What is social media?

Most social networking sites have some kind of home page you see when you log on. Scrolling through your home feed gets you caught up quickly on the activities, thoughts, and news friends want to share. Concerns over the possible negative effects of social media are also growing in tandem with the burgeoning technology.

Government applications

For example, if you post a picture of your baby’s cute face and add #babysmiles, people can find it, along with other posts with the same hashtag, if they search for that phrase. Learn more about McKinsey’s Growth, Marketing, & Sales Practice, and check out the firm’s social-media job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey. Social networking is more recently being used by various government agencies. Social networking tools serve as a quick and easy way for the government to get the suggestion of the public and to keep the public updated on their activity, however, this comes with a significant risk of abuse, for example, to cultivate a culture of fear such as that outlined in Nineteen Eighty-Four or THX-1138. In other cases, members can contact anyone they have a connection to, and subsequently anyone that contact has a connection to, and so on.

While social media users claim to want to keep their data private, their behavior does not reflect that concern, as many users expose significant personal data on their profiles. People portray themselves on social media in the most appealing way.[155] However, upon seeing one person’s curated persona, other people may question why their own lives are not as exciting or fulfilling. Social media personalities, often referred to as “influencers”, are Internet celebrities who are sponsored by marketers to promote products and companies online. Research reports that these endorsements attract the attention of users who have not settled on which products/services to buy,[91] especially younger consumers.[92] The practice of harnessing influencers to market or promote a product or service to their following is commonly referred to as influencer marketing.

Literary networks

Businesses can use these and other survey statistics to their advantage by catering their marketing on social media to a generally young, well-educated audience. Social networks are being used by activists as a means of low-cost grassroots organizing. James Gee (2004) suggests that affinity spaces instantiate participation, collaboration, distribution, dispersion of expertise, and relatedness.[117] Registered users share and search for knowledge which contributes to informal learning. Social networks commonly provide mechanisms for posting content such as photos, videos, blogs or links to other sites. Other users can comment on or rate the content as well as recommend it to other users.

What are some of the risks of social media for businesses?

Social media mining is the process of obtaining data from user-generated content on social media in order to extract actionable patterns, form conclusions about users, and act upon the information. Mining companies sift through raw ore to find the valuable minerals; likewise, social media mining sifts through social media data in order to discern patterns and trends about matters such as social media usage, online behaviour, content sharing, connections between individuals, buying behaviour. These patterns and trends are of interest to companies, governments and not-for-profit organizations, as such organizations can use the analyses for tasks such as design strategies, introduce programs, products, processes or services. Social networking connects individuals and businesses by allowing them to share information, ideas, and messages. Companies also use social networks to create and strengthen brand recognition, promote products and services, and answer customer queries and concerns. The relationship between social media and consumer behavior seems stronger than ever, but the landscape is constantly shifting.

1. The median age was 14, although 28% said they started to use it before reaching 13.
2. Some users spend many hours each day engaging with their favorite social networks.
3. In 2021, $37 billion in goods and services were purchased through social-commerce channels in the United States, and that figure is expected to increase to nearly $80 billion by 2025.
4. To indicate that a friend or follower has read and appreciated a post, most sites have some kind of “like” button, perhaps a heart or a thumbs up.

For some organizations, social networking is a strategic part of their marketing strategy. They might use social networks to announce new products, increase awareness about their businesses or attract new customers. They might also use social networks for other purposes, such as interacting with partners or announcing job openings. The specter of online predators did little to diminish MySpace’s membership (which reached 70 million active monthly users in 2007), but it did open the door for other social networking sites to seize some of its momentum.

E-mail and chat programs debuted in the early 1970s, but persistent communities did not surface until the creation of the discussion group network USENET in 1979. USENET allowed users what is social networking to post and receive messages within subject areas called newsgroups. USENET and other discussion forums, such as privately hosted bulletin board systems (BBSs), enabled individuals to interact, but each was essentially a closed system. With the release in 1993 of the Mosaic web browser, those systems were joined with an easy-to-use graphical interface. The architecture of the World Wide Web made it possible to navigate from one site to another with a click, and faster Internet connections allowed for more multimedia content than could be found in the text-heavy newsgroups. For example, they might use social networks to target specific audiences so they can provide them with information about their businesses, increase brand awareness, generate traffic to their websites, or promote their products and services.

Deceased users

Facebook took the Classmates.com formula and turned it on its head, with a network that was initially open only to students at universities. After its 2004 launch by founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes at Harvard University, Facebook at first was an academically oriented alternative to MySpace, but in 2006 it opened the service to anyone over 13 and surpassed MySpace as the most popular social network in 2008. The earliest online social networks appeared almost as soon as the technology could support them.

The advent of social networking platforms may also be impacting the ways in which learners engage with technology in general. For a number of years, Prensky’s (2001) dichotomy between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants has been considered a relatively accurate representation of the ease with which people of a certain age range—in particular those born before and after 1980—use technology. Prensky’s theory has been largely disproved, however, and not least on account of the burgeoning popularity of social networking sites and other metaphors such as White and Le Cornu’s “Visitors” and “Residents” (2011) are greater currency. The use of online social networks by school libraries is also increasingly prevalent and they are being used to communicate with potential library users, as well as extending the services provided by individual school libraries. Social networks and their educational uses are of interest to many researchers.

In many organizations, members tend to focus their activities inside their own groups, which stifles creativity and restricts opportunities. A player whose network bridges structural holes has an advantage in detecting and developing rewarding opportunities.[48] Such a player can mobilize social capital by acting as a “broker” of information between two clusters that otherwise would not have been in contact, thus providing access to new ideas, opinions and opportunities. Recent research suggests that there has been a shift in blocking the use of social networking services.

It quickly became a venue for rock bands to connect with fans and to debut new material. Unlike Friendster, MySpace had the infrastructure to support its explosive growth, and members joined by the millions. In 2005 MySpace was purchased by News Corporation Ltd. (the media-holding company founded by the Australian entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch), and the site’s higher profile caused it to draw scrutiny from legal authorities who were concerned about improper interactions between adults and the site’s massive population of minors. Users may not understand how platforms use their data.[259] Users tend to click through Terms of Use agreements without reading them, leading to ethical questions about whether platforms adequately protect users’ privacy.

For consumer brands, social commerce creates the opportunity for an interactive, entertaining, and experiential journey—one that also feels less promotional than the traditional journey. For example, rather than starring in an ad for a new skin care product, celebrities can invite fans behind the scenes to view their skin care routines, demonstrating how they use the branded product and why they love it. Social commerce is when customers browse and shop directly on social-media platforms. It’s already a core feature of e-commerce in China, but this new way of buying is growing rapidly in the United States as well. In 2021, $37 billion in goods and services were purchased through social-commerce channels in the United States, and that figure is expected to increase to nearly $80 billion by 2025.