Why we and dancing Filipino prisoners like social media

It useful to step-back sometimes and understand some of the psychology that underpins the social media channels we are using for our online marketing campaigns.

Here is very interesting seminar on Social Media by Mike Wesch of Kansas State University who produced the popular video ‘web 2.0 – what is and how to use it’ – you can watch this video in our favourites at w00tonomyTV.

Using YouTube as a case study it looks at why social media had become such a phenomenom in the world by appealing to humans need for individualism and community. Interestingly the audience demographics for YouTube for over 35 are 25%, the same as 12 -17 year olds; the largest group is 18 -24 year olds at 50%.

It is an academic video so you may not wish to watch it all the way through but the first 20 minutes is a very entertaining introduction to Social Media with examples of the viral effects of videos in Youtube – look out for the dance with the prisoners from the Phillippines.

Also for those of you who want to really understand ‘what social networks mean’ without the technical jargon he provides a very clear way to explain it all

• YouTube is user generated content
• Digg is user generated filtering
• del.icio.us is user generated organisation
• Technorati is user generated commentary

Hope you enjoy it!