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__**What is Social Media?**__
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"A day in the life of Social Media"- What can happen in 24 hours on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube...

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"Social media explained in plain English"... media type="youtube" key="jQ8J3IHhn8A" height="256" width="456" align="left"

Social media is so popular and has such an influence on our daily lives there is even a Guardian news page dedicated to social media

Guardian Social Media

Notes from Kaplan A, Haenlein M (2010) “Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media” Business Horizons 53 pp59-68

What is social media
 * Social media should be of interest to be of interest to all companies
 * Historically, companies have been able to control the information available about them through strategic advertising and good PR managers, however firms are now unable to control what is written about them.
 * Originally, the internet was created as a "Bulletin board system" enabling users to exchange data, messages and news. Therefore, social media can be described as "old wine in new bottles" as it has gone back to the internets roots.
 * It is a combination of technological advances e.g increased broadband avalability, economic drivers and social drivers e.g rise of generation of "digital natives" & "Screenagers" make social media very different from what it originally was.
 * It is difficult to classify or categorise social media as new sites appear every day, but obviously the most popular are Facebook, YouTube, Wikepedia and more recently Twitter.

The challenges and opportunities of social media
 * Collaborative projects: e.g through wikis. This may impact on firms, as not everything that is written on wikis is true, but it is believed to be true by internet users.
 * Blogs: These are personal web pages and usually managed by one person but allows interaction with others. Firms use blogs to update employees, shareholders and customers to improve the transparency of their company. However, there is nothing to stop people writing negative comments or producing negative blogs about their dissatisfaction with an organisation or person
 * Content communities: Enables the sharing of media content, e.g YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare. This can be negative as it can enable people to share Copyright material and illegal content.
 * Social networking: Enables users to connect by creating profiles, inviting friends and colleagues and email and instant messaging. Firms can utilise these by creating "brand communities", creating profiles to promote their brand/products
 * Virtual social worlds: e.g Second Life enables users to appear in the form of Avatars and interact in a 3d virtual environment. Offers advertising opportunities for firms
 * Can be argued that if you do not participate in Facebook, Youtube etc you are no longer part of cyber space
 * There has also been a huge increase in Mobile Social Media