why is social media so addictive?

Protecting the irreplaceable | f-secure.com

Why is social mediaaddictive?

Intermittent Variable Rewards

Behavior reinforced intermittently as opposed to consistently is the most difficult to alter or unlearn. This explain why slot machines are so hard to walk away from.

A lot of things offer IVRs: phone calls, television, email…

So why is social media even more addictive than email (and possibly even cigarettes and alcohol, according to a recent study*)?

*Study by Chicago Business School in the Journal Psychological Science

Sharing activates the dopamine system, creating an urge so irresistible that people are willing to forgo money to do it.*Study by University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

Humans devote 30-40% of speech output to self disclosure

The answer is worth at least a thousand words.

Fun Fact: As of September 2011, 4 percent of all the photos ever taken, 140 million, were on Facebook.

This explains why Facebook spent $1,000,000,000 to purchase Instagram—a booming photo sharing site that some have called “the Twitter of pictures.”

Image sharing is also the key element of the fastest growing invitation-only social network in the world.

Protecting the irreplaceable | f-secure.com

• As of February 2012, Pinterest had 10.4 million users.

• 80% of Pinterest's users are female.

• 30% of Pinterest users are women 25-34 years old.

Pinterest is now the 3rd most popular social network in the US

Protecting the irreplaceable | f-secure.com

Total same-store referral traffic from Pinterest to five specialty apparel retailers rose 389% from July to December 2011.

Here’s the statistic that is driving marketers wild.

Create to be shared

Image sharing is an opportunity to create sharable content that also has a call to action to drives customers to take an action.

We know what doesn’t work.

BEST PRACTICE:Use visual content to drive users follow > like > sign-up > get a trial.

The goal is always a customer’s email, then a real quantifiable relationship begins.

5 ways to connect to content• Re-use F-Secure content from our

Blogs for your own blog• Share as a Facebook post • Tweet about it• Create graphics and infographic,

or re-use ours and re-brand it!• Make it easy to pin your images it

to Pinterest to attract qualified customers

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