The Influencers

It seemed pre-pandemic we were starting to see an influx in telehealth services.  Now, it is anyone’s game.  Telehealth is what so many are using now and there are apps to better suite people’s needs.  Services and access to medication have been made easier through these applications.  Having trouble finding mental health services in your area? Try Cerebral, or Talkspace.

Each of these organizations have social media platforms and regularly have ads in podcasts and streaming services.  I am curious to see the data analytic teams behind these organizations and what their metrics are. Anything health related is of interest to me.  Certainly post-pandemic these companies will be going into the data extrapolated during COVID19.  What made people decide to choose their services?

I recognized a lot of these companies started from personal stories that made them pursue entrepreneurship (at least this is what they push).  It will be interesting to see what the digital health world will look like in 10 years.  The apps are getting more specific.  Roman is for men’s health needs, Nurx is for women’s.  But I still don’t think we are there yet, not by a long shot.  

On the surface we have made health services seem more accessible but we have a long way to go.  Hopefully, we will see companies build upon all the data to give us a better healthcare world.  We all need it.

Hopefully while the TeleHealth Market Goes Boom, it’s leaders remain steadfast to actually serving their customers and not just taking their money.  That article has a brief market analysis breakdown.  A market trend the author posted was an emphasis on developing cost effective treatment.  There is an opportunity here especially with so many people trying to make ends meet.

Its crazy the things that you forget happened only a few months ago, I had completely forgot about the #FilmYourHospital nonsense that occurred during the early months of the pandemic. I remember noticing it here and there on social media or the news but it was very interesting to read Going viral: How a single tweet spawned a COVID-19 conspiracy theory on Twitter by Anatoliy Gruzd, and Phillip Mai. the article discusses a study that was undertaken to examine the spread of conspiracy theories on social media and #FilmYourHospital was the test subject. Study itself was able to track the original tweet that sparked the conspiracy theory and then was able to track its progression around the U.S. and the world. The study used the not so friendly Netlytic website (just kidding but not really, I don't know about anyone else but that website was a bit of bear to figure out) to perform their analysis of the social media data. The overall results were interesting in the fact that they were really able to track the trend from start to finish and anything in between identifying clusters of real people, bots, political influences, and other outside interface factors. Additionally it further adds to the notion that misinformation on social media is a massive problem when it gets in front of the eyes of the public.

At the initial shock and shut down of the world due to the pandemic, our lives moved to an increasingly virtual existence in order to stay connected to one another. We became ever more reliant on our internet connection in order to work, go to school, buy groceries, see our loved ones’ faces, etc. But it seems that our virtual reaction to the pandemic created a ripple of data for companies to study and analyze. Yigitcanlar et al’s article is an example as it discusses how tweets were collected in Australia in order to measure the public’s reaction to the pandemic throughout different stages. It mentions how words like “toilet paper” were repeatedly tweeted, representing our panicked human impulse to overbuy our necessities when faced with a sudden, unexpected crisis. And while this interests me for the psychological value of how we cope in a time of crisis, I’m also interested in how social media has become a significant tool in collecting, measuring, and reading data related to COVID-19. 

Apps have been released in order to collect data that tracks and monitors symptoms and contact tracing. The article mentions Australia’s COVIDsafe app. New York has its own version. The app is promoted as a “way to do your part.” The user must opt-in by their own choice and turn on notifications. This app could be essential for those who are immune compromised or those who live in the same household as high risk family members as they will be instantly notified if they crossed paths with someone who is infected. It also provides data for health and government officials, translating our symptoms into data that helps track and monitor where and when the virus is spreading. The hope with this data is that it will help us get the virus under control.  We’re also seeing bigger social media platforms take responsibility for collecting data. Notably,  Facebook, who partnered with Carnegie Mellon, prompting users to take a COVID-19 symptom survey by asking how they are feeling on their homepage. The question also asks users how they are handling the pandemic, such as, if they are wearing a mask and if they are practicing social distancing. The survey available on Facebook made it possible to reach 13 million users and they receive about 500,000 surveys daily -- a whole lot of raw data to trace!   

Of course, there’s a mix of feelings about big tech companies that are becoming ever larger in our virtual lives. While there are too many misinformation memes festering on spaces like Facebook that fuel the COVID-19 is a hoax conspiracy (eyeroll here), we do have to address the real concerns of privacy, especially when it's data that concerns information about our health and other personal information. This article here gives a detailed look at the COVID tracker apps and how they are handling (and mishandling) privacy of data. 

I don’t believe there’s an easy answer when it comes to data and privacy. But to see how data relevant to the pandemic has been extracted and used to monitor the virus is an interesting aspect of living in a twenty-first century. But for what it’s worth, I love being able to check the percentage of the population in my county vaccinated climb daily. It gives a beam of hope in these tough times!

Strengths:

- Create opportunities for money making and exposure by offering free merchandise when books are pre-ordered. They also create opportunities to win books without purchasing anything.

- Encourage kids to care about other children in need, pushing past the boundaries of only being a publishing company.

- Boast their successful published books in different ways.

- Advertise events like their summer reading program across platforms.

- Platforms don’t repeat information in an exhausting way to the audience.

Weaknesses:

- Using social media platforms differently causes pertinent information to be left out.

- They only use Pinterest for advertising individual books. No advertisements for events, etc.

- The foremost video on their YouTube page is 6 years old.

Opportunities:

- They could create other videos with celebrity voiceovers to keep up awareness for their message (that reading is important for kids and can change their life).

Threats:

- Scholastic pulls in 1.7 billion dollars a year but it still has competitors like Wiley, Random House, and Simon & Schuster. 

For example, Scholastic made the choice to hype an author and have a Facebook live with an entomologist on Earth Day:

On the other hand, Random House used this as an opportunity to make donations of some kind while also generating revenue.

These will attract different audiences.

Offering chances to win free things will keep the audience engaged and continuing to follow. They offer donations as prizes, cultivating kids who care (reading while they do). I found donating books to kids in need as a prize for their summer reading program an amazing idea, but this was missing in the caption of their Instagram post. They included a link with the information but how many people would actually click on this? Perhaps parents would and I do not know the audience! Their analytics would give them an idea if this move is effective, but I feel as though advertising that aspect of the program would serve them well.

I noticed the first video on their YouTube page is six years old. As it includes Sarah Jessica Parker’s voice, I understand the move, but I feel like it’s too old to be so prevalent on their page. If they continued to create videos like this every couple years with other prevalent people, they could keep up the exposure.

Overall, I think Scholastic does a great job with their social media. I think it may be a tough to advertise these books since parents are the ones with the smartphones and money. Since that’s a factor they need to make sure parents think these books would be worth spending money on for their children. I’ve always been a veracious reader and my parents let me make my own choices as far as reading goes but I know that isn’t always the case so they have to keep this in mind with their posts.

I left my last post talking about my friend.  She was/is a genius at analytic philosophy and would always make fun of my interest in more continental stuff which she said was “stoner philosophy.”  Her critique is a tad simplistic but still pretty spot on.  When I try to explain analytic philosophy the best way I can explain it is turning logic problems in a language into math.  I admit that this is also a tad simplistic but I hated the subject.  I feel like this is what data mining is doing in a way.  I’m thinking specifically of one of the articles that I picked to read about tracking the publics response to the governments handling of the pandemic in Australia.  The concept of text mining and breaking apart words or phrases as optimistic or pessimistic seems so interesting but yet completely lacking of how I think about language.

I know that Noam Chomsky had this concept of Universal Grammar.  His idea was that there exists a certain set of structural rules in language that are innate in humans.  Now I shouldn’t critique his views with such a limited knowledge of linguistic but I am anyway.  His idea sounds absolutely ridiculous.  I feel like anyone whose struggled through Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus then read his Philosophical Investigations would easily understand that. That’s a lot to ask but its not hard to see that Chomsky is basically Foucaults play toy during their debate. I like Chomsky but I feel like his humanity is getting in the way when he comes up with a theory like universal grammar.  It’s too childishly optimistic for my taste.

I was lucky enough to have been reading that later Wittgenstein at my mother’s daycare center.  He develops the idea of “language games” where language must be learned cooperatively through interacting.  In the room with me there was a child who was delayed, working with a speech therapist. She was trying to get the kid to understand the word father.  “Your father drove you here right?” He nodes then points to me.  “Father!” The teach said, “No, that’s not your father, he didn’t drive you here.” The kid was confusing male with father.        

You can’t just point at an object and say a name and expect someone to understand what you mean.  Is it a quality of that object? The whole object? Are there other objects with that name or is this the only one?  

Language develops through context.  Language is done cooperatively.  It depends on who, what, where, and how.  Language is fluid, changing, living.  Every sentence in an academic research paper is poetic if you’re in love.  Sarcasm can’t be tweeted.  What maniac snapchats their existential dread?                

Social media sites are now the holders of massive amounts of data.  It became clear they would need to improve the data and statistics offered to their users as well.  By giving administrators management and analysis tools, they will be able to use the data to their advantage and in turn, continue using the social media tools.  Data mining in social media is fascinating when you think about how far we’ve come with technology.  Social media allows organizations and businesses to access data on a level like never before.  This data can be used to better business and engagement with customers and hopefully, future customers.

Digging into the blogosphere aspect of Dr. Sun’s lecture was interesting, especially identifying influential nodes.  Essentially seeing how influenceable someone can be to their audience. Companies are able to use blogs to further reach and influence, but as Dr. Sun mentioned it can be hard to data mine here because of language ambiguity.

I honestly never even heard of Hootsuite until recently.  It was built as a platform so people can post, access their social media data and other data they might be interested in.  I kind of laugh a little when I think of Hootsuite, having all their stuff on Hootsuite, for all their other Hootsuite social media accounts.  It’s almost scary to think how much is out there and how companies can use and see everything you do.

I also liked learning about Altmetrics this week.  Great way to tap into popular topics or interests that can help generate detailed collections.

The NY Times just posted today about a tech companies specializing in helping restaurants in delivery services.  Customer data can help these places.  There is just a massive opportunity in data analytics to be used for good but we must unfortunately acknowledge that data can be used in the wrong hands.

Cultivating and maintaining a particular appearance is an important practice that companies need to consider in their social media presence. Content and curating, aesthetics and influencer ads- all words that have become part of the social media marketing dialogue, with the goal that it will generate a response in the consumer - a quick tap before they swipe up or refresh. But there’s another word that has started to circulate and quickly catch on because of social media users and organizations interacting in the virtual world: transparency. In a realm where fake news, conspiracy memes, and click-bait easily flood our newsfeed, consumers are searching for brands and authentic sources that can clearly prove the truth in their promoted content. 

Transparency is a call for brands to be honest and for companies to listen to their consumers’ wants and concerns. In a survey of 1,000 participants, 86% responded that transparency from businesses is “more important than ever before.” Transparency is defined by this survey as “open,” “clear,” and “honest.” Forbes recommends for brands who are seeking to curate an image of transparency to utilize video as a medium. The immediacy and unedited look at companies through videos, especially now through social media features like “Instagram Live,” allows users to see the faces behind the companies, “off scripted” and “in the moment.” It puts a feeling of authenticity in the eye of the camera, especially generating user engagement since it puts users in a dialogue together. (Consider how an ordinary TV commercial feels in comparison, especially when “real person” is printed underneath the actor.) Social media has shifted what we consider to be authentic content and has pressured companies to do more in order to maintain a socially ethical face. 

So what companies are succeeding at transparency on social media? Patagonia, the sustainable outerwear company, is one example. They have a project called “The Footprint Chronicles,” that shares video footage of the process of how each of their garments are made. This visually shows consumers that they are a genuinely sustainable company, and how they uphold the values that they market. The visual aspect of video quickly works to educate and entertain consumers about the product they are considering buying. For brands that promote sustainability, transparency is an especially essential practice. It’s easy to place “greenwashing” words on a label, but to actually show consumers how a brand is implementing eco-friendly practices or donating in order to make a difference, is what will drive consumers to actually trust the face of a brand, and will hopefully turn them into a customer with a sense of pride for supporting a company that practices what they preach. However, this shift to “transparency” that is associated with “authenticity” does have tension in a virtual world where content has become curated and mapped in order to create engagement. I wonder if transparency is a trend, or if it will continue to have lasting pressure and continue to re-shape how companies market in the long term.   

I took 508 last semester and for the topic of my paper I picked “the information seeking habits of vaccine skeptics.”  This was a topic I’ve been really interested in since I really didn’t understand the skepticism.  The conspiracy aspect also was a huge turn on for me.  I was always really into conspiracy theories not in a believer way but more I have always been fascinated by the creativity.  Foucault talks about the little bubbles that form around groups whose “truth” has been belittled and the feedback loops they create.  The concept seems highly unrevolutionary today with social media, and it probably wasn’t that revolutionary when he wrote about the topic. I’ve been trying to find out what he called these groups but I guess it not important.  If it was really revolutionary it would have been easier for me to google.                

             Anyway, the idea of sheltered people holding strange beliefs has always made sense.  I’m sure most people assumed that these anti vaccine people weren’t well educated and didn’t get out much.  Probably a bunch of religious people.  Well its interesting how when we used to think of sheltered it was someone who didn’t get out much.  Now its kinda the same thing but more like, “they don’t get out of their algorithm much.”  

             When I was doing my research, I came across many articles talking about anti vaccine facebook groups.  One of the articles had all these graphs with those connecting nods on them.  I was fascinated by the pictures but really didn’t have the time to understand what they meant.  There is something really beautiful about them.  Well what the article was saying was that that about 90 percent of the posts were from 1 percent of the group members.  Most would join, post once, like 2 posts then kinda stop paying attention. We have seen this many times in class. The most prolific posters make up a significant amount of the content posted.

             Now I jumped ahead in the readings and admit I read an article about #videotapeyourhospital.  People were posting using this hashtag to get people to prove that the hospitals by them were not that crowded.  This would of course prove that Covid 19 was being exaggerated.  They investigated the nods and I had the time to really understand the process.  This really explained how a hashtag started by a nobody could get such a huge response. As long as someone with a big enough following posted it once you could see this spiderweb of posts jumping off that one.  They had nods from different periods so you could see the building webs.                      

Data Mining was a very interesting topic to learn about this week mostly in part because I had had little understanding of it outside of television and movies (definitely the best medium to learn about important systems in the world haha). I remember a while back where data mining had a very unpopular presence in the media, and was in many ways looked at as a malicious technology (really any type of data acquisition was/ is). For example, the popular NBC television show Parks and Recreation made a specific attempt to bring this up in their final season. The big corporate entity that the team had been waging a hilarious war against for the season was caught data mining citizens personal information. Though an egregious loop hole in the contract signed between the town and the company this data mining was allowed to occur. While I think the main point of this scenario was to demonstrate that corporate greed, manipulation of the law, and achieving consent to data mine in underhanded ways it overall “bad” the show managed to make it sound like the actual process of data mining was evil. 

While this was great for a story plot and probably not meant to cause any real harm it does create some unnecessary fear in a system that can be beneficial as a whole. The issue is not with data mining itself it is with the overall morality of the people that use the tools and processes. Additionally the issues with data mining have to deal with how the information used in the process is obtained (consensually or without consent) that really creates the issues that we see in the world.  Which brings me back to my original statement, in that I am very happy that we learned about this topic this week. Data mining can be a very useful tool in predicting the trends in audiences and enhancing business knowledge of the people they serve. 

I decided to take a look at a real-life study utilizing data mining this week.

As Dr. Sun mentions in her lecture, before beginning the data mining process you should understand the user data, understand the data mining tools before using them, and take the time of day into account. I found a study conducted by Evelien D’heer and Pieter Verdegem in 2015 analyzing use of Twitter during a “Belgian current affairs television (TV) programme”. They took these steps into account before proceeding with their study.

D’heer and Verdegem (2015) discuss the use of hashtags and keywords used on Twitter during television events. They note that in this study “we add a layer of understanding via the combination of digital traces and user insights. In doing so, we define the challenges of using data gathered via Twitter for audience research.” They also chose these particular times on purpose so they can collect users’ reactions pertaining to this television show, so they were collecting data during different airings of the same program. This team also understood the data mining practices they were using during this process. They used the interface within Twitter’s app to collect tweets using a hashtag or keyword using yourTwapperKeeper. They note that “following this procedure, we collected a corpus of 3961 tweets containing the dedicated hashtag (#7dag). This corpus reflects one month of data, that is, September 2012, and comprises five episodes.”

During the conclusion of this study I thought they acknowledged something really important about collecting data through a hashtag or @ sign. The mention the @ sign “is essentially a means to collect and store data; it does not indicate a collective entity of users per se. Otherwise stated, analysis and conceptualization cannot precede data collection. In extension, there is a potential mismatch between ‘objectective structures’ (i.e. metaviews of these communication structures which are not perceivable as such by the users) and ‘subjective experiences’ (i.e. the way users perceive communication and interaction). In general, we cannot mistake the amount of data for the variety of RQs we can answer.”

This note is so important. On social media, the types of posts can vary so much in substance and intent.

I just took a look at Twitter to look at some of the trending hashtags. One of them was Joe Buck since he is going to be hosting Jeopardy as a guest this summer (basically a tryout for the real job).

Many of the tweets were (negative) opinions. Here’s one from barstool sports linking to an opinion based blog post on the subject:

But here’s more of an announcement-based tweet from the New York Post linking to an informative article:

I also found this tweet in the sea of negativity:

These tweets all need to be analyzed for what they are, so yes, the analyzation process cannot come before collection. I thought the study at hand did a great job of understanding the analyzation tools and practices before conducting their research. By choosing a particular time and subject to collect data on, they were able to analyze in an efficient way.

I find social commerce fascinating.  There is so much potential for capital if social media tools are used correctly.  The audience is immediately connected to your brand.  Reviews and ratings are so easily accessible nowadays.  If someone had a great time at your institution or loved your product, you’d want them to be able to tell everyone they know, social media allows this.  Then when others see these positive reviews on social media sites, they’ll be more inclined to purchase or at the very least, click onto the companies own webpages or apps.  You can have the complete other end of the spectrum as well though, negative reviews.  But beware of fake reviews!

The new generation of tech users are very app-friendly. Tablets and smart phones are used every day with apps, by younger people and used in schools.  Sadly, I’m sure marketing companies are already researching how they can get them to purchase their product.

This new technology allows deep connection to the product.  Users can now evaluate throughout their whole shopping experience.  These applications are being used by consumers more and more. We now have simple clicks to products. If I want to buy an island puzzle on Amazon, I go to my phone app, type it in, see one I like and boom.  Odds are, most people are using apple pay or have other forms in which they are saving their cards.  Retail is instant, no store hours required.  During COVID19, more and more people seem to be shopping from home. This article discussed how people are shying away from in store shopping. Authors studied “social commerce-based marketing in Pakistan,”. Companies not exploring ways to maximize their social commerce will be slow to the races.

Before any online purchase I make or new business I visit, one of the first things I do is look at reviews. In fact, if I make a hasty online purchase without first looking at the reviews, I will likely feel a twinge of buyer’s remorse and worry that the product I bought isn’t any good. I shared in a previous blog post on Yelp reviews how we have a habit to look towards our peers when making a decision. Social media has given us the power to look up reviews in a seamless amount of seconds. Reviews and ratings, in turn, have given the power to the consumers by voicing their opinions on the products and services they receive. 

But yet, can reviews lead to conflict when a consumer is making a decision on a purchase? For instance, it’s safe to say that there are two types of people who will take the time to leave a review: those who are extremely satisfied with their purchase that they feel compelled to share it, and those who are extremely unsatisfied and have to rant their issues in a public domain about their disappointment. So, In a sea of thousands of reviews, what reviews do we take to be trustworthy? How do we weigh the one star and the five stars for one product or service against each other? Also, do we abstain from looking at specific reviews or taking some reviews less serious if they tell us what we don’t want to hear? Just some questions to consider. I find myself wondering these questions a lot while skimming an item on Amazon. In fact, sometimes I will feel overloaded by the amount of conflicting reviews that I’ll put off making the purchase. 

Businesses are catching onto the power of reviews and they are developing technology to benefit from positive reviews. According to this article here, businesses are beginning to create algorithms that organize the way that reviews are displayed on their website. This algorithm places five star reviews towards the top of the reviews, so that it is in clear visibility and influences a consumer’s opinion on the product. However, the article also warns that it’s important for businesses to use this type of algorithm in a way that appears organically. Too many five star reviews in a row might turn consumers away in wariness that the reviews they are reading are inauthentic. This gives power back to businesses if they are able to structure how a consumer views their product in order to increase their likelihood of making a purchase. This may make it easier for the consumer to make a decision for an online purchase, but does it also strike concerns on how much power big businesses have developed in the online world?

I tend to think that I am a pretty good target for ads, usually if I see an ad for an item while scrolling through instagram (or whatever social media site) I tend to look it up causing traffic to the website and in some cases a purchase. This behavior for me at least is different from shopping in person at a mall or store, when I am in there I tend to move with purpose and not spend the whole day there. Due to this I don’t see even half of the items that could be interesting to me, but due to the convenience of these ads on my phone I tend to spend more time actually looking into them. Investigating the main website, seeing what else they have, and taking my time looking at items is all because I can do it in the comfortability of my own home. This convenience gives companies an edge when it comes to advertising, since they are able to target people with ads at home and in a volume equal to the time they spend on social media. 

Eventually I began to think about how this convenience actually applies to purchasing, which is when I clicked on the Matrid Technologies video explaining the finer points of the advantages of apps. Personally I spend much more time shopping on a company's app as opposed to their actual physical store. When I am bored I can just pop onto the app and see if there is anything new in stock, and I actually pay attention to push notifications which are essentially spam that we trust.

             At the start of this topic I immediately thought of an episode I listened to of This American Life.  You can listen to it here, and while the whole episode is good its only the first 10 minutes that are really important for this discussion.  Basically, this guy has been obsessing over the 1-star amazon reviews that he gets for the book he has written.  This is expectable and I have heard this happens to many people even though you should never read what the critics say.  Well to make himself feel better about the bad reviews he has discovered that you can just look up what else the person has reviewed. It basically helps him to feel better because who cares if a person doesn’t like your book if they are writing reviews on amazon about yarn.  What maniac buys an amazon gift card then feels the need to WRITE A REVIEW for the gift card?  Surely no one whose has the time to write up that review should be a serious book critic.

             I am always wary of scams in social commerce. If you look up a simple electronic on amazon like a phone charger you will find these companies that you have never hear of with thousands of reviews.  The names of the companies seem to be picked by a cat walking across your keyboard with all caps on.  These companies buy all these fake reviews and then disappear within a month.  I’ve had this problem with buying smart lights, since I could buy 4 for 20 from some strange company or pay like 80 for 2 from a company I trust.  Of course, I pick the 4 for 20 and just know that I am rolling the dice.  

             What I do love is the connection I can get with small companies or individual sellers on platforms.  I recently accidently bought 5 of the same shirts and easily contacted the small online store and was able to make sure they fixed the order.  I love reading reviews on Etsy for products since I have found them to be very sincere.  I guess what I’m trying to say is I find it to work really well if the community is smaller and not the giants like amazon.

This got me thinking about buying products through a social media site. I personally don’t ever buy anything in this fashion, so the concept intrigues me. I don’t know about anyone else but if I see an ad for something interesting on Instagram, I will shut down the app and google it myself. I always remember a couple of years ago when I heard about people getting scammed for purchases on Facebook. It looks like this is still an ongoing issue. Andrew Chow, writer at Time highlights instances of Facebook scam in his 2020 article. Two separate buyers had seen an ad for these cute, blue sea glass Christmas trees come up in their feed a couple days in a row. They both decided to make the purchase but what they received instead was an ugly gnome or a cheap plastic cone. The pictures showing up in the “sponsored” ad were stolen from a woman’s Etsy shop, in turn making her the target of several angry customers. Chow notes “in October, the Federal Trade Commission reported that the number of complaints about scams that started on social media has more than tripled in the past year, with reported losses adding up to &117 million in just the first six months of 2020”. I wonder if this number sky rocketed based on the increases of online shopping during the pandemic. This is certainly worrisome for companies who want to use social commerce. There needs to be trust and I’m not sure there is.

I’m sure that this is a successful way to do business for many companies. Not even halfway through all the stories on my Instagram, I saw an ad for ourplace, Pantene, meals with Maggie, curology, John Frieda, and Madison Reed. I have to say, I’ve only heard of Pantene and John Frieda before these ads so it’s a great way to get exposure as well. I think I am going to stick with e-commerce instead of social commerce still, although I will definitely be exposed to more brands and potentially make more purchases because of it.

Animal Crossing New Horizons was released for Nintendo Switch on March 20th 2020, just a few weeks after our lives drastically altered from the COVID-19 outbreak that enforced sudden and unexpected quarantine orders. For those who are unfamiliar with Animal Crossing, it is a relaxing open-world simulation that allows you to design your own deserted island with adorable animal neighbors who move in. It is appropriate and fun for all ages. The game provides users with tasks that can be worked on at their own pace, collecting items and materials, as you build and customize your own island, all while listening to soothing instrumental music. The game also has an online component that allows you to visit the island of other users and a user can host several friends on their island. This social communication feature became a huge and attractive selling point for the game during quarantine. With everything else shut down, the virtual world of Animal Crossing provided a space where friends could use as an alternative to “meet up” and hang out. A friend could leave the “gates” of their island open, allowing their friends to “fly in” and visit their island. The game allows up to eight other users to come to another user’s island. Friends used Animal Crossing as a way to hang out on a friday night, or even to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Nintendo noted Animal Crossing’s success by stating that it is the second-highest selling switch game of all time with 22.40 million copies sold. 

The initial hype that followed Animal Crossing New Horizons release at the start of quarantine has certainly dwindled. However, there are communities that still use this game as a way to connect and interact. There are Twitter and Instagram accounts dedicated to sharing game hacks and design inspiration, allowing users to also intermingle across platforms. At my public library, programs are still held virtually. Social games play a key role in our current programming. We offer video gaming programs, especially to our teen community who have a high interest in video games. By attracting them to the video game programs, it gets them interested in the library and they are exposed to other programs and services that the library can offer them. Right now, we host a monthly Animal Crossing virtual meet-up. The teens log onto a Zoom meeting hosted by the library, and use their Nintendo Switches to log onto Animal Crossing. They chat through their cameras, while exchanging materials and exploring each other’s islands. They show genuine joy at being able to do a program like this at the library and this program gets more frequent and consistent engagement than other virtual programs. The last time I helped host this program, I noticed that the teens exchanged their friend codes at the end of the session so that they could stay in touch. It goes to show how real connections and real friends can be made because of a shared social experience through gaming. 

Video games receive criticism for being a passive and lazy hobby. But I believe this view is simplistic and dismisses the potential of social gaming. Behind a video game stands a visionary crew of artists and storytellers who worked together to create an interactive, social world for users to exist in together. Humans strive for connection, and social video games provide a place for interconnectivity, attracting users who have shared interests and niches. Animal Crossing was the perfect middle ground for users who already loved other versions of the game before it was released on Nintendo Switch, while also inviting newcomers into this realm because of its relaxing, creative and social world. It provided the perfect antidote of escape from the crisis of the pandemic that we were heavily dealing with in real life. 

Personally, I used social gaming as a way to stay in contact with many of my friends whom I could not see anymore. Many had moved out of state prior to the pandemic and some of them adhered to strict pandemic lockdown rules. However, through online gaming I was able to keep in touch with them, during the height of the lockdowns this was occurring every night. I have even been able to connect with new people whom I have never met, the more my friends and I gamed the larger our friend group became as they brought in others whom they knew. This group has grown large enough that at almost any given time in the afternoon one can find someone online and ready to play.