Social Networks Stimulate Exercising

Yearly millions of dollars are invested in promotional ads and social media campaigns to get people exercising in the United States. The country is dealing with obesity among its inhabitants and even though there is so much money going on in campaigns, still 43% of the Americans are not exercising enough.

A research from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that social networks help to motivate exercising more often. One group of people got divided into smaller groups with so-called ‘health buddies’ and they could keep track of each other’s progress. Whenever one of their buddies signed up for a yoga class, the others got an email notification about this. In the other main group of the experiment people got shown promotional videos that should help to keep them motivated and tell them about the importance of exercising.

The results showed that the group that was shown promotional videos only had a short term effect on their motivation, but they would lose this motivation quickly. In the groups with the health buddies participants became more motivated over time. It must be noticed that in this research the participants only had to deal with positive signals from each other. In regular social networks there are usually mixed signals, positive and negative. This could be someone taking a yoga class but also someone posting they are at McDonald’s for instance.

The power of social influence is not new and was well known before the start of the trial. For now researchers are not sure yet why social networks manage to stimulate exercising. In their new research on this they are trying to find out whether it is competition causing this or the friendly social support people get from the health buddies. Which of the two options do you think that keeps people motivated?

Sources

• http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/10/08/social-networks-can-be-powerful-exercise-motivators/93251.

• http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/fitness/social-media-can-motivate-people-to-exercise-more/

Minecraft, a blockbuster thanks to Word-of-Mouth?

As we could see in this weeks readings, “[…] firms increasingly rely on “network” and “viral” marketing strategies” (Hill et al. 2006, Manchanda et al. 2008, Nam et al. 2010, Retrieved from Aral, & Walker, 2011) in order to drive the product adoption and sales. So basically, the attention is paid on how to make products viral using marketing strategies and campaigns instead of how to design products that can turn  themselves viral (Aral, & Walker, 2011). So I was thinking of a good example of a product that went viral without using any marketing and what came to my mind was Minecraft.

Probably most of you heard or even played Minecraft, but for those who don’t know, it is a sandbox indie game that has its unique look of everything being boxy and sharp. It is not one of those high-profile games with sick graphics and real-life feeling to them. So how is it possible that a game that is not made to be perfect and not made to be fully marketed has earned its huge worldwide success?

While trying to answer this question, I came across a couple interesting articles (Minecraft, the worlds most successful casual game, Why Minecraft is so popular) which all showed some different aspects of the game that made it a blockbuster. However, the one that interested me the most was the fact, that word-of-mouth was one of the factors that facilitated the popularity of the game. So how is it possible that the game became so successful having no advertising/marketing budget, using only word-of mouth? Well I do not think this strategy from the side of the company was on purpose. Minecraft community is fairly tight, anybody can play the game, old/young, gamers/non-gamers. Thus, the whole platform is fueled by people, their engagement, so word-of mouth becomes something natural.

It is only to be discovered why exactly this works. What do you think? Do you know of any other platforms that use this strategy (on purpose or not)?

Social Media Mistakes & Mix-Ups

During our classes, we’ve seen a lot of examples of social media fails of companies and individuals. Today I’d like to share some other examples of social media mistakes and mix-ups of celebrities and businesses, all together in a very neat Infographic (how convenient!). The last example also shows how a mix-up can be saved.

What would you have recommended the abovementioned celebrities or businesses to recover professionally and thereby minimizing the damage?

The Rush to Crush

There’s quite a big chance that next time you travel by metro, a high educated man in a fancy suit will enter the metro, sit down, grabs his fancy new smartphone and start playing Candy Crush. And there’s even a chance that when he’s out of lives, he rather pays 0.99 cents than waiting 30 minutes for a new life. Nowadays, this situation has become normal in the entire world. How is it possible that millions of people, no matter what education or job they have, are addicted to crushing candy’s?

I did a little research on the success of Candy Crush for my case write up last week and found some very interesting results. In March 2013, Candy Crush surpassed Farmville 2 as most popular game on Facebook. Mobile monetization firm ThinkGaming estimates Candy Crush to have over 7.5 million daily unique users. Data site AppData even estimates Candy Crush to have over 15 million daily unique users. Whatever the exact number is, it is clear that Candy Crush is a huge success. Developer King has a daily revenue of $850,000 out of Candy Crush. Recently King even stopped advertising on Candy Crush, because they’re already making so much money with just the game itself.

Now back to the key question: Why is Candy Crush so popular? During my research, I found three factors that makes this game such an immense success. The first factor is simplicity. The game must be easy to learn, and it shouldn’t take too much time. King works with a timeframe. Each level is designed to take a maximum of three minutes.

Secondly, there must be a good concept. Riccardo Zacconi, co-founder and chief executive of King, has set up a factory-like production line with multiple small teams working on a game for a maximum of three months. After those three months, the game will be released on their website. King uses its website to test the game. If the game fails, then only three months work is wasted. If a game turns out to be a big hit, they proceed with working on that game and release it on Facebook. King has currently over 200 games running on their website, but only 8 were released for Facebook. “When we develop a game for Facebook and mobile we know that game is very likely to be a success as it was a success on King.com,” says Mr Zacconni. Furthermore, King handles the freemium model. The game is free to play, but there are options to buy in-game advantages and lives. Although there’s a small percentage of people who are actually spending money on Candy Crush, it is enough to get a very high daily revenue because of the big amount of daily active users.

The last factor that made Candy Crush a success is by far the most important factor: Facebook. When the game wasn’t released for Facebook, Candy Crush probably didn’t even have 10,000 daily active users. After the release for Facebook on April 12, 2012 Candy Crush grew to the most popular game on Facebook within a year. King doesn’t have to do any advertising on Facebook, because their users will do that for them by asking their friends to give them lives or to get access to a new episode. Without Facebook, none of you would know Candy Crush now.

I didn’t have time to invest any more time in my research, so I didn’t really do research on the psychological aspect of Candy Crush. I’m wondering, what makes people play games like Candy Crush. Is it because ‘everyone seems to play it nowadays, so I have to play it as well’? Or is it just to kill time when you’re on your way home? Or maybe is it because people just like to see that they had a better score than most of their friends? I’d like to hear your opinions about why this game is such a success. 

Sources:

http://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/2/candy-crush-saga/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/candy-crush-saga-studio-behind-game-with-over-44m-monthly-users-promises-more-hits-8755414.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-success-as-gamers-get-a-crush-on-candy-8604756.html
http://www.startupitalia.eu/blog/article/strategia-vincente-riccardo-zacconi-mr-kingcom
http://www.appdata.com/

Make a better world through social media

Social media isn’t used only by commercial companies to create more revenue or by individual users. Also non-profit organisations that want to raise awareness on several topics use social media. They generally try to make a good campaign that has the potential to go viral. A campaign going viral means that the campaign makes use of a kind of snowball-effect where in the end millions of people have seen or heard about the message. The goal of these organisations is to put pressure on a group other organisations of governments. For instance to operate more social responsible of make more environmental friendly legislation.

10 September last, there is a video about a renewable phone launched. The Dutch D. Hakkers made a concept of a phone in which you can renew out dated parts. Normally when a phone has become slow, out dated, broken or has any other lack the phone is thrown away. This causes lots of unnecessary electronic waste, because most of the parts in the device aren’t useless yet but still are thrown away with the rest of the phone. Because electronic waste is the fastest growing kind of waste, D. Hakkers tries to raise awareness for his concept. He does this through a YouTube video and an very simple clear website where he stimulates people to share his concept video. Within two days the video had over 5 million views and at the moment of writing this (5 days after launch) the views are over 10 million just on YouTube. The goal of this campaign is to make people exited about this concept and let the video go viral through their excitement. As a result D. Hakkers hopes that phone builders are kind of pressured by the will of millions of customers to make such a product. By all this he wants reduce the growth of electronic waste. This whole phenomenon of people putting pressure on big organisations is called crowdspeaking.

This example tells us that social media is very multifunctional and that there are other interest groups in social media than the obvious companies who place advertisements increase profit. Also it states that it isn’t always necessary to pay lots of money for advertisements when you make a creative interesting campaign that appeals to many people. So to all to all the companies out there who want to grow itself or want to raise awareness for certain topics through social media, be creative!

Related articles

• Phonebloks modular phone concept isolates components in swappable blocks (slashgear.com)

Impact of Social Media- Weibo

Currently, the development of social media offers a wide range of benefits, e.g. a more cheap and efficient way of communication among citizens or between citizen and government, quickly spreading news around and so on.

In this blog, the issue what happened last year in my hometown turned out to be solved by social media successfully in some extent.

“China’s days of pursuing growth above all else are over. Protest upon protest over industrial projects that citizens see as damaging to health and the environment make that plain; people are no longer willing to put up with pollution and the consequences. Officials in the eastern city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province should have been aware of the need for changed ways, yet were unprepared for demonstrations over the planned expansion of a petrochemical plant that led to clashes with police at the weekend. They have halted the expansion, scrapping a controversial facility, and promised public consultations and greater transparency.”

Source: http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1072726/ningbo-protests-against-growth-any-costt

 “Following several days of mass protests against two proposed petrochemical projects amid environmental and health concerns, officials in the coastal city of Ningbo announced late Sunday that the projects would be halted. The government’s announcement failed to deter protesters, however, who continued to gather outside the government offices Monday and demand that the city’s mayor step down.

Online, suspension of the projects was formally announced through the official social media account of the Ningbo government at 6:45 p.m. yesterday, October 28, 2012. The post read: “[We have] learned from a news spokesman from the Ningbo City Government that the city government has been decided after research with the project investor that: (1) the PX project will definitely not go forward; (2) preliminary work for the chemical refinery project will be halted and a scientific assessment redone.”

Source：http://cmp.hku.hk/2012/10/29/28267/

During the people were against to the project hold by the government, citizens used social media- Weibo to spread news and talked about their opinions. After citizens published a large amount of blogs, pictures, video and opinions in Weibo, it attracted the government’s attention to this issue. PX project should be considered again before putting into action. At the end, government gave up this project.

From my point of view, in this issue, citizens in China make a good use of social media- Weibo to show their opinions and try to communicate with government. And both party are involved and try to make the win-win decision. So in current society, social media is of huge benefits, which provide us a platform to communicate more efficiently. It is the age of Weibo in China.