Netlytic

I used Netlytic for the first time a few days ago for our assignment. I haven’t dealt much in external social media analytics before this. Netlytic is a “community-supported text and social networks analyzer that can automatically summarize and visualize public online conversations on social media sites” and was “made for researchers by researchers, no programming/API skills required,” as per their About page. It’s fairly easy once you understand what the deal is.

Netlytic requires you to make an account and then plug in your own social media for whatever site you’re trying to analyze. Luckily, it’s a free service at its base, but you can pay to upgrade your account and keep more data sets. I only needed one and the free version has three sets, so I’m good. I wasn’t keen on plugging my own social media account in to analyze hashtags or accounts that aren’t related to me, but you do what you gotta do, you know?

Netlytic allows datasets for Twitter, YouTube, Google Sheets, Text Files, RSS, and Reddit. After you put your own social media in, you follow the directions. You name your data set, choose a language, a location (or a radius), as well as choose keywords, hashtags, and relevant accounts. Once the website extracts and analyzes the data, you can look through it and mess around however you want to see what changes. I can definitely see how this would be helpful to people using it for business purposes.

Social media metrics

I think that it’s interesting how exhaustive social media metrics can be. When I think of analyzing a video or Tweet, I generally just think of checking how many views it received or how many times it was shared; it usually doesn’t occur to me to check the site for repeated visits. Granted, part of this is probably because I’m not very familiar with site metrics beyond the very basics--which, in hindsight, is probably because I’m only scratching the surface of what can be done (and because I’m not privy to a lot of the information a site might have. But mostly the first one). Using social media metrics is probably a good way to determine what users like and dislike and how they interact with certain products and features; for example, a site that sells shoes might have the ability to view how many people bought a specific piece of footwear, which might determine how the company will proceed in future endeavors.

TikTok and Public Libraries

     TikTok has taken over the social media stage during the pandemic. Between political drama, and teens doing weird dances in public, is there really a need for libraries to use the platform?

YES. 

    When we take a look at social media as a whole, people all have their reasons for using it. Whether it be to connect with family that live across the country or just to watch funny videos, it is all about sharing. Sharing your life, your experiences, and things that you find entertaining and valuable. While most of TikTok is individuals that are creating content for entertainment, businesses have began to catch on and use the platform as well. 

    But rather than use the platform to directly advertise their goods and services, brands and companies have incorporated subtle marketing techniques into comedic entertainment. With a majority user base in the United States using TikTok being 10-29, businesses can directly reach a large demographic. 

    So where do libraries come into play? Well just looking at the library I personally work at, we are having a huge issue with reaching and connecting with certain user groups. There is a large fallout between the ages of 12-30, which ironically is the largest user group on TikTok. Libraries can join in on the entertainment factor, and create content whether it be original or a trend. 

    Each type of social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok) has their own type of vibe, type of post, and humor that resonates amongst the users. Libraries can add this social media platform to expand who and how they reach the community, but it will take a little practice and finesse!

I found this video that made me chuckle a few times, thought I would share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8P0eQYMnyo

Social Media Analytics and Mental Health

While the ability to access social media analytics is obviously very useful for companies and researchers alike, I have to wonder what the effect is on the average user. It seems like social media is a constant numbers game, always pushing people to produce more and more content for free and obsess over how well it does. When I first joined social media, I started largely on Tumblr. One of the quirks of the platform is that your number of followers is hidden from public view. Only you really know how large your audience is, although anybody can see hints of it based on the average number of interactions your posts get and other signs like that. Eventually Tumblr fell out of favor when it banned adult content and I moved to Twitter along with many other users. On Twitter, your follower count is displayed prominently under your bio and available for everyone to see. It's no longer something you can hide at all. I think this causes a lot of people to take it pretty seriously and probably isn't great for mental health.

Another thing I've seen on Twitter that just feels unhealthy are external sites that will track things like how many people have unfollowed you in the last week. While this is probably very helpful for companies to gauge their social media success, I've mostly seen it used by average people who check it obsessively and seem to base their self-worth on keeping followers. It's especially common with young teenagers who treat unfollowing someone like a personal betrayal. That's definitely not healthy behavior.

These sort of tools are really useful for researchers and I can see why they should be available to the public, but social media isn't designed to help mental health. It's designed to attract as many users as possible and keep them scrolling so they can see ads. The addition of numbers to gauge how well their posts are doing in a very tangible way really just reinforces how unhealthy it can be sometimes.

Facebook and Data Profiles

It seems as though every time Facebook makes an update to their Terms of Service, new stories pop up about what the new or changed features do to change your experience with the site -- and what new ways the site is adding to the overstuffed folder of data it has collected about you. These pieces seem to show up every few months, and not without legitimate concern: Facebook has the ability to collect a really thorough profile on someone using the site, from religious and political views, to hobbies and interests, to geotagged check ins at various locals, to years worth of photos. With Facebook's ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp as well, those profiles become even more complete. Factor in the number of websites using Facebook's API for third party site account creation (you know, when you have the opportunity to either type in your email and a unique, secure password or just click the Facebook button and gain access to the website immediately by logging in with your Facebook credentials instead?) and the profiles become even more layered.
Wired.com published a piece by David Nield in January 2020 about this particular phenomenon. One of the neat features of this piece was how David highlighted ways to see what kind of advertising-specific profile Facebook has for you. I easily lost twenty minutes scrolling through, laughing at the mismatches and feeling a little exposed from the direct hits. Interestingly, he also noted that a lot of the tools that Facebook has rolled out in the name of controlling who has access to your data do not do anything to erase the profile that Facebook already has of you, or to even stop Facebook from gathering more data. These tools are all about how ads are targeted at you. So with these tools engaged, posting pictures of your newborn might not get you quite as many advertisements for the latest and greatest in diaper technology, but that does not mean that Facebook's profile of you has not carefully noted the new addition to your family -- it just does not specifically send ads for Pampers your way.
Even using Facebook's mobile apps can spell bad news for your privacy. These apps, such as the primary Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, receive information about what Wi-Fi networks you connect to, the type of phone you use, other apps you have downloaded, and more (Nield).
If completely removing yourself from all of these websites (and all third-party websites that use the Facebook API for account creation, tracking statistics and more) is a little unrealistic, there are some measures you can take to reduce the amount of data gathered in the future. In the settings for all three apps, be sure to turn off or disconnect every feature or tool that you can related to advertising or 'improving your experience'. Remove applications from your phone and limit mobile use to only within the mobile web browser whenever possible. On desktop sites, choose a browser with robust privacy features and turn off any features that remember your data for later. Skip the geolocation check-ins, sketchy third-party quizzes and tagged photos, and become a social media lurker instead of sharing the play-by-play of your day. To go even more robust, you can add a VPN, or virtual private network, into the mix to shield your location data. It's difficult to remove yourself from Facebook's long reach of data collection should you become wary, but these practices a good idea even beyond its reach to ensure data safety and privacy.

Social Media Analytics

A few years ago, it was common to think that a social media position in a company was held by some unpaid intern. Nowadays “social media manager” is recognized as a real, often difficult job. “Why would a company care about how it looks on Twitter or Facebook? It can’t be that hard, just give the passwords to the kid here for school,” people would think. Even now, on occasion I’ll hear someone talk about companies’ social medias as if it’s run by interns. Obviously, that’s not the case.

 

Social media analytics is basically public relations and brand management, updated. The purpose is to see what people say about your company, what they’re seeing by your company, and how the posts are being received. Most social media websites offer ways in-site to track analytics. Twitter, for example, allows you to “view tweet activity” on tweets sent out by your account. It’ll show you the total engagements (times people saw the tweet on twitter), total engagements (times people interacted with the tweet), likes, detail expands, profile clicks (times people clicked on the account’s name, @handle, or profile picture), retweets, replies, and link clicks. If a tweet did not receive any of these values, it is not shown. So, if a tweet has a hundred likes but no retweets, it will show the amount of likes but not mention retweets. Twitter also allows for paid promotions.

 

Besides in-site analytics, there are plenty of websites and services that provide analytics for you. Hootsuite is one such website. A paid service, Hootsuite is an advertising and analytics website. It allows you to publish (share and schedule engaging content to your profiles), engage (address incoming messages and deliver timely replies), monitor (stay informed about market trends and competitors), advertise (promote your organic content and manage paid ads), and analyze (measure your results across all social media networks). Hootsuite is integrated into over twenty social networks, including the big ones like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. Plans start at about $50 per month and increase in price.

 

By tracking analytics, companies get to see how they’re doing. They may see the audience they are reaching isn’t quite their target audience and shift marketing approaches to fix it. They can also measure their reach and make sure word is getting out at all. They can also make sure things being said about their companies are mostly positive, to keep their image clean.

Data mining

 Data mining is one of those hot-button topics that everyone has an opinion about--opinions which are almost never positive. To be fair, it’s hard not to feel wary about some weird software on a website that keeps track of your data, and it doesn’t help that it has the most suspicious-sounding name possible. Seriously, “data mining?” That term reminds me of those lame-but-cool-rebel-hackers in bad action movies who can gain instant access to your computer files with a mere click of a button. Of course, reality tends to be far less glamorous than the movies: “data mining,” at least as it is used in social media research, can be used for practical research purposes. Still, I find that many people still have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the topic, likely because they associate the process with websites like Amazon using their information to recommend products similar to ones they have previously bought (a big problem if you’re susceptible to buyer’s remorse). Those aren’t unreasonable complaints, but the truth is that data mining can be utilized for multiple purposes, some good and some bad; as a result, it’s important to be mindful.