Conversations with Users

The previous two sections examined how businesses exploit Facebook to augment their own visibility as well as take advantage of the visibility of users. A third approach fuses these two in a way that facilitates a long–term engagement with the site's user base. Some businesses dovetail their own visibility with that of users as part of a broader social media strategy. Industry literature touts this approach as a paradigm shift in terms of market relations. Internet business guru Don Tapscott suggests to businesses: "Don't focus on your customers – engage them. Turn them into prosumers of your goods and services. Young people want to co-innovate with you. Let them customize your value."  As social media have historically not been used to this end, research needs to examine the kinds of relations businesses are seeking with clients/users as well as how personal information on social networking sites contributes to these conversations.

Both industry literature and respondents emphasize two–way communication and engagement as opposed to broadcasting. This resonates with Andrejevic's description of mass–customization, where user input is presented as empowering consumers but clearly benefiting telecoms and other businesses. Yet the kinds of engagements imagined and attempted through social media are diffuse. These developments can bring a democratization of visibility. But they can also optimize businesses' exploitation of social media. Popular literature describes this as empowering for individuals in their relation to businesses. Shirky claims these tools allow users to voice their complaints, make suggestions, and be less removed from the production process. These features are not inherently problematic, but they can be configured by businesses to maintain an exploitative relation vis-à-vis their user base. In particular, they enable unpaid labor by further extracting value from users.

A conversation–based engagement presupposes users want to engage directly with businesses on Facebook. Sometimes users welcome a corporate presence on Facebook. In other instances, their presence marks a privacy violation. Joana, who is developing a Facebook presence for a brand she represents, is concerned with whether or not she should announce herself as officially tied to that brand. For these reasons, many businesses prefer to remain covert on Facebook. Yet Ben contends that users value businesses that are visible and willing to converse. This strategy is deemed effective when coping with negative feedback about a brand or product:

I think people just want to be heard, and if you are prepared to listen to people and if again (...) [m]ost people will stop at that point. At that point, people will be like, 'You know what, okay. At least they are trying.'

Activity on social media often has multiple benefits. Joana describes the returns she was experiencing when building a significant presence on Facebook:

We're getting really marketplace information like we're getting consumer feedback pretty much first hand if we can see those comments, and also it becomes really word of mouth marketing at some point when people are reading each others' comments and commenting on each other.

Optimized social media engagement combines the collection of market information with viral promotions and advertising. It combines the strategic advantages of radical transparency and listening for businesses.

Respondents claim Facebook is optimized for maintaining connections with users, which means exercising caution when promoting business content. Corey favors a conversation–based approach to Facebook, noting those who bombard their audience with content are punished when they lose that audience. Instead, he suggests businesses need to learn about their market by watching and strategically engaging with it online. Marc echoes the idea that Facebook can foster long–term relations with clients, as users find that mutual visibility to be less intrusive, thus leading to a richer engagement on their part.

The conversational approach resonates with the way application developers build their products. Developers make perpetual revisions to their products based on in-game and external feedback generated by their users. They watch over and listen to users and respond to this information by improving their product. Likewise, businesses revise corporate strategies based on information garnered from users. In terms of how Facebook shapes the production process, respondents claimed it helps integrate user labor. By targeting key populations and maintaining a lasting engagement with them, Facebook allows businesses to channel user input at an early stage and frequently return to these users. Damien takes advantage of user activity in public discussions to add value when developing and revising products. This approach harnesses user input to the benefit of the company. Martin echoes this approach:

We often launch an application before it's completely perfect and then fix it as it goes. We have an "always in beta" kind of mindset. Again, spending two years developing an application and then releasing it, it's better to just get something out there, watch your customers, talk to them about how to make the game more fun, and then bring those changes in as it goes. It's pretty interesting and fun that way. Sort of a ready–fire–aim approach.

Here, a conversational approach fits with a development cycle modeled after Facebook's own way of operating, as ongoing revisions are based on user visibility.

Both Facebook and developers are able to closely watch user behavior on the site, as well as the complaints and recommendations they broadcast. They are able to modify their services based on what they know about users. Respondents suggest the optimal way to use social media for some businesses is to selectively target a group or population, gather the information they broadcast, and eventually converse with them in a strategic manner. In particular, respondents encourage users to think of social media spaces like pages and groups as belonging to users themselves. In the case of application developers, maintaining close relations with users enables them to receive feedback to improve their products, all while giving the impression they are committed to keeping users satisfied:

But players have really helped us to develop the games. They're saying, 'Oh my god, wouldn't it be cool if you did this?' And we're like, 'Wow, that would be really cool.' And then we do it, and players like it. So they are actually helping to design the games themselves, and what better way to get people's interest and potentially to get them to spend than have them as a co-designer? (Martin)

Businesses on Facebook are able to exploit users by collecting feedback from them. This relates to the notion that Facebook is more like an enclosure than a conventional database and that it is able to gather a wider range of input, including suggestions to make products and services more valuable. This is a consequence of users increasingly living their lives in these enclosures. Respondents favor the visibility of users, citing that being able to identify them leads to a more disciplined user and more valuable data. For Damien, this is "the flip side of getting rid of the anonymity: the quality of conversation goes up."

A conversational approach to market surveillance is informed by users' familiarity with interpersonal visibility on social media. Respondents suggest that users are more comfortable making their lives public to businesses if they feel a sense of reciprocation. Corporations manage their presence on Facebook through employees who use peer-to-peer sociality with a target audience. Based on the descriptions offered above, this approach resembles Dallas Smythe's understanding of audience labor. As industry literature describes a shift from an attention economy to an engagement economy, audience labor involves an active construction of goods and services by unpaid laborers. This suggests a personal information economy goes beyond surveillance in taking advantage of this connection to enroll users into the production process.