What’s your social technographic profile?

This week in my public relations and new media class, we addressed the topic of social technographics. “What’s that?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, authors of Groundswell, social technographics “classifies people according to how they use social technologies.”

Still confused? Let me see if I can make it simpler. From what I gathered, social technographics is a means of categorizing people into one or more of six groups based on their usage, or non-usage, of social technologies, such as blogs and social networking sites. These groups, according to Li and Bernoff, are creator, critic, collector, joiner, spectator and inactive, and the combination of one’s participation in each of these groups is one’s social technographic profile. Seems like a lot of scientific, number crunching, mumbo jumbo, doesn’t it? I know it does, but it’s actually quite fascinating.

For example, did you know that young men are more likely to be creators, collectors, joiners and spectators than young women are? Did you know that older boomers (people aged 52 to 62) are more likely to be creators, critics, collectors, and joiners than seniors (people aged 63 and over)? Did you know that democrats are more likely to be creators, critics, collectors, and joiners than republicans or independents? I sure didn’t.

According to Li and Bernoff, creators do exactly that. They create social content, such as writings blogs or uploading video, music or text. Critics are, well, critics. They respond to content that others created. They may post reviews, comment on blogs, participate in forums or edit wiki articles. Collectors are a little less self-explanatory. They organize content for themselves or others by using RSS feeds, tags or voting sites like Digg.com. Joiners join. They connect in social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Spectators are all eyes and ears. They read, watch and listen to a variety of social content but never actually create any themselves. Finally, inactives are just that…inactive. They do not create or consume any social content whatsoever.

So what’s your social technographic profile? Based on Li and Bernoff’s six group definitions, I’d say that I’m definitely a joiner, possibly a low-level creator, critic and spectator but not quite a collector or an inactive. How embarrassing. You’d think someone who grew up in the technological age would have a greater presence online. Wouldn’t you? Well, by the end of this class, I’m going to increase my presence and improve my social technographic profile.

Want to know more? Then check out Bernoff’s presentation on social technographics and rate yourself. I’m sure you’ll be surprised at where you land.

Until next time,

dp

Stayed tuned for more reports on my student adventures in public relations and new media.