Social media is the social interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.
Social media depends on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, create, discuss, and modify user-generated contents. They create substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals.
Social media differ from traditional media (Print media, Electronic media,etc) in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy, and permanence. Internet users continue to spend more time with social media sites than any other type of site. At the same time, the total time spent on social media in the U.S. across PC and mobile devices increased by 37 % to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 compared to 88 billion minutes in July 2011.
Here are few types of social media:
1.Collaborative projects (For example, Wikipedia)
2.Blogs and microblogs (For example, Twitter and Tumblr)
3.Content communities (For example, YouTube and DailyMotion)
4.Social networking sites (For example, Facebook)
Virality on Social Media
Some social media sites have greater virality - that is, users are more likely to reshare content that has already been posted on the site by another user, to their social network. Many social media sites provide specific functionality to help users reshare content - for example, Twitter's retweet button, or Tumblr's reblog function. This is of particular interest for viral marketing for businesses, but also for nonprofit organisations and activists.
Some features of Social Media
1.Quality: In industrial (traditional) publishing, the typical range of quality is substantially narrower than in unmediated markets. The distribution of quality has high variance: from very high-quality items to low-quality also.
2. Reach: Industrial media typically use a centralized framework for organization, production, and dissemination, whereas social media are by their nature more decentralized, less hierarchical, and distinguished by multiple points of production and utility.
3. Frequency: The number of times an advertisement is displayed on social media platforms.
4. Accessibility: The means of production for industrial media are typically government and/or corporate (privately owned). Social media tools are generally available to the public at little or no cost.
5. Usability: Most social media production requires only modest reinterpretation of existing skills. Anyone with access can operate on social media.
6.Immediacy: Social media is capable of virtually instantaneous responses.
7. Alterable: Social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing.
Internet usage effects
1.Consumers continue to spend more time on social networks than on any other category of sites—roughly 20 % of their total time online via PC and 30 % of total time online via mobile.
2.Facebook remains the most-visited social network in the U.S. via PC (152.2 million visitors), mobile apps (78.4 million users) and mobile web (74.3 million visitors).
3.51% of people aged 25–34 used social networking in the office, more than any other age group.
4.While the computer is still the primary device used to access social media despite dropping 4% in usage in 2012, the last year saw a significant increase in usage, most notably through tablets from 3% to 16%, internet enabled TVs from 2% to 4%.
5. In November 2011, it was reported Indians spend more time on social media than on any other activity on the Internet.
Advantages of Social Media
- Social networks are new way of staying in touch with the whole world.
- It is now easier to keep in contact with old friends and colleagues.
- The professional networking site LinkedIn even allows users to request introductions to business people who are known to their contacts. LinkedIn is a particularly valuable business tool, over 200 million people are members, including hiring managers from many top companies. Your profile is designed to function as an online resume, detailing your education, career history (with recommendations from your colleagues), and creative portfolio.
- Freelancers can find contacts via professional groups on LinkedIn and Twitter, while business owners can make use of the large user bases of Facebook and Twitter to market their products and services.
Online communities can be very diverse and expose you to many new viewpoints, ideas, and opinions that you may not be familiar with.
Disadvantages Of Social Media
- Public sharing of private lives has led to a rethinking of our current conceptions of privacy.
- Social networking sites allow seemingly trivial gossips to be redistributed to a worldwide audience, sometimes a rumour is shared.
- The one potential risk of social networking cited most often is that of hacking. Incidents of profiles and accounts are being hacked.
- While social media can help people / companies create good image, it can also be used to tranish an image with false claims. A viral social media post talking how a product can cause problems can lead to huge losses to a firm.
- All over the world social media websites are used to get up close and personal without even revealing the true identity....
CONCLUSION
Social networking is indeed boon for human race because it is bringing people closer and letting them communicate with each-other without any fear and barrier. But still one needs to be cautious of what level of personal information they are providing on social sites and how much time they are spending on it.....
-Shubham Dixit
(team leader)
