Social Media and its impacts

Social Media and its impacts

 Why social media exists and survives?

Human being is a social animal.  A normal human being lives in a society. In the ancient age, they had nomadic life but always traveled in groups.  Now we either live in villages or cities. These are the different form of societies.  We like to live in society to engage ourselves in the various activities, share the happiness, share the sorrow, and share the knowledge, to do business and to help each other.  As we progressed, we organized ourselves into nations geographically. We also formed several associations comprising either persons or nations of specific interest. In my view these associations are also a society.   

In the modern world these societies have evolved significantly.  With the development in science and technology the format of the society also developed. This has given birth to online social media.

Online social media is easiest and cheapest way to engage with people. This allows communicating with people all around the world instantaneously.  People discuss the issues, debate and also celebrate their happy moment in social media.  This innovative platform of social engagement excites people. They create their profile and update it regularly.   They form interest groups to engage with like-minded persons and to discuss, debate and to share the knowledge on the specific areas of subject. The online social media such as Facebook, Twitter also provides up to date news.  Any social media will survive and exist which can engage people and excite them to use it and provide a single platform for discussion, entertainment and knowledge with cheapest transaction cost. This is like a firm. (Nature of the firms)

The use of any social media depends on the real world society of person.  If his society is more comfortable with a specific platform, then it is high likely that he will choose and will be active in same platform. It is same as people of same clusters  or neighborhood are attracted towards similar products

Why is social media powerful?

Social media is very powerful as it empowers the users. Common man is empowered by social media as he/she can express his/her opinion without any restriction.  Social media derives its power from its structure. It is a complex network of the users.  A single user is connected to millions of other users through direct or indirect connection.   In the simplest network defined by binary tree, the number of connection is given by   where   is distance or steps or hierarchy. In the online social media platform this number is always more and hence multiplier effect or viral nature is very high.  Due this anything uploaded in the social media spreads instantaneously.  Omnipresence and cheapest transaction cost also makes it powerful as large section of population in the world can enjoy its benefits.

Social media has empowered everyone business as well as consumers.  Consumers can directly communicate with organization either to complain, admire or to give feedback.  Business organization can run their campaign in online social media with lesser cost. The usage of social media has grown rapidly from individuals to corporations for various activities.  Many organizations now use actively use social media as a tool to reach out to millions of potential and existing customers.  One of the most important factors that have promoted usage of social media across the world by organizations is shift from a one-way to a two-way communication (Kumar & Mirchandani, 2012). Social media is a fast, easy and simple way to communicate private and group messages on internet.  The news can be spread in seconds (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009).

Social media has also empowered civic movements and provided a platform for expressing a opinion on various political and economical issues. It has a strong ability to influence the governance model, civic engagements, and social structure. It can also create new opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs. A study by Dubai School of Government has provided evidence that in Arabian countries where civic movements took place, the use of social media was high.  Such movements were organized successfully by the use of the social media. In India also during anti corruption movement in August and Dec 2011, social media was very useful in spreading messages across the country.  In the developed countries also gay marriage movements and slut-walk movements were successful due to efficient ability of spreading news across the world instantaneously. In such civic movements social media is used to create awareness and to get support and feedback from the people. 

Anything powerful can be dangerous also

Anything powerful must be used in the development of the mankind. The misuse of also social media poses threats to the humanity.  Recently (2013) initial investigation has shown that communal violence has erupted because of careless usage of social media. Some social evils uses social media platform to defame their personal targets. Such activities on the social media must be discouraged.  Social media is also like any other scientific and technological development, misuse of which is a great threat for the world’s harmony.  

Social Media has rapidly changed the way people communicate with each other around the world.  Human being is social animal so social networking is not a new trait of human behavior. The social networking process has become increasingly sophisticated with the development in the science and technology (Edosomwan, Prakasan, Kouame, Watson, & Seymour, 2011).  Online social media is a platform which has facilitated advanced methods of social networking in the form of sharing texts, pictures, audio and video on the web space. With the increase in the number of internet users the use of social media has grown over the past decade. The advancement in the technologies of the data transfer and mobile phone has made social media sites accessible not only from the computers but also from the cell phones.  The sharp reduction in the cost of different electronic gadgets such as mobile phones, tablet etc also contributed in the rapid growth of internet users leading to the high penetration of the online social media across the world.

Andreas M. Kaplan *, Michael Haenlein (2010) defined the social media and differentiated it from related concepts such as Web 2.0 and user generated Content.  They also provide classification of Social Media into more specific categories on the basis of self disclosure and media richness.  The social networking media is most powerful among all the categories described by them. This, in turn, coined the term ‘‘Social Media,’’ and contributed to the prominence it has today. Professional networking site LinkedIn has 300 million active users whereas micro blogging sites Twitter has 500 million active users. Facebook had 1.06 billion monthly active users (MAUs) and 618 million daily active users (DAUs) as of December 31, 2012.There were more than 150 billion friend connections on Facebook  and  over 240 billion photos have been shared on Facebook as of December 31, 2012

Social Media Impacts

The usage of social media has grown rapidly from individuals to corporations for various activities.  Many organizations now use actively use social media as a tool to reach out to millions of potential and existing customers.  One of the most important factors that have promoted usage of social media across the world by organizations is shift from a one-way to a two-way communication (Kumar & Mirchandani, 2012). Social media is a fast, easy and simple way to communicate private and group messages on internet.  The news can be spread in seconds (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009). Social media has become a preferred inexpensive marketing tool that encourages two way communications between businesses and consumers, thus giving the latter a freedom like never before. With customers reacting and expressing their views on public domain, social media has become more than a mere marketing tool. It has become a channel that allows interactions and gives companies an opportunity to address the problems and concerns of their customers, which if done effectively, contributes in building the brand (Carraher, Buchanan, & Puia, 2010).

 Small enterprises and start ups have tapped the opportunity created by social media for their growth.  To grow their business today’s entrepreneurs use social media for promotions and marketing of their service or product. They also use social media to build their brand by engaging them continuously on social media platform.  In order to exploit this technology, businesses are adapting their marketing strategies accordingly, trying to gain sustainable competitive advantage from it. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and MySpace provide good two- way communication tools for business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing and have been successful in reaching masses of people in a short period of time (Bernoff & Li, 2008). The Internet, with all its social media platforms, not only offers beneficial and profitable marketing tools for B2C communication, but can also be useful for companies operating in the business-to-business (B2B) environment. Although the first perception may be that social media solely provides techniques to communicate with the end consumers, this does not always have to be the case. Many companies are present within all different social media platforms, which means that companies can communicate with one another via these platforms. Moreover, businesses’ constantly try to be aware of changes in the communication systems and to stay up-to-date, in order to be successful (Kietzman et al., 2011). B2B companies can establish relationships with their customers and suppliers via these communication platforms to build trust, brand loyalty and enhance their brand effectiveness amongst other companies (Michaelidou et al., 2011).

There are several start ups which are inspired by social media. Social media was their launch pad.  Artist has shared their creativity on the social media and has started business out of that. They also receive feedback or advice from their peers in various aspects of the business.  

References

Andreas M. Kaplan *, Michael Haenlein. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizon (2010) 53,59-68.