Page 330 - Using MIS

298 Chapter 8 Social Media Information Systems

community when it realized the expense and commitment of maintaining it. In addition to
custom applications and databases, SM providers also invest in analytic software to understand
how users interact with their site and application software.

Data

SM data falls into two categories: content and connections. Content data is data and responses
to data that are contributed by users. You provide the source content data for your Facebook
site, and your friends provide response content when they write on your wall, make comments,
tag you, or otherwise publish on your site.
Connection data is data about relationships. On Facebook, for example, the relationships
to your friends are connection data. The fact that you’ve liked particular organizations is also
connection data. Connection data differentiates SMIS from Web site applications. Both Web
sites and social networking sites present user and responder content, but only social networking
applications store and process connection data.
SM providers store and retrieve SM data on behalf of users. They must do so in the presence
of network and server failures, and they must do so rapidly. The problem is made somewhat
easier, however, because SM content and connection data have a relatively simple structure.

Procedures

For social networking users, procedures are informal, evolving, and socially oriented. You do
what your friends do. When the members of your community learn how to do something new
and interesting, you copy them. SM Software is designed to be easy to learn and use.
Such informality makes using SMIS easy, but it also means that unintended consequences
are common. The most troubling examples concern user privacy. Many people have learned
not to post pictures of themselves in front of their house numbers on the same publicly acces-
sible site on which they’re describing their new high-definition television. Many others, alas,
have not.
For organizations, social networking procedures are more formalized and aligned with the
organization’s strategy. Organizations develop procedures for creating content, managing user
responses, removing obsolete or objectionable content, and extracting value from content. For
example, setting up an SMIS to gather data on product problems is a wasted expense unless
procedures exist to extract knowledge from that social networking data. Organizations also need
to develop procedures to manage SM risk, as described in Q7.
Procedures for operating and maintaining the SM application are beyond the scope of this text.

People

Users of social media do what they want to do depending on their goals and their personalities.
They behave in certain ways and observe the consequences. They may or may not change their
behavior. By the way, note that SM users aren’t necessarily rational, at least not in purely mon-
etary ways. See, for example, the study by Vernon Smith in which people walked away from free
money because they thought someone else was getting more! 6
Organizations cannot be so casual. Anyone who uses his or her position in a company to
speak for an organization needs to be trained on both SMIS user procedures and the organiza-
tion’s social networking policy. We will discuss such procedures and policies in Q7.
Social media is creating new job titles, new responsibilities, and the need for new types of
training. For example, what makes a good tweeter? What makes an effective wall writer? What
type of people should be hired for such jobs? What education should they have? How does one

6 Vernon Smith, Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), pp. 247–250.