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

Reading Reflections #1

Groundswell means ‘A social trend in which people use technology to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.’ Now, the groundswell is used to describe PR activities related to the internet or social media.

In chapter 1, the author use digg.com explains that people can now find news through their own power, rather than listening to traditional media. In this case, traditional companies can only change their own strategies. Emerging social media comes from thousands of sources and smashes traditional businesses like floods. Like a flood, it can't be blocked anywhere. Among them, websites around the world have begun to introduce rating mechanisms, such as Google Store, Apple APP Store, Amazon, Yelp, etc.

Under those innovations, countless people make comments or ratings on goods or services. I think these comments and ratings are helpful to guide other customers. For example, since I started shopping online, I usually will pay attention to customer comments and ratings. Because I found that the higher the rating, the better the quality of the product. From then on, every time I make a purchase online, I will review dozens of comments to evaluate the quality of the product before making a decision.

In chapter 2, we might think groundswell appears to be a bad activity because it weakens and undermined the control of the company and the organization. But in fact, as long as we can understand groundswell, it will be a good skill. Groundswell requires knowledge, experience, and enlightenment just like any other skill. Also, we should concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies. Because technology is constantly evolving, and no matter what technology will be invented, it always involves people's relationships. In this chapter, people have created a variety of websites to diversify the network. People created blogs, user-generated content, and podcasts to share their creations; people created social networks and virtual worlds to connect with each other; people made wikis and open source to collaborate; people made forums, ratings, And reviews to share their reaction to something; people use tags to classify network information; people use RSS and widgets
to accelerate consumption. The author uses five questions to dissect these new categories when writing the above six distinctions, which are '(1) how they work, (2) how many people use them, (3) how they form part of the groundswell, ( 4) how they threaten institutional power, and (5) what you can do about them.'

In chapter 3, the book uses a new term AFOL in the example, which means adult fans of Lego. The third chapter begins with the analysis of the psychology and behavior of several Lego important adult customers and divides them into several categories for use on a groundswell. They are creators, conversationalists, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives.

Social Technographics Ladder by Kristin Slevin

In Chapter 4, I think the most important thing is the five objects that companies can pursue in the groundswell. In the author and his team's observation of hundreds of companies pursuing groundswell strategies, they identified the following five objectives:
Listening: Use the groundswell for research and to better understand your customers.
Talking: Use the groundswell to spread messages about your company.
Energizing: Find your most enthusiastic customers, and use the groundswell to supercharge the power of their word of mouth.
Supporting: Set up groundswell tools to help your customers support each other.
Embracing: Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products.

New Live Streaming Style: 'Virtual YouTuber'

What is Traditional Live Streaming?

Traditional live streaming refers to a form of entertainment that record and broadcasts video in real-time. As the rise of online video platforms, the traditional video and social media websites started their own streaming services. With the internet become universal and computer computing capabilities have increased, the live broadcasts that can only be carried out by television station and media enterprises have expanded to general users and households on the internet. The platform such as YouTube Live, Twitch, Facebook Watch and etc become popular.

Twitch, founded in 2007, become a subsidiary of Amazon in 2014.

YouTube Live, launched November 22–23, 2008.

 

Facebook Watch, announced in January 2017.

The biggest difference between the live stream and traditional uploaded video is that the viewer can interact with the anchor through the live chat during the stream and the traditional video can only leave comments down below. The anchor can adjust the content of the program or please the audience according to the feedback of the audience.

What is Virtual YouTubers?

Virtual YouTubers(Vtubers) are YouTubers (online entertainers) who are represented by digital avatars generated by computer graphics. (1)

Tsukino Mito, an example of a female virtual YouTuber

Belmond Banderas, an example of a male virtual YouTuber

The technology was first founded in 1985 by the company SimGaphics, which has been providing creative animation solutions for live events since 1991. The word Virtual YouTubers has not been mentioned until Kizuna AI in 2016. In late 2017, Kizuna AI received a huge popularity spike, going from 200,000 to over 2,000,000 subscribers in 10 months. (4) Virtual YouTuber's main market is in Japan and mainland China. In Japan, once the virtual idol becomes popular, it was widely praised by Japanese society, because it only needs the actor to have a specialty on their voice and leave the other work such as character design or program planning to other members of the company.

On the other hand, the traditional idol/star need more requirement, they usually need a good looking face, pleasant voice, suitable makeup, action design and outstanding performance like. More importantly, the security of the idol has been improved, because the identity of the people behind the scenes is a secret, which is the consensus of the industry and it is impolite to actively listen. Thus, the probability of the Stabbing of Mayu Tomita case can be greatly reduced. (5)

Mayu Tomita, a Japanese pop star, was stabbed in the neck and chest area 60 times by her fan

In addition, the sexual harassment of idols, tracking madness, kidnapping, and other crimes that requiring exact appearance and address will be reduced. Vtuber's market has only just begun in China. Earlier this year, Japan's vtuber company Hololive conducted a seven-day broadcast on Chinese social media Bilibili to celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival. The plan is extremely successful. It can be said that the plan opened up Chinese vtuber market and officially brought vtubers into many Chinese people's field of vision. Until 8/1/2019, the followers of some vtubers on Chinese social networking sites have far surpassed the follower on YouTube.

Hololive, Vtuber company in Japan.

Bilibili, Chinese social media, popular in young people. 

In January 2019, the daily active user was 76 million.

As of May 28, 2018, the virtual YouTuber had about 3,000 people, a total of 10.89 million subscribers, and video hits over 690 million. (6) By April 2019, the virtual YouTuber had about 6,000 people and about 20 million subscribers. The number has almost doubled, which proved that the market still has large demand, and it also shows that the industry is on the rise. With the rise of virtual YouTuber, virtual YouTuber companies have emerged, among which the most famous are Upd8, ENTUM, Nijisanji, Hololive and etc.

Upd8

ENTUM

Nijisanji, or Rainbow Club

Source

1. Virtual YouTubers, Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_YouTuber

2. SimGraphics VActor™, the official website

http://simg.com/AboutUs.html

3. Japan's latest big thing: 'virtual YouTubers', KAZUAKI NAGATA, JUL 17, 2018

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/17/national/japans-latest-big-thing-virtual-youtubers/#.XX_9EihKiUk

4. From Japanese anime characters to Barbie, virtual YouTubers talk and act just like people — and they could change the way we all interact forever, Bryan Lufkin, 2nd October 2018

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181002-the-virtual-vloggers-taking-over-youtube

5. Stabbing of Mayu Tomita, Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Mayu_Tomita