Email and chat programs debuted in the early 1970s, but persistent communities did not surface until the creation of USENET in 1979. USENET began as a messaging system between Duke University and the University of North Carolina, but it rapidly expanded to other American universities and government agencies. Social media mining uses concepts from computer science, data mining, machine learning, and statistics. Mining is based on social network analysis, network science, sociology, ethnography, optimization and mathematics. It attempts to formally represent, measure and model patterns from social media data.[256] In the 2010s, major corporations, governments and not-for-profit organizations began mining to learn about customers, clients and others.
Use by organizations
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.
Typical features
Eschewing the anonymity that had previously been typical of the online experience, billions of people have flocked to social networking sites where members create and maintain personal profiles that they link with those of other members. The resulting network of “friends” or “contacts” who have similar interests, business goals, or academic courses has replaced for many people, especially youth, older concepts of community. The most basic social networks allow friends to comment on one another’s profiles, send private messages within the network, and traverse the extended web of friends visible in each member’s profile. The median age was 14, although 28% said they started to use it before reaching 13.
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.
Business
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.
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.
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 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.
Social networking service
- CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL were three of the largest BBS companies and were the first to migrate to the Internet in the 1990s.
- They might also use social networks for other purposes, such as interacting with partners or announcing job openings.
- Psychologist and University of Hamburg professor Erich H. Witte says that relationships which start online are much more likely to succeed.
- Social networks are being used by activists as a means of low-cost grassroots organizing.
- With the release in 1993 of the Mosaic Web browser, those systems were joined with an easy-to-use graphical interface.
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.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to social networking marketing strategies. But what would you say if your great-grandmother asked you to define social media? Our definition—the applications and websites that allow people to interact with other users, businesses, communities, and content—is accurate, but it also seems to include a large portion of the internet. People use social networking sites for meeting new friends, finding old friends, or locating people who have the same problems or interests they have, called niche networking.
Mobile social media refers to the use of social media on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It is distinguished by its ubiquity, since users no longer have to be at a desk in order to participate on a computer. Mobile services can further make use of the user’s immediate location to offer information, connections, or services relevant to that location.
Globally, the social-commerce market is expected to grow to more than $2 trillion by 2025. In the study of literary systems, network analysis has been applied by Anheier, Gerhards and Romo,[72] De Nooy,[73] Senekal,[74] and Lotker,[75] to study various aspects of how literature functions. The basic premise is that polysystem theory, which has been around since the writings of Even-Zohar, can be integrated with network theory and the relationships between different actors in the literary network, e.g. writers, critics, publishers, literary histories, etc., can be mapped using visualization from SNA. At the micro-level, social network research typically begins what is social networking with an individual, snowballing as social relationships are traced, or may begin with a small group of individuals in a particular social context.
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.
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.
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.
Social networking is also a significant opportunity for marketers seeking to engage customers. In 2024, Facebook ranks as the most popular social network, with over 3 billion people using the platform monthly. Overall, social media offers significant advantages for businesses that adequately monitor, respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior. The most powerful social-media strategies focus on a limited number of marketing responses closely related to every stage along the consumer decision journey.