Webtropic

A few minutes ago I saw in a tweet of Steve Rubel that Charlene Li is going to deliver a webminar by the end of this month. Thinking of Charlene Li, my mind jumped to her book, Groundswell, and then to the Social Technographics methodology of classifying social media participants (for those not familiar with technographics, look at this short presentation).

Where do twitter users stand in this frame?

Are they Creators? Yes, if they post original thoughts or emotions or pieces of information that they eyewitness and are worth of sharing.

But then, if they reply to other users that do the above,  they are Critics also.

What about link sharing in twitter, or retweeting or favoring the tweets of others? Surely, these users could be classified as Collectors.

Let’s not forget that Twitter is a social network in itself. It is a social network in its purest, simplest and stripped down form. So ALL twitter users are somehow Joiners.

Now, recollect on  how  many tweets do you react upon and what percentage of the tweets of your social graph, belong to you. Most people’s contribution and participation can be considered insignificant when compared to their social graph’s aggregate activity. What are they then? Mostly Spectators.

Last:  I am sure you are familiar with those users that engage for a period of time and then disappear, sometimes even deleting their accounts, sometimes simply abstaining from twitter usage. Inactives!

I understand that a similar line of thought can be applied to most social media.  Yet, no other medium offers such a balanced distribution of roles. Not roles of different people, but roles of the same people in different moments.

Now, how would that fit in the technographics analysis? Beats me! You?