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Why Asia's Companies Should Watch Social Media

by Knowledge@SMU, 15 November 2011

topics:
Technology

tags:
Facebook finance marketing Social media Twitter

Social networks offer up a goldmine of information just waiting to be exploited. For the first time, human relationships, comments and activities are documented quite publicly on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Save for privacy concerns, never before has it been easier to know what people think, what they like, and to whom they are connected.

Web forum content and individual comments made on blogs and news sites now serve as a new feedback source for market researchers, who use such channels to analyse consumer reactions, sometimes, to ‘crowd-source’ innovations and solutions. On a more advanced level, web data can be used to predict short term likelihoods in matters relating to finance, economics or even politics.

In Thailand, for example, the newly elected political party used social media aggressively in its election campaign. Then again, elsewhere in Southeast Asia, candidates who were most prolific in their use of social media were not voted in at Singapore's 2011 general election. This has led some academics to argue that the online responses are overhyped and largely inaccurate. Or are they?

“People leave footprints in the sand. They interact much more with each other now, and leave digital traces of their interactions on the web,” said Michael Macy, a Cornell University sociology professor, at the 3^rd International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo 2011), hosted by Singapore Management University’s School of Information Systems (SIS).

Macy illustrated his point with the findings of a large-scale sentiment and mood study on Twitter. He could tell, for instance, the percentage of people who are likelier to tweet later during weekends, and predict that most of these tweets would be more positive.

Challenges for social media research

Not many studies have been conducted on social media users in Asia, despite the region's high Internet penetration rates and the general popularity of social networking sites. Singaporeans are said to spend some 80% more time on Facebook compared with their British or American counterparts.

To be fair, researchers in such areas will have to confront several challenges. Firstly, Internet use remains disparate across the region. A third of the Chinese population may have Internet access, but the contrast is stark between urban centres and rural areas. Studies would thus only reflect the interests of the wealthy and educated.

Secondly, analyses within the region will have to take into account local equivalents of Twitter and Facebook. Comparisons will not be valid if one ignores the multitude of websites, such as Renren, Pengyou, Tudou or Weibo – all highly popular social networks in China. With more sites to learn and understand, researchers have to worry too, about neutrality and benchmarks.

Sentiment analysis is also expected to be much tougher in Asia due to greater restraints on expression. Asians have a tendency to express themselves in a more neutral way, compared to Westerners. Reading between the lines thus becomes more important for those who wish to make sense of the information.

Interpretation without prior knowledge of the culture will lead to inaccuracies. “Singaporeans may write in ‘Singlish,’ which is the local dialect – a mix of English with a touch of several Asian languages,” noted Lim Ee Peng, a professor of information systems at SIS and co-director of SMU’s Living Analytics Research Centre. So if researchers do not take into account cultural nuances and slang, they will misinterpret or miss out on their findings.

I think that people who use

Submitted by Ben Still on 13 February 2012 - 5:21am

I think that people who use social media tools, should also develop spyware remover software because we have had enough examples of people sending viruses and malware over social networks.

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