Social Share – Andy Havens

Andy Havens adds a useful term to our vocabulary. social share. or as he defines it:

Social share: the relative importance of participation in a group to a member of that group — or association of one group to another group — as measured by activities that involve resources or influence.

Then he provides a long explanation. Andy says you only have so many best friends, favorite foods, etc. for the terms to be meaningful. I agree so far and am reminded of the LinkedIn people who have over 7,000 friends and want to add me to their list. One was even called himself “your LinkedIn Daddy,” The ony point I disagree is the blog list where he says that ones over 30 he ignores. I am very guilty here but I just keep adding new ones that I like. With over two years of blogging I am pleased that there are over 30. I add ones that I want a quick reference to sine I am using my blog for my personal knowledge management system. I even added Andy,s blog, Tinker X, as there is good stuff there.

Comments

[Andy Havens]

Bill: Thanks for the comment/pointer and the link. Since you added my blog to your blog list, I can hardly complain, can I ; )

One question I've been pondering since I posted this, and maybe your readers can help me sort it out in my head. And that's the difference between what would be called (in monetary terms) "market share" and "share of wallet."

As I went back over my post, I realized that what I was defining was the relative importance of *participation* to a member. Which is more like "share of wallet" in economic terms; i.e., how much of my money do I spend on a particular item, type of purchase, etc. Whereas "market share" is how much aggregate purchasing is made in a category.

So... should my original defintion actually be "share of participation" or some such? Maybe "share of life?" With "social share" being the term reserved for the combined affiliation of everyone in a particular sphere?

I may have to go back and edit my own new terminology... Dang.

[Bill Ives]

Andy - Thanks for your comment. Have you read davenport's Attention Economy? It addressed some of these issues a few years ago but not so much in terms of web participation. You make a ggod point about share of wallet but then there is also the concept of mind share which is more of an individual thing and supports your original term. Bill

[Andy Havens]

Bill: I think that mind share, market share and social share are all going to occupy a "balanced triangle" we'll have to consider in some kind of business/web 2.0 setting. For a long time, we didn't really know/care about mindshare, per se. If you didn't buy (and do it *now*), the issue of reaching people wasn't considered important on its own. The idea of long-term brand touch-points being a strength wasn't considered important. Market share was all that mattered. With time, we've come to understand that mind share is incredibly important, even if it doesn't lead immediately to market share. You look at a company like Apple, who has managed (several times) to translate a mind share advantage into successful product launches, despite never having had a market share advantage, until the iPod came along. Had they not sustained that mind share marketing mentality, they would never have been able to, eventually, made a go of the iPod.

I think that we'll see parallel (yet much different) kinds of stuff (ooh! such a precise word, "stuff") going on with "social share." Where a particular company, platform, device, Web site, idea, etc. isn't, at first, very profitable, or even well known... but has such a hold on the time and attention and behavior of a set of people that it becomes the de rigeur leader in its category.