Vodafone Share Everything Day – capturing the nation’s first social media snapshot

From the outset, Share Everything Day felt like a unique, creative and slightly unpredictable project – what would NZ look like through the eyes of social media? 

On the 8th of July, Vodafone hosted the nation’s first ‘Share Everything Day’ and for one whole day, Kiwis were invited to share what was going on in their lives.  The lines were open, so to speak, with people able to submit Tweets, TXTs, PXTs, and status updates, to be crafted into a short film to capture a snapshot of local life.

It was a great idea…but would people participate?  Would they share the day to day bits and pieces of their lives?

And even if they did, what on earth did that look like? 

Happily – Aotearoa’s very first snapshot of life through the eyes of social media received more than 6,500 submissions of content, and as we all know, New Zealand looks great. 

Safe topics were the norm, with pictures of pets (450), food (750), kids and weather holding a steady lead, but that didn’t stop a large number of people sharing more insightful glimpses into their lives.

Interestingly (for work productivity at least), Facebook was the most common submission method with Twitter following closely behind.  To really cut to the core of Share Everything Day, psychologist Sara Chatwin provided insight about what the submissions said about Kiwis.

As a nation, Sara says the film reveals that while we are willing to share what is going on in our lives, we tend to self-censor and share only at a superficial level.

“People have a tendency to censor themselves when they feel they aren’t anonymous, it takes a degree of courage to bare all with your name attached, even online.  New Zealanders have a reputation as being a private nation and as a result seem to take a conservative approach to sharing.”

“Unlike our counterparts in America and Britain, social-networking is still a relatively new phenomenon for Kiwis. These results could indicate our wary approach to something that we’re not quite used to. Whether we will ever be as open and overt as our American counterparts remains to be seen.”