Personality types of Social Media Users

This weeks’ content was on the different types of users on social media and in which category the student would fall. As known, social media, whereas the whole internet, is changing in a dynamic way and thus the types of users have also been evolving.

At first, there were the different types of users described by Charlene Li and Josh Benhof in the Groundswell series:

* Creators – may create blogs, websites, etc.
* Critics – participate in communities, blogs, commenting, etc.
* Collectors – bookmark websites
* Joiners – join communities e.g. Facebook
* Spectators – just read
* Inactives – don’t use social media at all

Obviously, with integrated social media such as the platform Facebook, users tend to have multiple tags attached to them, as for me, I can be a creator, critic or joiner, all dependant on the situation.

Luckily, our tutor has seen this, and posted other presented types of users, published by a newer study from 2013 by First Direct, which is more accurate of describing the different users of social media. 

*The Ultras: Can’t live without social media. Usage of 2 or more hours a day.

*The Deniers : Claim that they can live without it, while in reality they can’t : without it they would feel ‘isolated’.

*The Dippers: Access social media rarely.

*The Virgins: Still need to get used to it and find their way around, in other words: newbies.

*The Lurkers: Rarely participate in conversations- often because they worry to have nothing to say.

*The Peacocks: Love to show how popular they are, being competitive with friends on the amount of likes or friend that they have.

*The Ranters: Nice people in real life, with a strong opinion online. The platforms allow them to post without worrying what others might think.

*The Ghosts: Afraid of giving too much information away. Create usernames to stay anonymous or give away little information on their profile.

*The Changelings: Ghost v 2.0 : Having an anonymous other identity

*The Quizzers: Like to start discussions or asking questions in order not to be left out

*The Informers: Tend to have hot and relevant information in order to gain kudos – or followers

*The Approval-seekers: Worry about the amount of likes/comments/re-tweets they get with them constantly checking their online profiles, since they link endorsement to popularity. 

Luckily, studies seem to show more relevant results as social media is so dynamic. Concluded may be, that the types of social media users are differentiated in more forms than in the previous study.

I consider myself as being an Informing Quizzing Ranting Ultra. I still tick a lot of boxes, but maybe this time, they are being more specific, and I will be able to brag about it on my own social media profiles ;).