Israel's Social Media: Different Strokes for Different Folks
Entrance to Mamillah street open mall in Jerusalem. Upscale retail shops are using FaceBook and Twitter as an extension to their physical connections to their customers / © 2009 This blog did not get any articles the last month. This was not intentional or laziness. My time was spent expanding my social networks. I am working on two campaigns, one to find a full time job as a product manager [CV]. The second is to promote a beta test for YouFounder. We keep hearing how Israel is the land of new ideas and early adoption. Stories about how people get noticed on social networks make the TV news. There are statistics on use of social networks; so many people use social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Linked-In) that pretty soon everyone will be just on social networks doing nothing else. Anyway there are lots of nice stories about Israel and technology. But what do people here use technology for? Is it really changing how people work? Are people changing their way of communicating by using social networks?
There are two interesting phenomena we see in Israeli social media. The first is the use of social networks which are group based in Hebrew. These include Walla groups, Blogli blogs, Y-Net communities and Marker Cafe. Local social media use is interesting to people outside Israel who see social networks as an extension of personal physical connections. In Israel personal physical connections have always been one of the most useful way of getting things done. Israelis keep long connections with high school friend and army buddies. Friendships with neighbors and parents of your children's school friends are also important. In small communities even in big cities, personal contacts are the way people interact. The other phenomenon is the use of popular world wide sites. These connect Israelis to people around the world. Sites like: Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In and MySpace are some examples. The blogsphere is also strong in Israel with high Blogger and WordPress use. Israel is a small place with connections all over the world. Social media gives people the opportunity for the first time to connect around the globe without leaving Israel. This has turned out to be one of the most active area in the Israeli high-tech field today. (more on Israeli technology status in an upcoming post.)
What I learned in terms of networking falls into a few personal "styles". Styles is the only way to describe how people behave in social networks. Someone should research if people behave the same in real life as in social networks. They probably do. Here are a few observations on different personal styles:
Style 1, physical network extended:
People with large number of personal connections are using social networks as e-mail, blog and chat center. These are heavy users and they use social networks to manage their messages, keep friends informed and simply send short blurbs like SMS is used. The connection between social media sites to the cell phone is growing fast in this group. Twitter is not yet native in Israel but google Buzz and Facebook have connections to SMS. All the newer phones (3G and newer) have applications to connect with social sites even without a browser.
Style 2, a job tool: research, advertise, promote, communicate:
In Linked-In some technical and executive recruiters do most of their advertising and "hunting". Just like in the US, the users with biggest network connections and postings are recruiters. On FaceBook there are big networks for music events (concerts, music bars) and consumer goods (food, electronic gadgets) and restaurants. Israelis seem to follow trends in marketing and promotion started in the US. Apparently the best way to promote a new restaurant or bar in New York City is with a FaceBook page and an active social networker banging out messages all day long. Music is distributed in MySpace and YouTube although both sited do not handle Hebrew well. You can still search for a band or song name in Hebrew on YouTube and MySpace.
Style 3, curious observer, what others are writing and saying:
These are the traditional fashion and media fans. Most of the curious observers stay at the "sidelines", they are completely passive. They do now write articles or comment. Countless people follow communities of fashion designers and pop music bands. Here social media is taking the traditional place of magazines. In Israel with a small population there were never enough readers to justify Variety, Vanity Fair or Rolling Stones. Popular magazines from the US and Europe are translated to Hebrew or simply sold as is. Social media is probably going to hit hard the specialty magazine business in Israel.
Style 4, hit an run poster, political prognosticators, conspiracy theorist and government complainers:
Israel has plenty of these. Both Twitter and FaceBook are great places to post a complaint or an extreme view about something. There are legitimate groups pushing for government and legal changes. There are also many political groups affiliated with political personalities and government leaders. During the last election here many political candidates and parties did much of their promotion through FaceBook and blogs (in Hebrew.) I am sure that in the next election Twitter is going to be as big of a communication channel as blogs and FaceBook were in the last general election. Israel does not have the equivalent of Ariana Huffington (her blog) not for the lack of trying. There are plenty of private citizens, former politicians and newspaper reports going at it.
Well, at least I got back to the blog, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more interesting ideas from the Israeli social media world.
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