We all might have seen people coming up and posting their new year resolutions for 2020. I didn't want to have one in particular but Social psychologists assert that an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are very much influenced by social situations. Essentially, people will change their behaviour to align with the social situation at hand. If we are in a new situation or are unsure about how to behave, we will take our cues from other individuals.
We know the significant difference between Linkedin and any other social networking platform, but it took me 10 years to outline my first post. After thorough self-assessment, I realised that the reason could be the friction I might get for my post on LinkedIn, unlike Facebook and Instagram. Even now, the number of people who are active in my network on LI is relatively less than any of my other accounts elsewhere. It can be one of the reasons that stopped me posting here fearing that my opinions won’t get enough attention that I expect.
So, what if we don’t get to know the number of likes and reactions I get for my post? Will it give me an extra push to post or create more content on any social platform. So, maybe yes. When I don’t have a metric to realize how much attention I got for my post, my focus moves from thinking about others to creating the content.
But there is another node in this scenario, i.e., network! For example, whenever I scroll down and find long posts on FB or LI, I give 2-3 seconds to decide to scroll down further or to go with the post. What do I do in these 2-3 seconds is to mostly check the publisher and the number of likes the post has got. If that post gets a considerable amount of attention through likes and comments, I would definitely give it a read.
In a book Influence, Cialdini uses the example of advertisers informing us that a product is the “fastest-growing” or “best-selling.” Advertisers don’t have to persuade us that a product is good, they only need to say others think so.
In Social Networking, a lot of psychological factors play the game. If we take the color of most of the logos and themes, Blue is the color of the intellect, the mind, making it the color of communication and when you think about social media, it's all about communicating. Blue also has the perception as being trustworthy, dependable, safe and reliable.
Removing a feature metric like LIKES count is a pathbreaking step by Instagram, but not to forget how humans fall for Radical Acceptance.
If we remember how WhatsApp has replaced its traditional text status update feature with images and short videos in 2017. At that time, a certain segment of their user base was not happy with the new feature complaining
1. It is becoming more of snapchat and facebook
2. That they wanted it to be as simple as possible for the purpose of messenger
3. Reading status takes much less time than seeing all those stories and moreover, it shows a list of people, who see it (initially)
4. Status updates are just for 24 hours
We have seen how various updates and changes have come and I don’t think that someone is still complaining of WhatsApp status updates feature anymore.
This can be called as Radical acceptance, “It simply means that you are acknowledging reality,” said psychotherapist Sheri Van Dijk.
Instagram clearly stated that its hidden likes feature has got positive results. It is for a greater good when it comes to psychological pressure and peer comparison.
Then can we expect other platforms to follow a similar strategy and get rid of the number game focusing more on content creation?
And there are 3 types of audience for this post.
1.People who know me personally and gave their time to give it a try.
2. Who gives considerable time for the Linkedin feed
3. Influenced by interactions/likes from their network on this post.
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