Nielsen report says that, while internet use rises, literacy scores fall. Both writing and reading scores correlate directly to amount of time spent reading books for fun. As of 2006, less than one third of high school seniors in the U.S. were found to read proficiently – compare with 40 per cent in 1992.)
What about our experience of time?
A huge question – but some quick observations:
1. Social media compresses time. In the SM world there is no waiting. There is no night and day. There is no rest. One is always on, always available, always there. Immediacy is taken for granted. Email is a generation old because it doesn’t allow you to connect instantly. It doesn’t tell you whether your contact is there, ready, instantaneous. Time is obliterated. Gratification is instant. If you can’t get it done in minutes, it’s not worth doing. (This blog post is way too long.)
2. Social media accelerates time. Because all time is shared and social, the need to stay in touch just to keep up with the events of one’s community mean that there is no rest, that a day away from a computer can actually feel like weeks.
3. Social media flattens time. In the Web 2.0 world, the world of constant beta where there are no phases, no stages, but constant and consistent improvement, waiting becomes unacceptable. Time is no longer seen as divided into periods. There is no first and second. There is only now.
So much more to think about here. But for now I’m out of time. And so are you.
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