What is your perception of social media, do you think it is a fad or the
biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?
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Social Media, Image. |
Mark Zuckerburg, first developed Facebook as a school connection platform that widely spread in popularity through colleges and universities across the United States, that was almost ten years ago. Now Facebook, is the biggest social media platform available to everyone worldwide.[see Social Media Today - Ultimate History of Facebook Infographic] We went from obsessing over our friends and colleagues connecting through Facebook to share contact details, pictures and games; to promoting our favourite brands and sharing our favourite videos.
Social media and social media integration has all but changed the way we communicate, connect and interact with each other. Got a product you want to launch? You best have a twitter account where you can give daily updates and/or random PR blurbs directly to your consumers and future consumers.
Facebook likes, twitter mentions and retweets are tangible commodities that are highly sought after; essentially there is great income to be earned in social media. Not only, are companies making money via more targeted advertisements to its users, but second and third party developers are earning an income, creating apps that will integrate with social media platforms for our mobile devices.
Advertising and Promoting through social media platforms, also provide a cost effective way to reach the company's goals. Instead of spending countless dollars and hours researching the target market, marketing execs are looking towards social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to get their brand out to their audiences and rely on what consumers are sharing and tweeting about. It has become a quick and effective use of buzz marketing. This has paved a new way for interactions between consumers and businesses. Through each business' page consumers can post questions and/or comments regarding exactly what they want from a product or service; which offers businesses an opportune moment to tailor their products towards their audience.
Luke Wyckoff, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer for Social Media Energy, based out of Denver, Colorado; posted the following video on YouTube highlighting that social media has indeed became the next biggest shift since the industrial revolution. He states that Social Media has taken on the lead spot for activity on the web! We spend at least 15 hours a week on average using social media sites a week! That's enough hours to classify it as a part time job!
Social Media has opened a new window for many new opportunities and opened the door for the development of new technologies. It has pulled us closer to other parts of the world, as it is constantly changing and growing with our views and behaviors - its most definitely the biggest shift since the industrial revolution.
Bibliography:
Social Media. N.d. Photograph. Athgo Blog: Conversation with Dr Armen Orujyan. 26 Apr. 2013. Web. 05 Sept. 2013. <http://www.athgo.org/ablog/index.php/2013/04/26/social-media-events-2013/>.
Wyckoff, Luke. Social Media Energy. <http://www.http://socialmediaenergy.com/>
YouTube. Dir. Luke Wyckoff. Social Media Revolution 2013. YouTube, 28 Nov. 2012. Web. 07 Sept. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQg2DJx0seo>.
Zeevi, Daniel. "The Ultimate History of Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]." Web log post. Social Media Today
N.p., 21 Feb. 2013. Web. 07 Sept. 2013. <http://socialmediatoday.com/danielzeevi/1251026/ultimate- history-facebook-infographic>.
I totally agree with you that social media started out as a fad. once one person started using ti another and then now world wide everyone i using social media to communicate with their friends, family, and co-workers, and now starting to use social media as networking and advertising for companies and get themselves out there for new clients to work with.
ReplyDeleteHi Brittany,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your article. I too was a (relatively) early adopter of technology, (I don't even remember my first twitter account, but when I made it I had no understanding of the purpose of Twitter!) and I remember the day I made my Myspace account (I also remember the day I deleted it) and I remember the day I signed up for Facebook. Besides doing homework or gaming, social media is definitely what I spend most of my time online doing. I like that there is money to be made by using social media correctly, although I want to be a web designer I also have my blog (where I write about my experience of going through school to become a web designer) that I would love if I could make money from in the future. There seems to be multiple ways to do that from writing your own ebooks and promoting them through social media, or sell advertisement and placing them on your blog. The more popular you are on social media, the more money you can make.
Birttany, I completely agree with you that social media started out as a fad and then grew as one of the biggest shift change in the industrial revolution. I love how you went and explained the history of Facebook and how it has taken over our lives.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely LOVE your article and the way you explained this(the video clip was great as well)! I agree with your standpoint of how social media started as something along the lines of a novelty, as many new innovations/inventions are at first, then grew into something that no-one could have expected in the end. I also love the way you used a perspective on marketing as part of the way you explained social media, as media in general has always been about promotion (yourself, your ideas, thoughts, books, whatever people want to say!). I hope that not only does social media stay on the track its on, but may it also gain speed and become something we would be proud of 30+ years from now!
ReplyDelete