Social Media and The Five Temperaments

This post is the first in a collaborative series between MindTweaks and Elemental Truths . The goal is to take a look at temperament/personality types over the next week, and see what solutions and suggestions we can come up with.

Social Media is a current hot topic just about everywhere. People are scrambling to “join the conversations” on the various services, but also finding themselves frustrated (see “Why I suck at social media” . )

One aspect of that frustration may be explained through personality temperaments. Each temperament (and combination of temperaments) has a different approach to technology, different needs when it comes to socialization, different desires for approval and attention.

Extroverts are happy to seek out new friends and contacts, while introverts are more hesitant, preferring to just observe, or to let others come to them. Some temperaments are quick to embrace change, while others prefer more familiar, consistent, and proven technologies.

Privacy is also a personality driven issue; some temperaments need to feel safe and protected in order to participate in a social environment, while others would be happy with their own posse of cyber paparazzi! The level of control people have over their use of various services is also important to some of the temperaments, things like visibility, profiles, spam, and so on.

And we use the services for various reasons, too - many of them related to temperament: we may be looking to find customers, build a network of new friends, stay in touch with existing friends, share and inspire creativity, get and provide answers to questions, or just be generally social with strangers.

So why are we frustrated? The frustration appears because most of the latest, greatest social technologies only address the needs of *some* of the temperament types, and can make other temperaments distinctly uncomfortable, even anxious.

So being successful at social media means not just knowing which service is most popular, the etiquette or even the technical stuff, but knowing which services are best suited to our individual personalities — and maybe more importantly, how to participate comfortably even on services that aren’t well suited to our specific temperaments.

If we don’t find ways to adapt and make these systems work for all of the temperaments, we run the risk of losing touch with our existing social circles made up of a variety of personalities. Some of us might well wind up only keeping in touch with friends and contacts in a limited range of temperament - not a good thing! The best and most effective social groups (for any purpose) are made up of a variety of personality types.

It’s worth noting that while the older forms of social media (message boards, chat rooms, and instant messaging services) didn’t provide the networking or portability benefits of Web2.0 applications like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, they did better provide a comfortable space for *all* of the personality types. Hopefully the new services will resolve the conflicts in time - meanwhile, we’ll have to find our own solutions.

So over the next week (or next few weeks, depending on the posting schedule)Reg and I will be exploring the topic of temperament and social media, considering each the pros and cons of each service for each personality, from Supine to Melancholy, as well as offering advice on how the various personalities can best use the services for our advantage. We’ll be posting a series of interlinked articles addressing the issue on MindTweaks and Elemental Truths, but you’ll also be able to come back here, and find a listing of all of the links.

We’re hoping the result will be fun, useful, creative, productive, and reduce frustration levels. And *that* should cover just about all of the personality types!

Articles In This Series:

On MindTweaks:

• Social Media and The 5 Temperaments
• Surviving Social Media: The Supine Struggle
• Butterfly Meets Social Technology: The Challenge for Sanguines
• In Search of Intimacy: Melancholies and Social Media
  
• Quietly Participatory: Phlegmatics and Social Media
• Control and Conquer! The Choleric and Social Media

On ElementalTruths:

• In Social Media Measurable Doesn’t Equal Importance
• Supines and Social Media
• Sanguines and Social Media
• Melancholies and Social Media
• Phlegmatics and Social Media
• Cholerics and Social Media

About The Temperaments:

• 5-Temperament Test (pen and paper beta version)
• An Overview of Temperaments (on Elemental Truths)
• Temperament Overview: The Nifty Interactive Graphic Version! (MindTweaks)
• The Five Temperaments; An Overview (MindTweaks Take)