Social Media Surveillance and Visibility
Watching and Listening to Users
While maintaining transparency on social media is seen as an effective strategy, it is also an approach that must be performed tactfully for the sake of maintaining a good reputation. Another key strategy for social media - one with fewer opportunities for downfalls – is to watch over users. As Facebook and other social media are a vast and accessible source of personal information, a lot of industry literature recommends that businesses pay attention to this. Following Li and Bernoff: "Consumers in the groundswell are leaving clues about their opinions, positive and negative, on a daily or hourly basis." Li and Bernoff recommend that businesses 'listen' to social media in order to: find out how customers interpret their brands, obtain a high–resolution and constantly updated understanding of the market, invest less capital for better feedback, identify key influencers in social media, effectively identify and manage public relation crises, and generate new product and marketing ideas.
Businesses can access user content on their profiles. They can also develop a page that not only centralizes relevant content but also provides additional analytics. They may also rely on detailed feedback offered by Facebook's advertising services. Finally, they may rely on external social media services like Radian6 (http://www.radian6.com/) or Reputation.com (http://www.reputation.com/). Based on the access that any of these entry points offers to nearly one billion users, Marc goes so far as to describe Facebook as a source of "unlimited information."
Respondents described their engagement on Facebook as if they were dwelling in these spaces rather than owning them. This makes sense as business users do not have more claims over Facebook than individual users. Yet this is not to suggest businesses are identical to Michel de Certeau's tacticians, who dwell precariously in borrowed spaces and have only marginal control over these spaces. Susan suggests Facebook is used as a site for tactics rather than strategies. When asked to elaborate on her definitions of these terms, she offers the following: "The strategy is the overall plan; what are you trying to do? And the tactic is how are you going to go about doing it." While businesses may experience some precariousness by not having complete control and ownership of social media, their presence in these spaces is used to augment brands and products they own and control. The lack of immediate control over Facebook is offset by the ability to have a more pointed engagement with the site. Businesses may employ tactics based on watching and listening to users without any responsibility toward this group.
When asked why they chose to collect information through Facebook, respondents point to its methodological advantages. Jared's radio station audience uploads personal information on Facebook that does not appear elsewhere, for example, if they are coping with a death in the family. While the immediate market value of this information is difficult to ascertain, it supplements a conventional way of understanding an audience in a comparatively risk–free manner.
Other respondents collect information on Facebook because it is much cheaper than the alternatives. Market research in particular, is seen as prohibitive and lengthy compared to social media:
Market research is very, very expensive, so for us to get an Ipsos study done costs a lot of money and involves a lot of lengthy phone calls and interviews and a lot of compilation of data, and this would be just another avenue of hearing consumers' comments and, you know, first hand, really. (Joana)
Not only is market research riddled with logistical issues of cost and time, but the above quote also frames that process as burdensome compared to first-hand accounts. Joana goes on to suggest that Facebook leads to more authentic information, as it does not rely on leading questions. This is a fair assessment, as users do not consider Facebook to be a questionnaire. For Wade, Facebook is not an explicit site of inquiry. He is fine with this, as he discredits users' ability to self–report:
What I think is even more important than where the criticism happens is being able to observe the actual behavior. So, you know, it's often true that people will tell you that they want one thing, or they do something one way, but they do it another. As subjects, humans are actually poor at self–reporting. (...) I think if you own the social network or the social application, and you have good measures and analytics on the back end, you've really got this amazing toolset because you can look at not just what people say but what they do and where the delta is between those two things.
This suggests the real value of Facebook's data will come from emerging analytics to process it. Facebook's potential for behavioral assessment is unclear. However, this has been a key ambition for market surveillance. Behavioral scrutiny sorts users based on their engagement with brands, their purchase histories, and other transactional data. By generating data about social ties as well as operating in a prolonged engagement with users, Facebook is regarded as offering better insight into consumer behavior. Wade underscores the importance of the ownership of new media, including social media databases.
For respondents developing applications for Facebook, their software enables a rich set of opportunities to watch over users. On the one hand, they are able to monitor user activity within the application. This allows developers to see what features are popular as well as manage vulnerabilities and potential exploits. But they also benefit from discussion groups elsewhere on the site. This suggests developers not only have access to opinions voiced by users but can also monitor their behavior on these services:
If we watch them play our game and we know they're spending, you know, on a certain stage, we're like, 'Ok, Stage five seems to be where a higher percentage of people spend. Why is that?' And then we'll look into their behavior on the game itself, but that's not the case; that has nothing to do with their Facebook accounts. That just has to do with how they're playing our game as a player. (Martin)
The reliance on user-generated content is also regarded as a way to side–step methodological tools in order to reach user perspectives. Jared described how Facebook enabled them to access photos their listeners would take at events the radio station would host. These photos allowed the respondent to "understand what they're looking at" and "allow us to see it from their eyes too." While Facebook is clearly a mediating link between businesses and users, the fact that it is not an explicit service for this end suggests it can provide a more intimate connection to a user base. The fact that businesses can collect information before engaging with users suggests it provides the former with a strategic advantage over the latter. Marc uses this advantage to gain leverage over potential clients:
The more information you have, the more leverage you have when it comes to making your pitch. That's one thing I've realized. And that's what I like about the social networks; it's because it's a gateway for me to, kind of, look into their lives and figure out what they like and we have in common, you know, things I can bring up to build rapport when it comes to our phone conversation.
Here user-generated content is valued for its ability to understand markets and generate sales. This is not a new feature of marketplace surveillance, yet Facebook's ability to effortlessly locate a broad range of biographical and relational details about any single person is noteworthy. Indeed, it marks a more precise resolution, where marketers and sales staff can search both abstract categories and key individuals. This also suggests services like Facebook can be used to establish trust with clients in a way that may violate personal boundaries. This is not surprising, as the violation of such boundaries remains a pressing concern for social media users.
While polling and market research services are being made redundant by social media, Liane believes it is more likely that the two would enter into a partnership that would enhance the scope of the former while providing a way for the latter to monetize their content. On the heels of an announcement that Facebook developed analytics to track moods and emotions online, she states:
Maybe this is a better way of monetizing Facebook is to go out, speak, and share your research with research organizations. I'm sure Gallup would enter into an interesting partnership, and Gallup sure figured out how to get money out of research.
Listening as a strategy allows businesses to easily collect information about their clients through their online presence. User visibility in this context is often motivated by reasons external to the business, such as peer–to–peer sociality. Yet businesses gain from interpersonal scrutiny by covertly accessing that information. While users may be aware this is going on, they do not know exactly what information is collected. Jared suggests users benefit from this visibility in that they can voice their opinions. Yet he also acknowledges his radio station exploits this visibility to develop its market. While users may enjoy intrinsic rewards through social media, businesses enjoy extrinsic, monetary rewards. Even in the absence of a multitude of ways to monetize Facebook, the costs associated are so low that listening on social media seems like a low–risk strategy.