We use social media as an essential part of our daily lives – we use it for news, entertainment, knowledge, expressing ideas, sharing our lives, interacting with friends and so on. But what we may have overlooked is the fact that the browsing, clicking and posting of content on social media are generating profit for the platform – it’s like ‘working’ for it. In the Internet age, audiences have made the transition from consumers to prosumers, not only consuming content but also producing it.
This is me, a regular social media user, recording my primary social media usage during the day. I will use this as an example to analyse what I get out of my “work” and what I contribute to the benefit of the platform.
It was an ordinary day during the holidays. I woke up and first opened Instagram to check out Stories and Posts posted by my friends, and inevitably, while browsing, I saw an ad with the sponsored label – but since it was for a clothing style I was interested in and showed a sale, I didn’t exit. Instead, I swiped up the screen to go to the brand’s official website to continue browsing.
As I continued to use Instagram, I found that it suggested more ads from clothing brands with similar styles – because I had been in the last ad for a long time, the big data and algorithms made it possible for me to keep receiving similar messages. So my browsing is equivalent to selling my ‘attention’ and ‘preferences’ to the platform, and I gain more insight into the brands I like for my clothing style.
Taobao
The next thing I want to focus on is the ‘work’ I do on Taobao, China’s most famous shopping app.
Taobao has a programme called ‘Baba Farm’ where users can ‘fertilise’ virtual saplings to make them grow (upgrade). After it matures (full level), users can purchase a box of fruit, or rice, or other items for RMB 0.01 – depending on the supplier cooperating with Baba Farm.
Screenshot of Baba Farm: the level of growth
So, how can I get fertiliser? This requires the user to complete tasks, including answering questions, and browsing product pages (the products presented on the browsing page are usually of the user’s preferred style or the types they have searched for).
Since I have left a history of clicks and searches in my daily use of Taobao, when I complete tasks in Baba Farm, it suggests product pages that are of interest to me, and I don’t feel the pain of ‘working’ while browsing, but rather enjoy it.
I “work” on this farm because my parents think it’s fun and they can get the fruit for a perfect bargain. Taobao has also introduced ‘family trees’, where families can plant a tree jointly, making farming a tree faster, usually taking around 45 days to complete. This format allows more people to participate as a family, increasing the number of users.
I get good value fruit from my’ work’ on the farm, and I may ‘accidentally’ make a purchase when I see something I like as I click through the products to complete a task. The platform cooperates with suppliers to help them promote their products for profit; my clicks and browsing preferences are used to predict my preferences, thus improving the platform’s big data and algorithms. The suppliers, in turn, can increase their popularity and sales.
With this diary, I see every click I make in my use of social media as a record of my preferences. Clicks are a form of labour. The value is the preferences embedded in them – something that advertisers are particularly interested in – and this preference information is a valuable commodity that can add up to considerable commercial benefits.