Where does my site fit into the honeycomb?

Mccarthy, Ian, (2011) Understanding the Social Media Ecology: A Honeycomb Framework, Downloaded 9/2013 from http://itdepends4.blogspot.com/2011/04/understanding-social-media-ecology.html

I found the article “Social Media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media” very interesting with the idea of the honeycomb framework. The organization I work for is involved in an evolving social media strategy, including our own private social media site. Looking at our private site, wellnesswired.org, in light of the seven functional blocks of the framework show both successes and failures.

First of the functional blocks, Identity, “represents the extent to which users reveal their identities”1. The site performs well on the requirements of this block, with users sharing name, age, gender, location, and more.

The second functional block, Conversations, “represents the extent to which users communicate with other users”2. Wellnesswired offers this ability, with users having the ability to send individual, as well as group messages, and a chat function as well. However, the communication has been mostly one direction, from the organization to the user. There has been little communication user to organization, or user to user. The chat function remains largely unused.

Functional block three, Sharing, “represents the extent to which users exchange, distribute, and receive content”3. Again, this has largely occurred in a single direction, from organization to user. Little content flows in the direction of user to organization.

The fourth functional block, Presence, “represents the extent to which users can know if other users are accessible”4. This functionality exists at two levels on the site. Users can see who is online, as well as seeing who is available via the chat function. Statistics show that while users take advantage of the site visibility function, they do not use the chat function or it’s presence indicator.

The fifth functional block, Relationships, “represents the extent to which users can be related to other users”5. Wellnesswired inherently has the relationship of mental health issues, as well as the relationship of being a program graduate. However, deeper or varied relationships appear not to have formed.

The sixth functional block, Reputation, “is the extent to which users can identify the standing of others”6. Wellnesswired does offer this ability, with users having the option of creating ‘kudos’ to specifically identify other users. However, as with some of the other features, this usually occurs only in the direction of organization to user, and not the other direction.

The seventh functional block, Groups, “represents the extent to which users can form communities and subcommunities”7. The site offers subgroups, however users do not have the ability to create them on their own. This ignores an important functionality necessary to complete the honeycomb.

In light of the honeycomb strategy, the site has lots of room for improvement and further refinement in order to increase user engagement.

1 Kietzmann, J., et. al. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, 243

2 Kietzmann, J., et. al. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, 244

3 Kietzmann, J., et. al. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, 245

4 Kietzmann, J., et. al. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, 245

5 Kietzmann, J., et. al. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, 246

6 Kietzmann, J., et. al. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, 247

7 Kietzmann, J., et. al. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, 247