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.