Issue Two – Quantifying Social Media

Online Social Networking has come a long way since it began in mid 1980s. It all started in 1985 with The Well or The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link – as a generalized online community. Many would not know that the underpinnings of Electronic Frontier Foundation can be traced to its forums. And so will the roots of Craigslist. It still has more than 4000 members who dissect issues ranging from the gravest to downright silly. The Well was followed by now defunct Geocities in 1994. Geocities hosted around 38 million user built pages until it was shut down. Geocities along with the Tripod.com [1995] formed the first wave of user generated content. These sites essentially focused on raising the inter-connectedness of people through (1) chat rooms and (2) enable individuals expression through personal homepages. During the same time, social website Classmates.com [1995] allowed people to link with each other via email addresses. Other notable social networking websites from the pre internet bubble era included theglobe.com, sixdegrees.com and epinions.com. But, the times have changed since then. And so have we.

Social networking, now, is more than connecting and finding likeminded individuals. Now, it is also a medium of expression for many – expressions that transcend beyond national boundaries; that too, in real time. Social media is also medium of news and acts as a channel of influence. Its pervasiveness can be gauged from the fact that people are spending as much as 6 hours per month on social networking sites. Moreover, web ready cell-phones have further aided in its expansion. It surpasses age barriers, as of now, at-least 47 percent of online boomers are socially networked. So much so that, the number of social profiles, together, can outnumber the population of India anytime soon. Social media is now influencing (1) public policy tactics, (2) marketing strategies of brands and organisations, (3) affecting purchase decisions of consumers, and (4) boosting growth of other forms of businesses.

In this issue, we are trying to gauge – how much social media have we immersed in our lives? and how it is affecting the communication paradigms between individuals and entities. Essentially we are looking at, in quantifiable terms, the trends in social media use worldwide, how Social Media is being used across sectors and industries, notably, Defense, Health, Public Policy, PR and corporate network. We are also looking at Industry perspectives as well as consumer perspectives on brand engagement using social media.

It is quite possible, that you may be already aware about some of the developments. However, what we have tried is to contextualize these various facts and statistics to presents a rather comprehensive picture of Social Media. As always, we hope this issue proves valuable to you, and if you feel that we have faltered somewhere, please feel free to enlighten us with your views in the comments. In case you would like to see the sources we utilized for this issue, click here Top Image Source – Anne Helmond’s Flickr Stream

Happy Reading!

The lure of Social Media

Social media has broadened in terms of use, besides expanding the relationship circle, it now enables expression of opinions, promotes discussions and mobilizes the collective. Use of Social media, now, pervades across all age groups, and moreover, social networking is significantly rising in developing nations, which are recording some of the most impressive growth statistics.

The Influence of Social Media

Social Media is increasingly becoming an ingrained aspect of political campaigns, national defense strategies, public policy, public relations, brand management and even intra company communication. And it is paying off well too. However the recency of the phenomena is catching us by surprise. It is helping grow businesses that were never expected to utilize it

Brand Engagement on Social Media – Industry Perspective

Not so long back companies could singly control brand promotional activities. However, presently, brand’s performance is affected more by what people say through medium like blogs and other social sites that what companies intend to communicate. While the idea of incorporating social media in marketing has dawned on organizations, its effective implementation is a challenge

Brand Engagement on Social Media – Consumer Perspective

There is a popular misconception that individuals use social media to connect with other people only. However, in reality significantly large number of social networkers are following / becoming a fan of brands with three primary motives, (1) to connect with other users (2) to show solidarity, and (3) to track discounts, promotion and other offers.