Tag Archives: social networks

Decision-making before retweeting

This is far from a comprehensive survey, but I asked and 83 people responded.

     Survey results are anonymous, so please be honest: I usually retweet/share links:
     If I like the title.                      3.6%
     If I trust the source.             25.3%
     After skimming content.    16.9%
     After reading content.        54.2%
     83 votes Total

 

I think that the people in my network probably slant towards more cautious thought before sharing, compared to a more random selection in a larger survey. That said, I’m often surprised when I see someone retweet something I shared in a shorter timespan than it would take to read the article I linked to. My guess as to why? ‘I like the message of the title and I trust Dave to share something good.’

Think about these results, what if anything do they say about the reliability of information being shared on social media?

World Markets and Apps

Two apps have made me realize how the world is changing. These apps are very popular, but not here in North America. Here, a very popular app for connecting with others for business (as well as socially) is Slack – a messaging app for teams.

However, pop over to India and WhatsApp is the cool tool that everyone is using. “Simple. Personal. Real Time Messaging.”

And hop over to China (as I did just recently) and WeChat is the tool that is already ‘Connecting a half billion people’… A HALF A BILLION PEOPLE!

Slack-whatsapp-wechat

One of my students, Brandon Mayhew, was invited to the Facebook F8 Developer’s conference, and he wrote about Mark Zukerberg’s opening presentation and an ongoing theme he heard, “4.1 Billion was repeated several times at the event and that’s the number of people that aren’t connected to the internet, over the next few years facebook plans on investing heavily on infrastructure to help connect these people in these remote regions of the globe.”

As an interesting aside, Facebook bought WhatsApp… for 19 Billion Dollars!

When over 1/3 of the world’s population lives in just two countries, and when those countries are on a fast track to get everyone connected… it is easy to see that if you were building an app, you’d want it to be used in other countries beyond North America, and specifically in China and India.

Soon, you are going to see some of the top apps start in other countries and the American/Canadian market will be an afterthought. In fact it has already happened… WeChat was ‘Made in China’!