Team project 1 - Team Traditional Media

Research object

 

Our team picked companies from the field of 'traditional media' to be the objects of research. The companies were The Guardian (newspaper), USA Today (newspaper), National Geographic (monthly magazine), MegaStar FM (radio) and Televisió de Catalunya (TV).

The term 'traditional media' refers to print, tv and radio media.

Research questions

 

Our team's research questions focused on how the 'traditional media' companies have adapted to the world of social media. Do they have a Facebook page? Twitter account? Instagram? Pinterest? Something else?What type of content gets to be shared there: Everything? Only big news/important content? Do they share with automation (via RSS feed etc.) or do they actually manage different accounts?

Does “the brand” communicate with the followers? Do they share for example the Twitter accounts of their staff there (for example in the end of an article “follow John Doe @johndoe”)?

How we did it

 

We tried to find the social media platforms of the chosen brands and see how they use the potential of the certain service.

Discussion and the gathering of all material were done in Google Doc.

The end result is this blog post.

What we found

 

USA Today

 

USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded in 1982.

USA Today use social media to a great extent, they have 1,6 million followers on Facebook and they even have specialised paged for different subjects. They use Twitter heavily, over 1 million followers, 39 different Twitter accounts for different subjects (like sports, style…) over 100 reporter of Twitter (whaaaat!). The reporters are able to use Twitter to bring the articles right in front of the readers and ask questions and create discussion. They don’t use any personal identities on their tweets (probably better so as there are so many reporters) but it seems that they don’t use automation, since the tweets aren’t just the beginning of the article.The activity on Facebook seems to differ from the activity on Twitter - there are a lot of “non-sense” stuff too, like competitions and stuff, but the discussion in very active on Facebook as well! There are a lot of commenting going on from the readers.

https://twitter.com/USATODAY

https://www.facebook.com/usatoday

They also use Foursquare and Gowalla and link them to their travelling pages and “where to visit”-pages, so that people who visit those places, can check in and get points etc.

They also use blogs, which I found interesting, since I haven’t seen such thing at least in Finland - have you guys? There are blogs about every current issue on the newspaper and the blogs go deeper into the subjects.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/blog-index.htm

Those blogs are connected to Twitter and they have feeds to follow, there’s everything from Idols to politics and sports.

All in all, USA Today seems to have the social media field well in grasp - they are very active and versitile!

National Geographic

 

National geographic is a famous magazine about photograph of natural or human being. They are using SNS instagram that specialized at posting picture. And they have 4,455,242 followers. They post nice pictures everyday and it makes followers easy to approach to their magazine.

 

I found the press which is active in using SNS media. AP News. They have accounts on twitter, facebook and youtube. And they also have a lot of followers each platform. Especially on facebook, AP News’s wall is used as a place for debate. People suggest their own opinions by comments. So we can see various view of person on articles that AP posted. I think it is the successful example of using social media in traditional media.  

 

Megastar FM

 

MegaStar Fm is a quite new spanish radio station which belongs to COPE, a really important radio group created in 1980. It started to broadcast in September 2014 and their philosophy is to create a new channel addressed to young people, full of energy and nonchalance, but mostly with their own style and different from anything else.

The most remarkable thing is that they have been working really hard in the online development both on the website and the social network. They have also developed an app for smartphones and I want to stress it’s quite cool.

When you open it the music they are broadcasting begins to play, if you press one button you can share via SMS, mail, Facebook and Twitter the song. It has another option where you can see the lyrics of the song played like a karaoke. Finally, you can send tweets directly to @MegaStarFM their Twitter account.

Concerning to their Facebook page I have to say that they only have 2227 followers but I think it’s because I have been promoting more Twitter. They don’t upload content everyday so that can be the reason. They post some funny videos and video clips but not relevant information.

Nevertheless their main channel to be in contact with their listeners is via Twitter, they retweet constantly their tweets, which is a good way to retain them because Twitter users like to be seen, especially through famous users. Currently they have 25,261 followers but increasing every day. It is a channel to organize contests and to make people to participate in their interactive programme during the morning and the afternoon.

Finally, their website is really similar to the application. A really simple design, based on their Twitter activity being updated constantly. It also has a karaoke and some videos of the events they organize around Spain.

To sum up, MegaStar is a really interactive media basing their activity and schedule on their listeners. So they are the most important aspect and everything revolves around them. Despite is a quite new radio station I consider they are doing their work really good because they are gaining followers quite fast. 

 

Televisio de Catalonya 

 

This is the public tv channel from Catalonia (Its capital is Barcelona). It’s very curious to realize that a television only available for seven and a half million people has the same amount of followers in Facebook than the public tv channel from Spain: Televisión Española (TVE), available for more than 47 million people.

TV3 started their broadcasts in 1983, seven years after the dictatorship in Spain finished. There was a general feeling of making and building a television adapted to the catalans, the catalan language and Catalonia’s folklore. And they managed to do it.

Since the beginnings, TV3 was a very modern and advanced channel if we consider the fact that was not a public television from Spain. It soon had its own news, series and programs. All of them, in Catalan.

But apart form the basic and usual programming that offered, it soon started to introduce different events that were not seen until then, and even less in an Autonomic television. For instance, in 1992 it started a special program broadcasted every year, that is only around 12 hours long and it tries to collect donations for different illnesses. It mobilises thousands of people not only donating but also taking part in the activities that are organized all over the country (Catalonia).

In this event for example, the social networks always play a very important role. It is obvious that the main distributor of the information is the tv channel itself, but thanks to Twitter or Facebook it is very easy to get to many people who may not be watching tv.

As any other company who joins a social network, in the beginning there were hardly any likes, followers or people commenting on the Facebook page, however, it is now one of the most followed media companies in the whole country. A reason that helped this to happen was the interactivity there has always been between the tv channel and the audience not only in the programs but also and even more in the social networks. It is pretty sure that every time that there is a post on Facebook, it tries to involve people by commenting and giving their opinion. By doing this they can also find a way to know and maybe apply to their programming schedule what the audience thinks or wants.

Despite the fact that many of the posts (not even in Facebook but also on Twitter) are about news or future programming, there’s an important part in which we find conversations and comments between the audience and the tv channel, as well as questions about how much did the audience liked an already emitted program. That creates a very friendly and reliable environment between both the spectators and the professionals. And at the same time, the audience of the channel increases by winning the confidence of people… (or at least, that’s what they try to do).

All in all, I think TV3 is a very good example of a modern tv channel, not only because of the diversity of programming that offers but also for the quality they have, and how the audience relies on it day after day. Basically it is a channel to be proud of and even more if we have in mind that is only subsidized and seen by a 15% of the total population of Spain but fights equally to the rest of tv channels of the country.

The Guardian

The Guardian is a British national daily newspaper. Founded in 1821, it was known as The Manchester Guardian until 1959. From its beginnings as a local paper it has grown into a national paper associated with a complex organisational structure and an international multimedia and web presence. It has two online outlets based outside the United Kingdom, Guardian Australia and Guardian US.

”The Guardian has become the world's third most read newspaper website, with 30.4 million readers in June 2012, according to industry analyst ComScore.” [http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/8]

The Guardian is known for its involvement in Twitter. According to twittercounter.com, The Guardian's Twitter account has 2 058 374 followers (checked 28.3.) and the account follows 1071 'tweeters'.

It's hard to get exact time the account has been founded but twittercounter.com has been tracking their statistics since 26^th of September 2008.

The Guardian's @guardian account seems to share all their new articles published on their website by automation. However, they have founded several other accounts for specific genres (see picture below).

There are 24 Twitter accounts with the certificate tap that connect to The Guardian. The accounts share specific news from topics such as politics, lifestyle, films and so on. There are, however, more accounts that seem to use The Guardian's G logo but don't have the certificate tap on them.

The Guardian's journalists are known to be pro-social media type. One can find many of their journalists, editors and other staff by searching 'Guardian' Twitter accounts.

As the ”brand” doesn't seem to communicate with the other users on Twitter, the employees do. They use Twitter a lot for crowdsourcing and discussing about the articles they've written or shared.

Paul Lewis, working for Guardian US now, has been the pioneer of using Twitter for journalistic purposes. Back in 2011, he used Twitter to locate events during the riots of London. He later collected tweets and other material shared on social media and gathered a data package of them, creating a timeline of the events.

The Guardian's official account has 26 055 followers and 360 posts. Instagram has yet to be taken advantage of by traditional media, and the amount of posts tells that even The Guardian isn't using Instagram with its full potential.

The Guardian has pinned 562 times. They have categories from 'behind the scenes' to infographics and themes such as 'vintage'.

The Guardian's Pinterest account is being followed by 4807 users. They follow 59 accounts.

Guardian has accounts similarly to Twitter. They have multiple pages for certain topics.

Their main page has almost 1,9 million likes. 

Team Members

Sami Lindfors

Noora Tolvanen

Hyerim Kwon

Adriana Gil

Albert Arrabal

Music Festivals & Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA - MUSIC FESTIVALS

Using of the social media channels in FIB, Arenal Sound, Rock en Seine and Ilosaarirock

0. TEAM MEMBERS

Alba Cid Blanco

Sofia Esteve Santonja

Esteban Izquierdo Mora

Audrey Ramos

Sami Juntunen

Riikka Uhmavaara

1. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Our research topic was social media usage in music festivals and music festival marketing. Our goal was to understand how social media channels are used and do the channels, or the use of these channels differ depending on the country or size of the festival. We also wanted to find out which social media channels appear to be most useful for music festivals and why.

On this research we also tried to understand if using social media in marketing is essential for music festivals these days, or are some of the channels unnecessary or lack value otherwise. We were interested in finding out if social media is used to enhance customer’s experience by adding social interaction and community-building.

Social media as a marketing tool was another side we looked into. In this research we have tried to understand music festival’s marketing strategies by analyzing their social media behaviour and used platforms. We wanted to find out if these platforms were improving their marketing strategy and how the usage of social media differs between an on-going festival and a festival that is not currently on progress.

2. HOW WE DID IT

We started our research by working on Google documents and discussing about our own interests and wishes for this group project. After coming up with first ideas and guidelines for research questions, we moved our working platform to Facebook where we felt communicating and co-operation was easier.

We decided to research a few festivals and their social media usage. This research consisted of analyzing music festivals and their appearance in social media channels by trying to find answers to our research questions. We separated our work so that some of us did the research and one the final conclusions and analysis of found information. This we felt was most clear for all. There was communication throughout the project.

 
3. WHAT WE FOUND

Music festivals these days seem to use social media as their main marketing tool and marketing strategy. Music festivals are thought to be social and interactive events, that usually want to give customers the feeling of community. This is why social media and community-building seem to have a big part in many music festivals’ marketing strategy.

3.1. Festival Internation of Benicàssim

Social Media channels are essential for the Festival International of Benicàssim existence. There are a perfect way to interact with its public throughout the year and get to know people likes but, above all, the FIB employs its social media channels as a marketing tool, promoting itself and generating its own brand.

The social media channel most used by the Festival Internacional de Benicassim is, as usual, Facebook. In it, the festival publish all kind of contents during the year and also while the festival is on progress. The festival uses Facebook as a way to promote the invited artist to the festival publishing news about them or simply songs and videos. It is also used for own promotion (merchandising…) and to give interest and important information (ticket prizes, schedules…). We can say that Facebook is more important and used that the festival website because of his capacity to be in continuous flow.

As the other big social media channel, The FIB’s Twitter is not very exploited, acting as a complementary of Facebook used to publishing FB posts apart from to retweeting people comments. Of note is the continued use of English in both Twitter and Facebook because of the large concentration of English public, being its principal target.

A different and clever way of exploiting the social networks apart from the usuals Facebook and Twitter are the compilation of pictures, music and videos that the Fib have intelligently gathered between Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr and Youtube.

Another distinguish way that the FIB has implant in its social media channels are some annual promotions such as the viral application “Crea tu single” (“Make you own single”) or the free tickets for 16 bloggers and community managers of the 16 webs more visited in Internet in collaboration with the Generalitat Valenciana where the festival is hosted.

Finally, mention a social media accident that the Festival has suffered although in the end it turned as another way of promotion in the social network. The last year the poster of the festival (in which the artists are announced and almost the best kept secret) was filtered in the net and infinitely shared. The FIB neither confirmed nor denied the news becoming trending topic, which is always good.

Apart from that, normally there is a lack of proposals that encourage user interaction and other strategies that could take more advantages of its social media leaving the FIB as a secondary spaniard festival in social media use behind the Arenal Sound.

3.2. Rock en Seine

This festival is one of the most famous in France. In January 2014 it was the 4th french festival with the most fans on Facebook (82 525 fans, a growth of 35,16%) and the 1st french festival with the most followers on twitter (20 861, a growth of 62%)

The target group is the same on the website and on the social medias, young people less than 35 years old. In the website frontpage there is a “current events”, in which they put link of social media channels, in order Facebook, Twitter and then Instagram.

Facebook is the social media the most used by festivals. Myspace is totally dropped. Google+ is not really used a lot but it could be more important is the near future because of the way publications are referenced.  On instagram, they just put pictures of the staff not that much information or breaking news. On Twitter they post similar things than on Facebook, music videos or artists programmed, news about offers, ticket, new artists.  

This festival shares videos on Youtube, Dailymotion and Vimeo and they share pictures on instagram (1415 followers), flickr (since 2006, 69 members, 898 pictures), pinterest (11 paintings, 200 pins)

Rock en seine is also active on spotify with a playlist with artists per year and they have an app for smartphone.

When the festival is in progress, they put videos of artists and some comment about lives. When the festival is not in progress, like in christmass, they do advertising about “christmas pack” when tickets for 3 days are less expensive but you don’t know the programmation yet. They don’t post things except that when the festival is not in progress.

These platform, by using video clips, are more attractive than simple advertising in the street and less aggressive than radio. In your timeline you see videos of artists who are going to play in the festival and you can choose if you want to discover it or not. If you like it, it makes you wanna go to the festival.

3.3. Arenal Sound
Just three years after the starting of the Arenal Sound, it has already been the most crowded Spanish music festival, and the one that has most followers in its facebook page. It is characterized by the mixture between Spanish and international groups, and it mostly attracts young Spanish people. That’s why, the posts in the different social media channels are written in Spanish and also in a very lighthearted language, which, on one hand, stops the international marketing, and on the other, seems to be very successful among young people.

Facebook is from far the Social Media most used by the Arenal Sound. It’s use by the festival as a way to build the consumers loyalty, to descript the different aspects of the Festival and as an advertising tool. So, the Arenal Sound uses most of its marketing strategies through this social platform. Specially, posting videos of last editions of the festival, which creates future expectations, providing information about the festival and posting videoclips and news of the bands performing in the festival. But the most important marketing strategy used by the Arenal Sound in Facebook, is the “Sounders al abordaje” contest. The contest challenge each Monday people to achieve the highest amount of crew members (friends in facebook) for their ship. This allows a high interaction between consumers and the Festival, reinforcing the community building made by it, which has a name for their own participants: “Sounders”.  

The use of the other Social Media Platforms is quite low compared with Facebook. Actually, twitter, where it has just achieved 42.000 followers (compared with the 335.000 of Facebok), and it has now converted in just a complement of Facebook. Other platforms such as Kedin or Daily Motion, has a very poor amount of followers. Nevertheless, is important to mention that the festival use this social media channels to post videos of the last editions, and, contrary to facebook, they don’t disappear after posting more posts, so the followers can find them in an easier way.

Finally it’s also important to mention the Spotify list made by the festival, which is a very practical thing for the people attending the festival, as it contains the most popular songs of each group performing. In that way, people can easily find and listen a quick summary of the festival music. Finally, it’s also interesting to name the use of Instagram as way to create future expectations, as people can see some amazing pictures of the Festival, and probably would like to go.

3.4 Ilosaarirock

Ilosaarirock is one of the oldest rockfestivals in Finland. The festival has an image of being a real musiclovers festival with loads of new artists and only a few major acts. It is also among the most followed festivals in Finland with almost 26 000 likes. The festival and all the related sites are mostly in finnish and the organization is not aiming their activities outside Finland.

Ilosaarirock-organization is active all year in the social media. They announce new signings via their facebook- and twitter profiles, arrange competitions, inform about new happenings around the festival, relay messages from their partners and sponsors and even use facebook to recruit voluntary workers to the festival.  

In addition to these almost standard new media outlets, they have their own youtube-channel and Instagram-account and even an app for IOS and Android.

Facebook is clearly to main outlet and the organizers use it quite effectively and frequently with long updates and lot of information. Twitter is more fast paced and is used more for ”call-to-action” type of messages. Instagram is also active all around the year, but it really comes alive during the festival weekend. Youtube is not very active, but the content is interesting for those people coming to the festival. The app is designed to be used during the festival with updates on what is happening right now and schedules and artist profiles.

There is a clear plan of how they use social media and understanding how to be effective. Facebook-updates have some relative information about the festival, it is not just doing an update because it has to be done. They are able to create interesting content to the social media during the not-so-busy months but during the summer leading to the festival updates are not so frequent and is seems that there is no time to create quality content. Instagram is an exception, for example, during the 2013 festival there was loads of photos published every day of the festival and on the facebook there was only five or six updates during the weekend. As the festival is mainly run with voluntary workforce it is clear that there is no resources for creating editorial content on facebook.

The use of social media by the Ilosaarirock-organization is not exceptional and it does not differ from other festivals, the same channels and methods are being used, but somehow I can relate more to them than I do to the other festivals. Perhaps this is a reflection from my own very positive experiences from the festival. So the real life affects to the perception of the social media.

3.5 Tomorrowland

This electronic music festival is one of the most famous around all the world. It takes place in Boom (Belgium) 32 kilometers north of Brussels in July. With more than 5.000.000 fans in Facebook and it has 575K followers in Twitter.

The most social place use is YouTube, after every festival they always upload an Aftermovie, in this video you can see how Tomorrowland was that year, which music they had played and the decoration of the festival. The Aftermovie of 2013 was watched for more than 58.000.000 times. It is the way they show us the festival and the way that they try to sell it.

In twitter they post every single day videos of the DJ that are going to go the electronic festival the next year and when the tickets are going to be sold, because when they open the webpage to sell the tickets it is sold out in just 20 minutes.

Also, the use too much Facebook to uploads the news of the festival and let us know when it is going to take place. Furthermore they use Instagram too for posting images and videos of the festival.

The last festival they set an online platform for watching in streaming (real time) the festival, because there are many people who could not get the tickets.

4. CONCLUSIONS

According to our research it is quite clear that Facebook is still thought as the most important social media channel. Music festivals use it to promote their events and spread information, but also to interact with customers and add other social value. It is considered most useful tool for allround marketing, and is also a good way to reach a majority of customers.

Even though Facebook is the main social media channel, a lot of other channels have become important in music festival community-building and marketing as well. Twitter along Facebook seems to be used for informative reasons whereas Youtube, Spotify and Instagram have different values for users.

Adding social interaction and asking customers to participate is considered a useful tool for marketing. Example Instagram is not a tool festival organizers necessarily actively use for marketing, but the social media users create the content themselves.

For a music festival it is important to have social media coverage and have content that people are willing to share. There are a lot of smaller social media channels that are used in various creative ways, but seems like Facebook is still the main channel to focus on. Spotify has a clear importance in social media marketing of music festivals and seem to be used with most music festivals today. Using social media in marketing is interesting, because it doesn’t seem to matter what is the size or location of the festival, the marketing tools and strategies appear to be alike.

5. SOURCES
http://open.spotify.com/user/fiberfib

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiberfib/

http://fiberfib.tumblr.com/

https://twitter.com/fiberfib

http://instagram.com/fiberfib#

https://www.facebook.com/fibfestival?fref=ts
http://fiberfib.com/index.php/es/

http://www.pasosonline.org/Publicados/10412special/PS0412_06.pdf

http://selenus.es/index.php/2013/05/07/festivales-de-musica-redes-sociales/

http://industriamusical.es/estudio-de-festivales-espanoles-en-las-redes-sociales/

http://www.konbini.com/fr/entertainment-2/infographie-festivals-francais-reseaux-sociaux/

https://www.facebook.com/rockenseine?fref=ts

https://twitter.com/rockenseine

http://www.rockenseine.com/http://selenus.es/index.php/2013/05/07/festivales-de-musica-redes-sociales/

Chierichietti, Luisa La promoción del turismo musical: los festivales de música. PASOS Vol. 10 N. 4

http://www.ilosaarirock.fi/2014/

https://www.facebook.com/ilosaarirock

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-kwpo-OmVm65IBqpe8bBww

http://instagram.com/ilosaarirock#

https://twitter.com/Ilosaarirock

Use of Social Media by Social Media - The case of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube

It is always such a pleasure to work in an inspired team. When dividing work to one quarter each, we have each produced more than 25%. With ideas flying around and mutual support, we must have produced 50% each.
The result is our waaay more than 1-2 pages loooong report. :) It is very text-based with not so much graphical elements, except for some tables and charts.

After the team was formed, our first task was topic selection. We were three different people with three different ideas. After a well-organized voting on Google docs we have selected the topic.

Guidelines were simple: ”The voting can be simple. Each person has 6 points. You can give them to one idea, to two or to all three[1]. You cannot vote for your idea. Let's see which one wins. You can give all 6 points to one idea. Or spread points equally 2, 2, and 2. Or 4 and 2. Or like I did: 3, 2, and 1. And so on.”

Table 1: Voting for the topic

	Topic
Name	Airlines	Music	Games	Social Media
H. K.		x
Vlad Meghes	0	2	x	4
Veronika Lazareva	x	0	2	4
Sebastjan Brezovec	3	2	1	x
TOTAL	3	4	3	8

With the topic selected, we have formed the research questions and divided them among group members. After Hyerim Kwon left the group our team had three members only and each member has defined 2 research questions. Later, when Satu has joined, she added 2 more, but we decided that 7, being a magic number, should suffice.

Hope you will enjoy reading our findings.

---

[1] At the time of voting our team included H. K. who later left the team. 

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY SOCIAL MEDIA

THE CASE OF FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND YOUTUBE

Sebastjan Brezovec

Veronika Lazareva

Satu Mattila

Vlad Meghes

Research report

March 2014

EVA Social Media Course 2014

Tampere University of Applied Sciences

1      INTRODUCTION

1.1    Research objectives

The main purpose of the research is to analyze three Social Media platforms, and their activities on the Internet, as well as how do they use competitors’ platforms in content promotion and advertising. We have decided to compare the following Social Media websites: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as they represent three different community/content platforms:

• Facebook – social networking
• Twitter – micro-blogging
• YouTube – video-content sharing

The first part of the research is aimed at briefly analyzing the demographic representation on the websites, as well as the type of functions they use. This part also shows the correlation between the platforms and similarities of the content provided.

Then the overall activity on Facebook and Twitter is investigated more in depth for all three companies. This has been done in order to get the basic idea of what for and how actively do the researched companies use Social Media websites.

As for the third part, the research examines the opportunities for community building. How well is worldwide Internet trend organized and supported on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube?

Or are there no signs of any community building at all?

2      DESCRIPTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

2.1    Facebook

Facebook is an online social networking service. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users.

People on Facebook can interact with each other using the following methods:

·           Messaging (all messages are contained within single threads in a unified inbox),

·           Voice calls (live voice calls via Facebook Chat, allowing users to chat with others from all over the world; also service also allows users to leave voice messages on Facebook).

·           Video calling,

·           Following (via "Follow" button, which allows users to subscribe to public postings by the user without needing to add them as a friend).

The most distinguished feature of Facebook is its Like button, allowing users to express their appreciation of content, such as status updates, comments and media (photos, videos).

2.2    YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website that belongs to Google since 2006. The main purpose of the platform is community building around user-generated video content. It was founded on February 14, 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim. Their slogan from 2005 till 2012 was “Broadcast Yourself”. It is available in 61 language versions.

Registration is optional (Only required for certain tasks such as uploading videos, viewing flagged videos, viewing flagged comments, liking videos, adding videos to playlists and commenting on videos). It is on a third position of Alexa ranking (as on March, 2014).

2.3    Twitter

Twitter is an online social network that allows its users to communicate through messages. It is a platform that is growing constantly reaching over 200 million users on February 2013. Each user can post messages (tweets) to let their friends and other users that use Twitter, know the latest news.

The following features allow people to interact with each other, and share their news with other members:

·      Direct messaging that can be used to send a private message to another user. This can be done by adding their handle (username) to the tweet. For example if a user wants to send a private message to another user, he will have to add the receiver's username to the post in this form: @username.

·      Friend request feature is slightly different than on the other networks. Twitter uses a follow system which allows the users to see the latest tweets of the people they follow on news feed. People that follow each other are considered to be friends, not just followers.

·      Image and video sharing through tweets were added in November 2011. Until this date, images and videos could only be viewed on external websites, through the link provided in the tweet. Ever since November 2011, Twitter allows its users to view videos and images inside the Twitter website.

·      Twitter utilizes hashtags to group posts into categories, making it easier for people to follow certain interests and categories by viewing that specific hashtag page. Users who want their tweet to be shown in a specific category can add into their tweet that hashtag in the following form: #hashtag

·      The most important feature that makes Twitter different than other social networks is the fact that they allow messages to be only 140 characters long, making its users post brief and concise messages.

3      TOPIC SELECTION & RESEARCH QUESTIONS

After the team was formed, our first task was topic selection. We were three different people with three different ideas. After a well-organized voting on Google docs we have selected the topic.

Guidelines were simple: ”The voting can be simple. Each person has 6 points. You can give them to one idea, to two or to all three[1]. You cannot vote for your idea. Let's see which one wins. You can give all 6 points to one idea. Or spread points equally 2, 2, and 2. Or 4 and 2. Or like I did: 3, 2, and 1. And so on.”

Table 1: Voting for the topic

	Topic
Name	Airlines	Music	Games	Social Media
Hyerim Kwon		x
Vlad Meghes	0	2	x	4
Veronika Lazareva	x	0	2	4
Sebastjan Brezovec	3	2	1	x
TOTAL	3	4	3	8

With the topic selected, we have formed the research questions and divided them among group members. After Hyerim Kwon left the group our team had three members only and each member has defined 2 research questions. Later, when Satu has joined, she added 2 more, but we decided that 7, being a magic number, should suffice.

Research questions:

1    Who uses what? Demographic distribution on Social Media platforms?

2    How do researched companies use other Social Media platforms?

3    When were Facebook pages founded?

4    Is there any difference in the content of the Facebook page between the three Social Media companies?

5    How many Tweets on average do the researched companies produce per day (average of the last week)?

6    Can you spot the similarities and differences in the use of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube among the three companies?

7    Are there signs of community building somewhere? Is there any kind of noticeable community building in the chosen social media areas, what kind?

4      RESEARCH RESULTS

4.1       Who uses what? Demographic distribution on Social Media platforms

Table 2: Demographic distribution on Social Media platforms.

Social Media	Number of users[2]	Gender statistics[3]	Average user age[4]
Facebook	1,23 billion (29.01.2014)	Male 43% - Female 57%.	30
Twitter	243 million (05.02.2014)	Male 41% - Female 59%.	28-year-old female
YouTube	1 billion, 4 billion views per day (20.03.2014)	Male 54% - Female 46%	18 to 29

4.2       How do researched companies use other Social Media platforms?

Table 3: Social Media platforms’ used of other Social Media

Social Media	Facebook	Twitter	YouTube
Facebook	143,855,055 likes	13.6 M Followers	185,840 Subs
Twitter	11,731,854 likes	29.5 M Followers	48,655 Subs
YouTube	78,831,858 likes	40.6 M Followers	22,001,902 Subs *

            *YouTube Spotlight channel  

4.2.1     Company: Facebook

·         Facebook: Company uses their own website mostly for announcing updates, sometimes posting inspirational quotes on special days (for example, NBA Finals, International Women’s Day, MLK Day, etc.) They also share company’s news and activity pretty regularly (for example, participating in Pride 2013).

·         Twitter: Facebook uses Twitter micro-blogging platform the same way they use their official Facebook page: almost all of the tweets are promotions and announcements, sometimes reposts/retweets from Instagram (that belongs to Facebook as well). No interaction with users on an official Twitter-account.

·         YouTube: Company has pretty decent YouTube account, which they maintain quite regularly by posting videos at least twice a month. Videos on the channel are mainly tutorials on how to use Facebook mobile apps, commercials, as well as announcements and etc. All the videos are usually less than a minute long.

4.2.2     Company: Twitter

·         Twitter: “Your official source for news, updates and tips from Twitter, Inc.” says the heading of Twitter account. Company is pretty actively uses their own platform, tweeting announcements and news, as well as retweeting from other Twitter accounts (Twitter Movies, Twitter eng, etc.) creating correlation and common awareness of the social media platform’s updates.

·         Facebook: Twitter has an official Facebook page, as well as some non-official community pages. They mostly promote Twitter-content, that is popular that day, reposting some trending topics and sharing pictures and company news and announcements. There is an app to connect your Twitter account to Facebook too.

·         YouTube: Company uses YouTube for posting announcements and updates, interviews with Twitter officials, as well as statistics videos, and videos about special events like Emmy Awards 2013, Tweets to Neil Armstrong. Usually they produce one video a month.

4.2.3     YouTube

·         YouTube: YouTube, as expected, has several channels for different needs (YouTube for Creators, YouTube Help, YouTube for Developers, etc.) Their YouTube Spotlight channel is mainly about announcements, meaningful events for YouTube community, special own productions, etc.

·         Twitter: YouTube uses Twitter for posting popular videos of the day, that’s why they are pretty active on a daily basis. Almost every tweet contents a link to a YouTube video.

·         Facebook: Same purposes as with their Twitter account: posting viral and promoting popular videos on their Timeline.

4.3    When were Facebook pages founded?

Facebook: Founded on 4 February 2004

YouTube: Founded in 2005

Twitter: Founded in March 2006

The comparison shows what was expected. Facebook has its page since the day one. We have to take this information with a pinch of salt. Facebook was a closed community at the beginning and was only open to selected university- and high-school students.

If we disregard the shortcoming of Facebook not being open to everyone, we can still spot the fact that the earlier the Social Media’s Facebook page was created, the more users (Likes) it has (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. Community size on Facebook page

4.4    Is there any difference in the content of the Facebook page between the three Social Media companies?

4.4.1     Facebook

Website: https://www.facebook.com/facebook

Likes: 143,813,408 (143,8 million)

What surprised me on the Facebook main page is how rarely it is updated. The most recent posts are presented in Table 4.

Table 4: Most recent updated on Facebook’s Facebook page

Date	Content
March 19, 2014	News about updated design (News Feed with bigger stories and a simpler design)
March 8, 2014	Celebrate International #WomensDay
February 13, 2014	Invitation to download new sticker pack: http://on.fb.me/LoveisintheAir
February 5, 2014	A Look Back. A short movie about own presence on Facebook. A mega hit among users.

4.4.2     Twitter

Website: https://www.facebook.com/twitterinc

Likes: 11,726,421 (11,7 million)

Twitter also doesn’t update its Facebook page very regularly, but still more often than Facebook updating its page. Twitter’s Facebook page receives on average a post every two to three days.

I expected Twitter posts to be shorter to reflect their main differentiating point - namely posting short, concise messages. Most of the messages are short - following the 140 character policy, but not all. The post dating to March 20 is a whopping 190 characters long! This is 36% more than limit on Twitter.

4.4.3     YouTube

Website: https://www.facebook.com/youtube

Likes: 78,826,352 (78,8 million)

As expected for a YouTube page there are lots of YouTube videos present on the page. There are two to three updates to the page every day. There are only videos, no other content, like status updates or photos.

I have checked the numbers of followers on Twitter. The picture is surprisingly different. YouTube has many more followers on Twitter than the other two. Also Twitter is relatively more popular on Twitter compared to other 2 SoMe than on Facebook.

Figure 2. Followers on Twitter

4.5    How many Tweets on average do the researched companies produce per day (average of the last week)?

Facebook is not a very active company when it comes to their own pages. As I could see on Twitter, Facebook barely makes 1 tweet per week, 2 at most. In the last month, they posted 4 tweets and a re-tweet from Instagram.

(http://twitter.com/facebook)

Twitter on the other hand is a lot more active when it comes to tweets. In the past week they posted 4 tweets and a re-tweet. That is the same amount of tweets as Facebook did in a month. In March, Twitter posted 12 tweets in total. (http://twitter.com/twitter)

YouTube is by far the most active on Twitter, they posted 37 tweets in the past week. They post on average about 8 tweets per day. (http://twitter.com/youtube)

4.6       Can you spot the similarities and differences in the use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube among the three companies.

From my experience and what I realized after researching these three companies is the fact that all three are used for advertising and promoting products or services. Facebook and YouTube are preferred by other companies to promote their services or products, but Twitter is catching up. There are websites that offer advertising through twitter and the client pays the amount according to the number of Followers the seller has.

This is a good concept that will help companies to promote their products or services even cheaper than before. Here is an example: http://www.paywithatweet.com/

Facebook and Twitter offer the possibility to upload pictures. From this research I found out Facebook is used mostly by younger persons and that Twitter's users is inclined more towards the middle aged persons. As for YouTube, it is used by every age groups, gender or location.

Another difference between all these social media is the fact that YouTube gives their users the possibility to share and promote their video on other social media sites. For example, you can share your YouTube video on Facebook, Twitter or other websites through the share and embed options.

YouTube has recently introduced the new comment system that is handled by Google+, making it easier for people to keep track of comments on their Google account.

4.7    Are there signs of community building somewhere? Is there any kind of noticeable community building in the chosen social media areas, what kind?

In Facebook, it's easy to spot a lot of community building. Every band, every movie, every game has their own official fan-pages, where the people interested of the content join and have conversations. Because community is described as a social unit that shares the same common values, we can make a conclusion that Facebook is full of different kinds of little communities with their own interests and values.

Community pages and groups in Facebook are very popular way nowadays to talk about stuff, and it almost seems that they make better communities nowadays than what discussion forums were in the earlier days. Even Facebook itself has its own community in the page. So Facebook has a lot of community building daily!

In YouTube, there are also many different kinds of communities. Although, the fan base of certain account may have same interests and talk about them in the published videos comment fields, but that does not seem as strong community building as what it is on Facebook. The commenting is kind of random act and does not make as strong feeling of a group as what Facebook does.

The funny fact is, that behind all the basic knowledge many of us 'random users' have of YouTube, it seems that YouTube actually encourages you to build your own community! Communities are very big part of building your audience and fan base in YouTube. YouTube gives you tips how to build your own community in the following page: http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/community.html

So as a matter of fact, Youtube also has a lot of signs of community building inside of it.

What about Twitter then? Community building seems more business-like than the other two research objects. Community building in Twitter is more clear, if the account that is followed, tweets about few specific topics related to the interest of the followers. As there is no general place to make 'home' for your community and find people with same interests at one location, one needs to be active. If no one starts the talk, there will not be community to build.

Following and recommending some accounts and talking about the content to others in their tweets is the mainly community building way in Twitter. Also retweeting is a big part of community getting to grow. Here is a link to page that tells you how to build your own twitter community:

http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2010/09/9-ways-to-build-a-twitter-community-with-substance/

5      CONCLUSIONS

Since Facebook became available to general public, Social Media are growing exponentially. Facebook is still the most used social media channel, but as researched, YouTube and Twitter have also reached millions of people around the world. Even if these companies may find each other as competitors, they still use each other’s pages to promote themselves.

As Facebook was published in 2004, YouTube kicked-off their personal page in there in 2005. Facebook uses Twitter and Twitter publishes videos in YouTube. It's a nice circle of social-media-life between the companies. The research has shown that the three social media companies have pretty high social media activity, as we expected. Some expectations about the activity may have been proven wrong, but otherwise the researched social media companies are keeping their heads up in the SoMe world.

As these three companies may have the same category - Social media, - they have different contents. Facebook is known for social networking, Twitter is a place for micro-blogging, and YouTube is intended for video-content sharing. Even if these companies have very different main content, they also have a lot of common features. Accounts can be followed, comments can be written and media content can be shared. So different, but still so similar in more than one way.

These three companies take a big part in Internet community building, as they have so many users. All of the researched companies are taking care that people react to each other, have conversations and find out same kind of people to rely on and connect with. Communities are nowadays mainly built in Internet world in one way or another, and social media companies might take the biggest responsibility for that. They encourage their users to build and join communities, and that's a very positive trend.

So what is the resolution in our research on these three companies, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? These Social Media companies are keeping us active and helping us finding multiple ways to expand our social life and grow communities. They are showing us an example how to promote one-self in other social media platforms, and offer us different ways to keep on board the internet. In social media world, you are never alone.

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[1] At the time of voting our team included Hyerim Kwon, who later left the team.

[2] http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/2/#.UzAi81f5P3q

[3] http://mashable.com/2012/03/09/social-media-demographics/

[4] http://blog.zogdigital.com/2013/05/01/social-media-marketing-101-network-user-demographics/