Social sharing, news values and commercial reality at Social Collective

True to the title, yesterday’s Social Collective event was a great excuse to catch up with some old friends and meet some new people. Some great sessions too – in particular I’d direct anyone with an interest in a truly commercial, company-wide use of social technology to this SoTech Infographic. Note that it’s version 1.0, and get involved.

The session I found most fascinating was Didier Mormesse’s presentation of CNN’s Global Research, a study of user recommended content and news shared across social platforms, email and IM. The report is yet to be published, but going by Didier’s talk it will be worth the wait.

Even in Didier’s sneak preview there was real insight, especially concerning people’s motives for sharing content (in short: for amusement in the US, for work in Europe, for status in Asia), the platforms used (social platforms outshining email/IM just about everywhere), and the kind of content shared (the “next chapter” of stories forming a sequential narrative proving especially “sharable”).

Most intruiging were the consequences for brand advertisers. When CNN looked at the performance of display advertising, they found significant improvement in brand metrics in the news content most shared across a range of platforms.

In response to questions from the floor, Didier insisted that these findings would not “shape the news agenda”. But most news organisations are commercial entities, in strong competition to give their audiences – and their advertisers – what  they want.  As more of this kind of data becomes available, it’s hard to believe that many won’t increasingly experience conflict between public service values and commercial reality.

Watch this space.