Web Business by Ken Burbary

Can you trust user-supplied data?

I’ve been recently involved in helping some people within our company on Social Media/Networking projects for clients. The focus has primarly been on Facebook, both implementing social ads and Facebook Platform applications. One of the goals is to target a specific demographic among the Facebook user community. No one questioned whether or not the demographic data supplied by Facebook to determine who and where targeted ads will appear was legitimate.

However, after reading this excellent article on the quality of social networking user-supplied data, I need to think about reconsidering how we should approach the advertising component of these projects. The article, by Mike McCamon, suggests there is a dark side to user-supplied data and outlines the risks in blindly accepting it as fact. Doing so will undermine the success of any marketing effort targeting an audience whose demographics data is false or misleading. Now while this may represent only a minority of the overall target, it calls into question whether or not demongraphic data is the most relevant.

The article goes on further to suggest that the future may lie with “intentional data”, information about what a user plans to do in the future. This is what marketers really want to know, a consumer’s honest intentions. Getting users to provide this info will prove to be more difficult than the standard social media demographics which may, or may not, be accurate.

Question of the day: Which social networking sites do you use? Do you reveal personal demographic data that marketers are interested in, or keep a barebones profile?

Twitter Stats

I just found an interesting Twitter site called Tweet Stats, that will report on a Twitter username’s stats and graph them in the following categories:

• Tweets per hour
• Tweets per month
• Tweet timeline

Twitter Popularity

Do you Twitter? If you’re reading this blog, you probably know all about Twitter. Even though I registered a Twitter account some time ago, I’ve more recently become an active user. I’m enjoying the benefits of keeping up with the happenings of key people, both professionally and personally, but I’m also having difficulty getting other friends to join and use the service. Despite my own personal experiences, Twitter appears to be growing the user base quickly. As reported on over at the Twitter Facts blog, the data shows just that, Twitter.com is rapidly approaching 1 million users.

So far my twittering is limited only to the indivudals in my social circle that are as heavily involved in interactive and the web as I am. I just haven’t found the sweet spot yet where Twitter is reaching the general masses (the ones not online the majority of their waking hours) among my social circle.

Question of the day: Who among your social circle uses Twitter? Professional contacts? Friends? Family?