Social Supermarkets

By Matthijs Rotte on 27 September 2009

Having been able to do research on social media, a lot of things have been drawn to my attention lately concerning the term. As we all use the term, there is still no consensus on what we mean by it. Is it because we are all too stubborn to embrace a collective definition? Or is it that it is just complex material? I think that the latter is true.

This college year we started with the JUMP project again. JUMP is an international exchange program in which international students do a small piece of research for the lab. This time one group is focusing on Social media. As we started up I asked them to look up some examples of what definitely is social media, what definitely is not social media and what might or may be. I didn’t give them anything to work with, so they started off with an open mind, and we could have a discussion about the media they chose, the next time I saw them. I should also say that I gave them the assignment not only to look at the web, but also look into other media.

What struck me is that they didn’t consider Wikipedia as a social network site. I’m not saying they were wrong, but they couldn’t put their finger on what it was that made them say it was not. One of the arguments they used was: ,,You can’t interact with an individual”. ,,But you can” I said. But apparently the way in which Wikipedia does it is not good enough. It’s too complex.

There are a couple of prerequisites for social media according to iCrossing:
- It has to be participatory
- It has to be open, so there shouldn’t be many barriers to use the content
- There has to be a possibility for conversation
- There should be a possibility of forming a community
- Social media often link to other sources sites people and blogs
As far as I’m concerned Wikipedia complies with all of the above. For the students though Wikipedia doesn’t comply with the openness factor in some ways. So the question is: Do al of the features of the social media have to have these prerequisites or is it enough for the entire site to in one way or the other have these features? I’m not sure.

If we take a non-web based medium, such as a bulletin board in the supermarket for instance, can we speak of social media? According to iCrossing we can’t because there is no real participatory aspect. Or is there? Does it depend on the form of content or what is posted? And surely people just post or read, but do not leave an answer on the board. If we compare those bulletin boards to services like eBay and in the Netherlands Marktplaats, there’s just one difference and that is that you can react to the offers. Does this then make eBay a social medium? I think not, because I’m missing the community part, which is much more evident in a supermarket due to the fact that they are located in the centre of the community. I do not think there are a lot of people that have a social connection with people they have met on eBay. The same can of course be said about supermarkets. But people in supermarkets have a lot more in common than people that “meet” on eBay. So if we speak of social media do we talk about the internet by definition? I don’t know, any ideas anyone?

tagged with: wikipedia, social media

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