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.

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[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/