Psychology of crowd in social media

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Marek

If you’re a marketer or community manager, to a mandatory set of books you should add two. The first is the “The Social Animal” by Elliot Aronson, the second is a “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” by Gustave Le Bon. Why these two? Because knowledge of human behavior helps to plan marketing activities, especially when budgets are small.
If you’re not a Polish reader you might not even know Nasza-Klasa.pl. If you’re reading this blog maybe you learnt a little about this portal. It’s enough to say that it’s something like Classmates.com. One day owenrs of Nasza-Klasa.pl decided to introduce new feature. It was simple inner communicator something like posting your status on Facebook. Nothing special really. It has its name – Sledzik (Herring). It was strange, but Nasza-Klasa users were against this feature. It was a flames of hate.

Sledzik has become public enemy number 1, and Internet filled with the ways how to get rid of it. The most popular method consisted in writing the following messages, which were to remove the application.

Let’s look at what people put to their profiles on their belief that it will work:

FROM ADMINISTRATION: Dear users. Due to the large number of messages for us to remove the “Sledzik” we want to find out how many people really do not want this option. If Sledzik has gone-copy message

Administator: NK understood the error which is Sledzik and the new program will be removed but only for those people who want it. These people should paste this message to your Sledzik and for 1 hour will be removed from their accounts Administator

END OF SLEDZIK. OUR TEAM CLASS LTD. ZOO UL.GEN.J.BEMA 2 50-265 WROCŁAW INFORM YOU THAT YOU SHOULD PASTE the TEXT TO YOUR Sledzik WITHIN 24 HOURS TO GET RID OF IT. OTHER WAY SLEDZIK REMAIN IN YOUR PROFILE.

Here is Robert Kosmowski Administrator of NK.I am very sorry that it took a long time but trust me on word that it is not easy to remove Sledzik. Now if you paste the text Sledzik will be removed after 5 minutes .

From Piotr, main founder of NK, I see that our messaging system Sledzik is blacker than not burning, unfortunately, its removal will take a few days in exchange for an apology You get 300 eurogabki only what you need to do is add it to the Sledzik.

Paste it on your Sledzik and then press ALT and Sledzik will disappear

5P13RD4L4J-5L3D21U (it need translation – try to imagine “Get the fuck out Sledzik” written with letters and numbers)

and my absolute favorite, litmus paper of intelligence and imagination:

J3273M-D38113M (it’s the same as above, but this time it means I AM MORON)

These trials of removing unwanted applications demonstrated excellent test of how easy it is to manipulate a huge group of people. It is difficult to say how many people enrolling in these texts, really wanted to get rid of Sledzik, and how many just felt that this should proceed.

What’s more, looking at these texts is difficult to find even one which can be considered credible. Tackling with Śledzik draws attention to user behavior that are of interest to those engaged in e-marketing and communities.

Even if this information is obvious, they are worth a repeat:

  • nothing so do not unite as a common enemy
  • Large group of NK users are the ones with little experience in the Internet, thus more susceptible to the messages eg (pseudo-) technical inclined to believe the most absurd solution

and what is most important:

  • although it is hard to admit, most of us are conformists.

On the occasion of the last paragraph I quote part of Elliot Aronson’s book – “The Social Animal”:

You applied for a volunteer to participate in the experiment testing perception. You walk into a room together with four other participants. Experimenter shows all draw a straight line segment (section X). At the same time shows you the comparison, three other sections (A, B and C). Your task is to assess which of these three sections is most similar in terms of length of segment X. You are surprised, because this task is very easy. You have no doubt that the correct answer is B, and when your turn comes, say, of course, that it is a section B. However, as the first answer is not you, but another participant, who is watching from sections thoughtfully and says: “A”. Open your mouth in amazement and looking at him mockingly. How can he think that this is A fool anyone have noticed if it is B?” – Ask yourself. “He must be either blind or crazy.” Now comes the turn of the second participant, he also selects the section A. You start to feel like Alice in Wonderland. “How can this be?” – Asking himself. “Are both of these people are either blind, or confusion?” After them, however, corresponds to the next person and says: “A”. Eyes again the sections. “Maybe it is I lose my mind” – silently mutter to himself. Now, the fourth person in the same way as its predecessors, considers that the correct section is the section A cold sweat appears on your forehead. Finally your turn comes. “This is obviously A” – notes. “I knew it from the very beggining”

and yet:

Suddenly, someone started to run. Maybe he just remembered at this point that appointed for a meeting with his wife, and said that it is terribly late. Whatever it was, the man ran wide street in an easterly direction (probably the Maranor restaurant, a favorite meeting place for men with their wives). Someone else, probably newsboy in a good mood, it started to run. Another man, corpulent gentleman with a briefcase, he set off at a trot. Not been 10 minutes and everybody was already running, anyone who was on the high street from the station up to the courthouse. A loud murmur gradually crystallized in a frightening word, “Dam! Dam is broken”. Fear has been expressed by the words of an old woman in a black dress, by a policeman at a street intersection or by a small boy: no one knows who first uttered the phrase, and not have it now insignificant. Two thousand people ran in panic flight. “Let us flee to the east” would jump up screaming – to the east, away from the river to the east, in a safe place. Tall, thin woman with severe eyes, chin and ran an energetic middle of the street beside me. I was not even sure what was going on, despite all the cries. Caught up with this woman, not without effort, because even approached the sixties, but she ran a beautiful, free style and seemed to be in excellent form. “What happened?”. She threw me a quick glance, then looked again moved forward, increasing the pace a little. “Do not ask me, ask God” – she replied. (…) This piece of Thurber’s story, though it has a comic character, is an excellent illustration of the human conformism. One or two people start to run, whereas after this his reasons, will soon run all. Why? Because running the others. In Thurber’s story, when running, people begin to realize that the dam gave way in spite of everything, felt rather foolish. However, so far as to feel stupid if it had not adapted to the other, and the dam was actually broken?

Don’t you have the impression that what Elliot Aronson wrote fits perfectly into this so we had to do in case of Nasza-Klasa’s Sledzik? I had that feeling, actually sure I had every time I saw another person by typing one of these texts.

Sometimes it is hard for me to believe it was that people of intelligence for which I have no doubt, also undertook such a stupid attempt to remove Sledzik. Probably just in case (dam, however, may have been broken), Probably because of that, since so many people have already done so it does not risk anything more.

Very well, though in a completely different context is described by Arvind Juneja, on his blog Community Management:

There appeared one sentence which is good in sense of traffic but in case of relation product/brand/company to user/klient is quite frightening. Let me give as much as I remember. Mark started talking about the fact that after some action on the FB-related advertisement our friends will get information about our activity So if there is an advertisement in form of questionnaire and I will click one of answers, so then my firend will see the same questionnaire and information “Arvind took a part in this questionnaire”. If there appear Sherlock Holmes movie ad with qestion “Will you go to cinema to see this movie”, and I will click “Yes” so than my friends will see “Arvind will go to cinema to watch this movie”. And here’s the sentence: so when my friend sees that I clicked he also clicks the poll because “hey, my friend is doing it, I will do it too, I mean, he must know what he’s doing”

Joining the group in which there are already our friends it’s free and takes a single click. And when you’re in a group, all the power is in the hands and head of the owner. One published message, then another. Once you can click on it, and be interested in this …

And by the way, that Facebook made it virtually erased the line between marketing message, and information from a friend. Such a “permission viral marketing” …

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