Quantitative Research: Social Media Profiles

I discovered a qualitative research study done in 2008 that categorizes social media users into groups by their attitudes and behaviors on their social media sites. (If you don’t know the difference between qualitative and quantitative research go to this site, it’ll help out a ton http://www.snapsurveys.com/techadvqualquant.shtml ). Anyways, I found the findings from this research way too interesting that I just had to share. The research discovered five groups based upon the attitudes and behaviors of social media users. The categories are as follows:

Alpha Socializers – “use social media in intense short bursts”

Attention Seekers – “crave attention and comments from others.”

Followers – “joined sites to keep up with their peers.”

Faithfuls – “used social networking to rekindle old friendships.”

Functionals – “using sites for a particular purpose.”

I found these results to be spot on, because I can easily classify my friends, followers, etc. into these specified groups. We all have that friend that just post pictures for attention (attention seeker), or that friend who always knows what’s going on in everyone’s lives (followers), or even that friend that only uses there account every once in a while (alpha socializers). This really is an interesting research finding.

I have been thinking about where I would be classified within these categories and I have come to the conclusion that it’s different depending on which social media platform I’m thinking of. I don’t think that any of these are necessarily really bad or good, it’s just interesting to see where you fit within these categories. Think about yourself, where do you see yourself categorized? I think by realizing where we fit within these groups it can help us to learn a lot about ourselves and our social media platforms.

Here’s a link to the research (I found the categories in 2.2 of the Executive Summary): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_04_08_ofcom.pdf