What type of social media user are you?

 

(Similarweb, 2018)

 

Have you ever wonder what people spent their hours on the internet on? According to Similarweb’s ranking of top websites based on Singapore, sites such as Google, Youtube and Facebook came out top. It’s no surprise since most of us will visit these sites at least once per day. However, what’s intriguing is that social media websites dominates the list. This further enforced the claim that social media is slowly taking over our lives.

Okay, having been introduced to the power of social media, now let us take a look at a fascinating framework. The Social Consumption/Creation Matrix categorizes social media user types according to their degree of social media consumption and creation. This framework had been mainly used for Facebook users but I believe it can be apply to social media as a whole too.

 

(Tuten and Solomon, 2013)

 

The 4 social media user types are:

Entertainment Chasers

These are the group of people with both low level of creation and consumption. Entertainment chasers invest their time and effort on social media wisely therefore will only participate if there’s something rewarding. Trending social entertainments such videos, news, contests and games will most likely attract their attention. They also hardly create any content but are the people you wanna go to for any latest ongoing deals.

Connection Seekers

Although connection seekers are low content creators, but their high level of engagement is crucial to the continuous development of social media. Social media is a great place to keep in touch with our family and friends as we can socialise and build relationships. Outings and events are also often being organised through connection seekers.

Attention Seekers

Attention seekers are usually “celebrities” with already a high number of followers and they create contents that they can promote it efficiently through their means. They are motivated by controversial topics that can make them stand out with the purpose of gathering attention and admiration from the public. Usually living the glamorous lifestyle which they are not afraid of showing it off.

Devotees

Devotees invest a lot of their time creating contents on social media. Almost everything is of an interest to them. They immerse themselves on social media constantly to share their opinions and interact with brands. A perfect example will be brand ambassadors.

 

Every user type has their own characteristics, but I believe some of us might even be a mixture of two (or more)! I mean it can be difficult to distinguish ourselves from the user types as many of us use social media for more than one purpose. So, the question here is how reliable is this framework in grouping us based on our social media uses and should addition user types be added to differentiate our roles more accurately?

Do let me know in the comment below what do you think about this post!!