Social Mediaand Its Effect on the Water Industry

What is Social Media?

Courtesy of Dave Grayhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/davegray/153025183/Tools to create, publish, shareand consume contentsimultaneously at large scales

How Does Social Media Work?

Don’t focus on technology:

“These tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.” –

Clay Shirky(www.shirky.com) Iran election on Twitter (go to search.twitter.com and search for #iranelection)

Why Does Social Media Work?

Extremely low barriers to entry: little or no time or money.Network effects: Exponential spread of ideas (member to member to member) rather than linear(institution to audience).

N e t w o r k E f f e c t

Network Size

Linear Viral

Small World networks: Groups spread

messages within, while “messengers” jump

from one network to another, eventuallyreaching a tipping point.Focus on the messengers to reach wideraudiences.Example: Civil engineer who is also memberof Audubon society and transfers story of protecting bald eagles between groups.

The Long Tail of Social Media

80/20 rule. Institutions historically focus on top 20%

Amazon model: “We sold more books today that didn't sell

at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did

sell yesterday”

Chris Anderson: Selling less is moreSeth Godin: Far better to reach 5000 people who want to

hear your message than 5 Million who don’t

Case Study: PSNH (twitter.com/psnh)

December 2008 ice storm:

2” of

freezing rain, 400,000 outages, 55% of NH, 780+ utility poles, 13,600+fuses, 1,300+ transformers, 408,000 calls, 105 miles of cable, 13 days.Used Twitter to disseminate information.