The exchange rate of social media currencies

There was an interesting post a few days back from on the Currencies of Social Media. I found it was interesting. The 5 currencies are:

1) Useful value (saving time etc) is more commonly referred to as brand utilities, so although Nike+ is held up as the ‘daddy’ of brand utilities, there are also a huge numbers of mobile apps that would qualify for this category.

2) Entertainment value (movies etc) is more commonly referred to as branded entertainment and it’s interesting to note that typically this is the approach that an ad campaign concept would take. The ultimate proof of social currency is when your content is being remixed and parodied, as happened with the Cadbury’s gorilla campaign.

3) Monetary value (aka real cash exchange value) is the social equivalent of the conventional sales promotion or PR activity. So it could be a simple voucher like the infamous Threshers’ discount voucher or a competition run in conjunction with an influential blogger.

4) Information value, (knowledge and thought leadership etc), can be produced in various formats e.g. video interviews, slideshare presentations and blog posts (like this one . More superficial forms of information, like gossip and conspiracy, can also be adopted.

5) Personal value (exclusivity, or drives fame/whuffie) is a particularly interesting currency, as it often provides social currency that is extremely compelling. The global success of reality TV shows, such as Big Brother, and the talent shows such as Pop Idol and X-Factor demonstrate the importance of fame.

Although it was done from the point of view of of a marketing person, the 5 definitions are useful to run with. But the really interesting question is this: what's the exchange rate between these currencies (or to put it another way, what is their relative value per user. One of these days I'll get around to publishing some of the client work we've done on Attention Economics, and the value of different Real Time data types. But for now this issue leads to a quick 2x2, as shown above. Here is a quick summary of the axes.

Direct Information Value: Of these types of currency above, some are backed up by more intrinsic value than others. Cash, or a promise to pay, is real. Social goods that can be put to use for productive value creation are more highly valued than those that merely alleviate boredom in slack time, for example.

Resource Constraint Value: The most valuable resource is the bottleneck resource - thats your time, you only have 24 hours a day of it, and it has varying levels of productivity and thus value. About 10 hours a day (sustainably) can be used for fairly high value work, most people need about 7 hours a day sleep (an average) which gives you about 7 hours a day of less valuable time. We tend to sue our high impact time to do Useful Stuff, our low value time for entertainment and personal maintenance.

This gives the 4 quadrants above:

Highest Value - high value information in constrained high value time. High quality content that solves the problems I have in my highest value activity time. This means not just good content, but presented in the right way that maximises utility and minimises resources consumed. Media example - FT data that helps me trade. "Information" and Monetary content (of high value) is mainly in this box

Value Bounded - Given I'm in my low value time, I will spend a lot of it to optimise the quality of information. "Personal" content, low value "Direct Money" and some "Entertainment" is in this box. Media example - this is why (for example) I won't pay for general news from a newspaper but will pay for FT content

User Bounded - This is the ability to get a piece of low value information just when/wher I need it. Location sensitive services at the right time are an example - this is when knowing good cocktail bars within 500m of where I am now is valuable. . Mainly "Useful" value, some "Entertainment" and some "Information" are here. Media example - a piece from the mainstream media that just happens to address what I want to do, now. (ie there is value in archive access)

Low Value - This s stuff that entertains me when I'm bored or in downtime. A lot of entertainment fits into this category, so its a high volume game. This consists mainly of "Entertainment" content and quiet a bit of low end "Personal Value" Media example - yet another Op-Ed on the topic du jour, videos to pass time while waiting for a train.

So as to relative exchange rates, I would argue that overall, on average:

Money > Information > Useful Value > Personal Value > Entertainment.

Thus the intrinsic value of a Social Media site lowers as it moves towards pure "entertainment" and thus it needs higher and higher volumes. I would go further, and hypothesize you may well pay (yes, subscribe) to gain access to the Highest Value sites, and even to get certain functionality/content in the bounded sites, but no one will pay for the lower value content. Incidentally, I suspect a similar thing occurs with regards to "social capital", eg Twitter "followers" vs people you influence, and what sort of people do influence others.