Social Media Demographics in the Conversation Economy

Bruce Nussbaum writes an interesting post on the demographics of social media based on some BW research.  What jumped out at me was the following:

INdata shows that there are 6 types of social media participatants--Creators who publish web pages, blog and upload videos; Critics who comment on blogs and post reviews and comments; Collectors who use RSS to tag and gather information; Joiners who use social networking sites; Spectators who watch, read and listen; and Inactives, folks who are online but don't participate in social media yet. The demographics are very interesting.

Each slice of the population participates differently in social media. Some 34% of online users aged 12-17 still do not participate in social media. 42% of people 27-49 online do not. Some 5% of seniors--62 plus--are social media creators (compared to 34% for young teens 12 to 17. That strikes me as surprisingly high. Only 7% of boomers are creators

The question I have is what is the overlap? For example, I'd be classified as a Creator, and a Critic, and Collector, Joiner, Spectator and Inactive, depending on the circumstance and conversation.  Bruce actually poses the question, "Who Controls the Conversation?"  Its situationally dependent isn't it?  I mean when I'm at a party, talking to friends, some folks are conversation starters (creators), some are joiners who occasionally, chime in (Critics) and some are just wall flowers (Inactives).  I for one am all of these depending on the situation. 

Maybe, I'm thinking too literally here but can conversations be controlled? They can certainly be dominated but then that's not much of a conversation is it? One tends to actively participate in the conversations they are interested in... what about this post though?  Is it an act of a Creator or a  Critic?  I'm not exactly delivering an original post but am "commenting" on Bruce's post... which we see a lot of in the blogosphere so to get an truly accurate picture of conversation dynamics would require a more granular view - one that looks at the actual content components in the conversations and the dynamics among separate posts in different web geographies.

Comments

[Larry Eiss]

I agree with your view of overlap. I think most people on the Web fall into multiple categories, and I agree that the categories are situational. This post of yours shows you in the role of critic for the reasons you posit above. Maybe that's the point. It has to do with current roles. I am a husband, father, grandfather, friend, Director at a software company, woodworker, photographer, blogger, and the list goes on. How I appear on the Web at any given point has to do with the role I am most prominently in at that time.

Conversations really cannot be controlled because people can ultimately do whatever they want. I could, for example, hijack this comment to promote my Blog or photo gallery, or I could be flaming you right now. I could decide that I'll try to twist this into a discussion of some subject dear to me.

That's actually the beauty and the bain of the Web, don't you think?

[Dennis McDonald]

A key issue, besides the category overlap, is why we are creating these categories in the first place. In the old days we sliced and diced like this to come up with estimates of market size and willingness to pay. Given the varieties of transactions and experiences that the web now supports, such categories now seem awfully simplistic.

[Steve Mann]

Thanx for your comments. Why we create categories is actually a very interesting question. As humans, we are wired to compartmentalize, categorize and segment the world into logical units. I think its difficult to NOT think that way, we're wired to do so. Agree that the varieties of interaction make it somewhat difficult but we need to start somewhere - segmentation is critical in understanding any market dynamic... I myself tend to steer away from basic demographics and firmographics and lean more toward attitudinal segmentation that is behavior based. Behavior based segmentation allows you to align your marketing and sales efforts based on how people want to consume and buy your products.