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Social Media Monitoring project part 2

In the second part of Social Media Monitoring, I will focus on using social media tools and the tools that come with The Valve Corporation to analysis the Valve itself. In this blog, we will use SWOT analysis, combined with textbooks to make some suggestions for The Valve Corporation products. If you are not sure what is The Valve Corporation please click here to navigate to the part one of this project.

Steam Statistics and @Steam_Spy
After an in-depth investigation of Valve's Steam in a while, I found that it has a lot of statistical features that might help the project. Steam has four statistical features, they are

• STEAM & GAME STATS, which can display concurrent Steam users (most recent 48 hours) and top games by current player count.
• STEAM DOWNLOAD STATS, which can show Steam global traffic map (most recent 7 days) and Steam download bandwidth used (most recent 48 hours).
• STEAM SUPPORT STATS, which can show Help Requests and Backlog (most recent 90 days) and recent help request activity.
• Steam hardware & software survey: September 2019, which demonstrate the hardware usage of the participants, it can be referenced by the hardware company.

A few years ago, Steam did not have so many statistical features, and a user on Twitter called @Steam_Spy has been providing statistical analysis to the public. In recent years, as Steam's functionality has gradually improved, the importance of @Steam_Spy has gradually declined, but it is undeniable that he is a very important source of information.

Statistic Provided by @Steam_Spy

S.W.O.T. analysis

Strength

The strength of steam is that it has been running for years, with a mature and constantly improving rating and review mechanism,  a large number of users, a mature global node network, an unimaginable number of games on sale, and a building under construction. social media.

a large number of users

 a large number of users

 A mature global node network

A mature global node network

Weaknesses
The weakness of the Valve is that it has no consoles similar to Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. The other game companies have their own unique game consoles, such as Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox. But Steam's HTC VIVE and Steam Machine are not as successful as the other game consoles described above.

HTC VIVE V.S. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox

Steam Machine V.S. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox

Opportunities

Steam as a digital distribution company it is too inclined to sell games. There are still many digital products in the world other than games. If Valve tries to launch more kinds of merchandise on Steam, such as music and movies, it may have a big development, become a comprehensive sales platform. But on the other hand, Valve might compete with companies like Netflix. Movies, TV shows and music are indeed a huge market, but it also represents a huge influence. The picture below shows people comparing Netflix with steam. We can see that Netflix is much higher than steam. After all, people who watch movies don't necessarily play games at the same time, but those who play games will definitely watch movies or TV shows.

Netflix V.S. Steam (in Social trends)

Steam's rating and review features also make this platform a film review or music tasting platform. The valve can open up this area to encourage ordinary people to create their own work and make a profit. Let the author decide their work should be charged or not.

It has always been important to evaluate the value of an employee within the game industry as a result of the need for the employee to present their work. If you open a block in the Steam community for job seekers, it will attract more game companies to use and rely on the Steam platform. Job seekers can place their work directly on the platform for sale and use the platform's data to prove their excellence and creativity.

Threats 
The main threat facing by Valve today is other competitors. At present, the main competitor is Epic Games. Epic's main products are Fort Night, Unreal Engine, and Epic Game Store. Unreal Engine is a famous game development tool, and Fortnite is a very popular video game. December 4, 2018, Epic Games announced its own game sales platform. To attract other independent developers and vendors to the platform and against the 30% fee of every game sold on Steam, Epic offered a 12% fee of every game sold, and if the game is developed by Unreal Engine, an additional 5% deduction will be available. Expansion utilizing acquisition of exclusive distribution rights. 
In addition, Epic expands by uses its acquisition of exclusive distribution rights: Epic will pay publishers/developers a large amount of money to buy exclusive distribution rights, making the game available only in Epic stores, or buying A few months of pre-release, let the game available on the Epic store for a few months earlier than other platforms.

Epic Games(Left) and Steam games(right)

Epic has higher strength and passion in the last month. This means that more people are discussing Epic than Steam and are willing to discuss it repeatedly. The remaining sentiment and reach are not as high as steam, but we need to know that Steam has been on the market for several years, and the Epic store is released on December 4, 2018, which makes Epic a threat.

Recommendations
I think Valve's Steam has done a great job on the groundswell. It has its own rating and review system, its own statistical system, and a social media system that will soon have its own users. I came into contact with Steam because my friends are using it. From here, I can see that the word of mouth strategy has been used successfully. Even though Steam has many advantages, I have found three areas where improvements can be made.

First, Steam should strengthen its connection with followers on social media. According to my observations, Steam's Twitter and Facebook accounts are more like a 'daily deals post machine.' It will only post information about promotions. It doesn't comment on social hotspots to attract attention like the Epic Games' CEO did. Perhaps this is because Steam is just a trading platform, and developers from all countries and races around the world may publish their work on it. If the hot comments are hot, it may cause dissatisfaction from customers, but it will increase the chances of competitors. My advice is to have their CEO or founder create a separate personal account to interact with followers.

Second, develop Steam's own social media platform. So far, Steam's social platform has come in the form of a company, and ordinary users can only follow these companies instead of core producers. So I think add a feature that can make producers stand out and interact with buyers and fans. In Chapter 6, the author mentions that one of the techniques for talking with the groundswell is to create a community. The feature I proposed can create a small community based on company and producer. In this community, only the content related to the producer or company will be discussed. Companies and producers can easily get feedback, thoughts, and ideas from the customers.

Third, establish a mutual help mechanism in the steam community(Chapter 8. helping the groundswell support itself). Sometimes, when a user solves a problem, if he finds that other users have the same problem as him, the user will have a good chance of helping other users. They are solving problems in this way much faster than the customer service department.

Example of how the groundswell support itself

Social Media Monitoring project part 1--Valve Corporation

The Valve Corporation

The Valve Corporation '(stylized as VALVᴱ) is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota series.' 

The company was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell (left)and Mike Harrington(right). They first released their first game half-life in 1998, and Mike Harrington left the company after commercial success. In 2003, Valve released Steam as a platform for the sale of digital computer games. In 2011, Steam sold digital games that accounted for half of all digital games. In 2015, after continuous growth, Valve entered the game hardware market and established its own software system - SteamOS.


The Social Media and The Valve
The Valve Corporation is a very unusual company because we can consider itself as a social media platform. On Steam's Community Activity page, we can see that it has the ability to send images/screenshots/videos and leave a comment on them; live streaming with anyone have the account; workshops to gather and realize ideas; news that developers and retailer can use; guides that can be inserted with text, images, and videos; customer ratings and reviews. All the features above can be found on Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, Blog and etc. Although the Steam platform has numerous social media features, Valve Corporation still uses several social media platform accounts to extend its influence.


Facebook Community Page
Follower: 4.80 million  
Steam's Facebook page publishes promotional information like its Twitter homepage. But I opened the comments in the latest games and found that the main topic of people is to evaluate the game and seek customer support.





Twitter
Follower: 5.19 million 

Steam's Twitter homepage publishes promotional information like its Facebook page. But I opened the comments in the latest games and found that the main topic of people is to discuss where there are cheaper prices, funny photoshopped pictures of founder Gabe Newell, and the technical problems encountered. Technical questions are often answered by enthusiasts.




Youtube
Subscriber: 1.25 million 
Steam's Youtube homepage does not publish promotional information every day like Facebook and Twitter. Its function is to publish promotional videos of important events, new products of its own company, and new virtual reality hardware.


Linkedin
Follower: 0.15 million 
Steam's Linkedin homepage is designed to attract talent. It writes 'We make games, Steam, and hardware in the most visible position. Join US,' on Linkedin. we can see 935 employees' data and a chart. From the chart, we can know that there are 434 employees living in the United States and 26 people who studied at the University of Washington.

Steam Community
Follower: 0.20 million
As Steam's own social media platform, it can be said that 90% of the followers here are game players and game developers. The audience categories here are very simple, they have been purchased something on this platform, or have been cooperated with the platform. On this homepage, steam is still promoting its 44 products, including 31 games, 3 hardware, and 10 additional/supplement products.




The Valve Corporation and other similar companies
In recent years, many game development companies have also begun to build their own game sales platform to avoid Steam's excessive sales/promotional share. Up to 30% of sales/promotional share brings a huge user base, a mature trading mechanism, and convenient evaluation/feedback capabilities. Today, Steam is still the largest digital game seller.

Google Trends

From Google Trends we can see that Steam has been the most frequently mentioned on all platforms in the past 12 months. Each bump in the chart generally represents a big promotion, such as the obvious prominence of Ubisoft and Steam, which is a big discount and a routine summer promotion. 

Valve Corporation Sort by last hour(left) and last month(right)

After I searched The Valve Corporation using SocialMention, I got the following results. Strength is the likelihood that the brand is being discussed in social media. The sentiment is the ration of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. Passion is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about the brand will do so repeatedly. The reach is a measure of the range of influence. From the result, we can see that the Valve Corporation has a low likelihood that being discussed, a high positive mention, a high repeat talking rate, and a low influence range.

Conclusion
I think that Facebook has more mature users, while Twitter users are younger. I think we can differentiate marketing for this. Facebook can tend to promote art-like games, while Twitter promotes discounted, fast-paced games. Valve Corporation's own social media needs more features, such as allowing key positions such as major producers or creative directors to share their ideas directly with buyers, rather than talking to the entire company. Valve Corporation's word-of-mouth monolithic positive. In terms of tone, I think that Valve Corporation is a multi-commodity company, and my tone of neutrality is largely influenced by Steam. Because steam is a product to collaborate with publishers and company/studio/individual developers in various countries, the neutral tone fits this need very well.

Reflection of Chapter 9-12

‘How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future provides dozens of examples of ways to harness “customer innovation” in development processes with tools like private communities, ratings, and reviews.’-------Patricia B. Seybold’s Outside Innovation

Finding practical ways to tap into customers to help the company innovate now— 'to increase the chances of developing something customers want'— usually have two reasons:

• Customers don’t take long to tell you what they want.
• With customers in the loop, innovation happens more quickly because you can iterate—make continuous improvements.

I think the mobile operator AT&T is a good example, it can cover all the contents of chapters 9, 10 and 12. The rating website such as Consumer Affairs can provide a massive amount of feedback to the current AT&T services. 

Ratings and reviews on Consumer Affairs

AT&T staff can improve their service by reading those low star reviews. I have encountered the same problem because there seems to be a state market lock inside the AT&T system. Moving phone numbers from one state to another will be very troublesome. I used to go to college in Nebraska, thus my number is a Nebraska number. When I arrived in Massachusetts for postgraduate, it took the AT&T staff one month to transfer my mobile phone service from Nebraska to Massachusetts. So, if they see those comments, they will optimize their service and increase their efficiency.

On the other hand, use Twitter to build connections with customers to become a major trend.

One reason is that Twitter has six major elements to build a social media ecosystem:

• Followers
• Hashtags and searches.
• Mentions and retweets.
• Links.
• Lists
• Apps and tools.

AT&T also a good example that how the company embraced Twitter.

AT&T Twitter

AT&T has more than 132.9 thousand tweets and 889.7 thousand followers. This is a very influential social media account, which is currently holding a donation event. Social media accounts often host events that attract more followers and further expand brand influence. AT&T is doing very well.

How the groundswell spreads with a customer-centric organization

First, it’s important to take this step by step. Because the company needs time to summarize, promote and think about the experience gained. This will form a stepping stone to help the company gradually gain and expand its advantages.

Second, each of these stepping-stones leads to a natural progression to the next step. These stepping stones will establish the foundation, which can push it up to the next challenging level of groundswell thinking.

Third, you have to have executive support. Selling groundswell thinking to the top level can have a philosophical identity at the top and support our cause, because groundswell may require joint operations in many sectors. 

When the company becomes huge, there will be problems with internal communication. This chapter encourages the use of employee-created wikis in large companies to streamline complex customer support service processes and inefficient communication. AT&T did a good job in this regard, they wrote the FAQ as an answer and got the application on the automated virtual assistant.

 Automated virtual assistant

This automated virtual assistant detects us typing and extracts key information. On the way, I wrote Bill, the automated virtual assistant listed below is the most common problem. If the customer's problem is on the list, it relieves the burden on the human operator.

Political Correctness, Countries, Different Cultures, Social Media, Groundswell and Double-edged sword

Since the emergence of social media, everything seems to be developing in a good way, people may have some small contradictions, but most of them have self-solved. Recently, the most eye-catching event is the NBA incident. The cause of the incident was due to Daryl Morey's twitter for the protests in Hong Kong and Adam Silver's use of free speech to support him.

 

Daryl Morey and Adam Silver

Subsequently, the NBA was banned in China in early October. Coincidentally, a few days later, China’s trade war negotiation team arrived in the United States. At the beginning of the extremes of the matter, on October 10, the first phase of the trade war seemed to have hopes of being reached, and the US stock market suddenly had an uptrend. The incident began to cool down, and many NBA stars began to have the exact opposite rhetoric. On October 14, other broadcast platforms in China other than CCTV began to continue to broadcast NBA games, except Houston Rockets' game.

Stephen A. Smith reacts to China angered Rockets GM supports Hong Kong protesters

The most objective comment I have found on the show so far.

In my opinion, first, social media and groundswell are used by the government as a public opinion weapon to attack each other. However, there was an accident in this incident, and the window-breaking effect made people around the world want to use groundswell and influence that belongs to international companies as a platform to express their political demands.
On the two days before Spain's National Day (10/12/2019), a few days after the NBA incident, the date that China and US have progress on trade war armistice negotiations, a group of 'people' (I don't know what to call them, the wrong word may hurt people on both sides and I do not want to support any sides because that's their own business) displayed an flag during Warriors pre-season game, intended to promote the independence of the Catalonia region.

Link to this twitter

This message seems to have been some sort of 'blockade' and it is not reported in most English news. I recommend you can search in other languages, such as Spanish, or read the news from Spain directly by your-self because that's the closest way to approach what their government and people thinking.

We can find out that this kind of offensive application of using social media has undoubtedly hurt others, and it may continue to expand to some other place, such as Scotland, or any area that has had residual effects after the two world wars and the colonial era. 

Second, in my view, Adam Silver used a very clever groundswell method to 'shaken' people. I agree that people should have the right to speak freely, which is what Adam Silver said, but he did not say the latter sentence that we all know in the subconscious: we must be responsible for our words and deeds. There is an example that happened in 2014. 

Donald T. Sterling (born Donald Tokowitz, April 26, 1934) is an American businessman who was the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers professional basketball franchise of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1981 to 2014.

Donald T. Sterling

'In April 2014, Sterling was banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million by the league after private recordings of him making racist comments were made public. In May, Sterling's wife Shelly reached an agreement for the Sterling Family Trust to sell the Clippers for $2 billion to Steve Ballmer, which Sterling contested in court. The NBA Board of Governors approved the sale of the Clippers to Ballmer on August 12, 2014. Sterling settled his lawsuit against the NBA in November 2016 and remains active in Los Angeles real estate.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sterling)

(Raw) NBA Commissioner Adam Silver bans Donald Sterling

From this case, we can know the NBA has a cognition that free speech has a boundary, offensive languages, such as discrimination and racial topics, should not be used in any case. But why almost nobody cares about the feeling about their fan in China? 

Kobe Bryant and his Chinese fan

I think one reason that makes this happened is probably that we don't really know each other. We all know that the Physical Correctness of the United States in the last 20 to 30 years is about human rights and freedom, but does anyone know that a very important Political Correctness in China is about sovereignty? In the past 100 years, few wars have threatened the United States, but in China, in the past 100 years, we have been invaded, slaughtered, divided, and killed. We call that 'The century of humiliation (1839 - 1949), ' I think this is why people in other countries may not understand why the Chinese are so cautious and sensitive about sovereignty. I also think this is why this contradiction the outbreak is so intense.

I browsed the forums on both sides after the conflict broke out (10/8-10/14). I saw a lot of people complaining about each other and laughing at each other's shortcomings. I saw the words that most mentioned on social media in China is like 'f@&k America', and I also saw some similar things on social media in the United States--'f@&k China.' The funny thing is we have surprisingly consistent choices on both sides of the bad language. I think this phenomenon is a fierce collision between our Political Correctness and culture, and then through the amplification of the social networks, and finally create a conflict in the case of political needs. 

Conclusion

This conflict has changed the views of the two sides on each other and has also brought history to a different direction. I am writing this article not to defend the Chinese government, nor to criticize the Americans. I hope that we can understand each other and respect each other. After all, complaints can't solve the issue. Only communication can truly understand each other and resolve differences. 

What role did groundswell play in this incident? Do you think that sports should be mixed with politics?

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I am open for rational feedback. If you have any question please let me know.

Reading Reflections #2

Energizing the groundswell means tapping into the power of word of mouth by connecting with, and turning on, your most committed customers, like Jim Noble with his improved laptop bag.

Word of mouth is a powerful amplifier of brand marketing, achieving results no media campaign can achieve. Word of mouth succeeds because:

• It’s believable. Testimonials from customers are far more credible than any media source.
• It’s self-reinforcing. Hear it from one person, and it’s intriguing. Hear it from five or ten, even if you didn’t know them before, and it has to be true.
• It’s self-spreading. Just as Heather Locklear said, if a product is worth using, its word of mouth generates more word of mouth in a cascade that’s literally exponential.
• From figure 7-1, people believe other people more than media.

7-1

One example of Word of mouth is the Steam, my favorite online game retail platform, which was released on September 12, 2003. Since its release, its user evaluation function has been continuously improved.

Steam

After the developer publishes their work on Steam, they can find out the inadequacies of their work in the customer reviews, communicate with the customer as soon as possible, and analysis the customer's taste.

Destiny 2

Destiny 2-Customer Review

On the other hand, Steam has innovated customer analysis in recent years, and they have added a statistical system to help developers and customers identify product quality more specific. For example, 3DMark is a hardware test software, which has been released for a long time. 

3dMark

In the long update history, customers may be disappointed or disgusted with an certain update, and this version may drag the overall ratings down. So Steam has launched a bar chart statistical system based on time(-X) with positive and negative reviews(-Y). If the customer is controversial about the update of a certain period of time, you can clearly see the problems on the chart.

3dMark-bar chart statistical system

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Chapter 8, the author found that 'People are far more willing to trust each other than a company, as we described in chapter 7. And amazingly, people are willing to spend lots of time helping each other, if you just get out of the way.' The company is now focusing save cost on after-sales expenses because they found 'Supporting customers is a burden.'
Chapter 9 is about finding practical ways to tap into customers to help the company innovate now— 'to increase the chances of developing something customers want.'
There are two reasons:

• Customers don’t take long to tell you what they want.
• With customers in the loop, innovation happens more quickly because you can iterate—make continuous improvements.

For example, Steam has created a community to help developers energize their customers. This works best if customers are truly passionate about the product and have an affinity for each other.

Destiny 2-Community Hub

3dMark-Community Hub

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Chapter 10 is about how to use Twitter to build connections with customers.

Twitter has six major elements to build a social media ecosystem:

• Followers
• Hashtags and searches.
• Mentions and retweets.
• Links. 
• Lists
• Apps and tools.

Today, most companies will set up their social media accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and etc. These companies usually use Twitter to build closer connections with their customers, such as posting promotions or hosting events.

For example, Steam uses its official twitter to attract customers by tweet daily deals. Steam is not like a normal company only discounted at a certain time. Because there are so much software on Steam, thus it has discounted software every day. In addition, there are publisher's discounts every weekend, seasonal promotions every season, and holiday promotions for holidays across the world. In the case of such a number and frequent discounts, it is essential to inform the customer of a twitter account. After the customer's retweets, the company's reputation and appeal will inevitably continue to expand.

Steam Twitter Account

In the end, I have some questions for you. In your view, what other activities the company can do with Twitter? Except for Steam, are their other companies uses such groundswell strategies?

Twitter’s hide replies options and groundswell

For the first time in February this year, Twitter announced the addition of a feature that allows users to hide their replies. After completing the first functional test in Canada June, Twitter opened its second test in the US and Japan on September 19.

TwitterSupport

Since the invention of social media, there have been significant problem-plagued people, which is how to deal with toxic responses. In the past two years, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created by the Internet each day. This includes a lot of social media information, and this information is not all useful, some comments or information are harmful, such as racial discrimination and cyberbullying. In general, we often use the ability to block or add blacklists, and now we have a new choice -- Hide replies.

With the hidden comment feature, we no longer need to use the block or blacklist feature for someone we don't know. We only need to choose to hide his or her comments. This is a quick way to manage replies, because those who send toxic comments may be on impulsive emotion.

But at the same time, many people are worried about this. Because it is like a child who does not want to hear criticism or dissent from others, many of the feedbacks that are contrary to the publisher's comments are hidden. Today, the vast majority of people rely on the Internet to get news. If this feature is widely used in all areas of the Internet, will the voices of people with different opinions be hidden? What are the negative comments about big company products?  These concerns make us think about how to solve this problem.

Do you think this is progress or regression of social media? Is there a better way to manage the balance of free speech and toxic replies?

I think that this option depends on the person who uses it, we need to maintain the right to free speech, but we also need to clean up toxic responses. I believe that improving people's basic ‘qualities’ is the best solution. People can speak on the Internet at a very low cost, but if the speakers are very knowledgeable, then their way of thinking will become more rational and thus reduce toxic responses.

Twitter Provides Option to Hide Replies to Users in the US and Japan, Andrew Hutchinson, Sept. 20, 2019.

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/twitter-provides-option-to-hide-replies-to-users-in-the-us-and-japan/563359/

How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read, Bernard Marr, May 21, 2018.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#7285d02f60ba