Impact Of Social Media On The Business World And Our Life - Essay Example

Impact Of Social Media On The Business World And Our Life Introduction The typical requirement of this study is to understand the effect of the social media in the lives of the common people, especially the youth as well as the business of the modern days. Today, the internet has reached a wide range of people. There are many ways in which people use internet. Many people use internet on the go on their smartphones, tablet PC’s and other mobile devices. Now the question is how the use of social media impacts the life of people around the globe and various business segments. Do social media have that much importance in our lives without which we cannot move further? Importantly, how does the latest event of the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook impact businesses? The answers for these questions are the discussion points in this essay. It is important for people to understand how they are going to use social media for their betterment, and also how the businesses can use this platform in order to enhance their revenue. Regarding social media and the popularity of emerging names in social media, two names that come to mind are WhatsApp and Instagram. Instagram is essentially a photo-sharing and video-sharing online service, which is available in platforms such as Apple, Windows and Android. Likewise, WhatsApp is a messaging and photo-sharing app. which has gained immense popularity in the last 2 years. Both Instagram and WhatsApp incidentally share a common aspect; they both have been acquired by the social media behemoth Facebook. The amount paid to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp has been $1 billion and $16 billion respectively, therefore reflecting the profit generating potential of social media platforms such as these. Almost 70% of the mobile users used internet on their mobile devices (Mayfield, 2008). With the increasing popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices, especially the Android based ones, the social networking foray started to think how they can reach as many number of users as possible (Mayfield, 2008) through their new and innovative ideas. This thinking created the need of generating a mobile messaging app, which is popularly known as Whats App. This popular mobile messaging service has almost 70 million active users every month (Socialbakers, 2013). This shows how much people are using social networking in their everyday life. Instagram – Case Studies Instagram, the photo sharing app over the internet, was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. This acquisition had been buzzing over the media as hot news. All the media channels have made this news a one of the hot topics in their news forums (Bakardjieva & Gaden, 2011). This acquisition has been the topic of many case studies in many Universities. The Griffith University in Australia had chosen the topic of social media as a topic in their graduation convocation. The students present in the graduation convocation had embraced the #griffithgrads Instagram campaign and they had captured more than 500 pictures for the particular event (Bulmer, 2013). In the initial stage, Instagram was a check-in app in the Android mobile environment. In this app, the user could also add photos. But the app did not see much engagement from the audience except them using the photo sharing feature very actively (GroupFMG, 2012). At some point of time, the makers of Instagram had built a prototype of “just photos”, but had decided not to launch the same. People started to use the Instagram app for actively for photo sharing. The active participation of users in using the Instagram app made the developers happy. This app was considered as one of the best in photo sharing as it was simple and fast (Liptakova, 2012). But with the advent of other internet based photo sharing platforms like Picasa, Facebook photos, Flickr and others; Instagram started to lose its charm. The social photo sharing app had simple filter option and this feature had made it a hit in the environment even though that time Hipstamatic was already popular. However, the popularity of Hipstamatic did not take away the charm of Instagram from not being a hit among the Android based mobile phone users (Liptakova, 2012). The simplistic and innovative features of the social photo sharing app had just one filter and it was made popular among the users for a longer time. It was understood that Instagram had simplistic filter and was used by a lot of people in the app world (Social Media Guys, 2011). However, the popularity of Facebook in the internet world started to take away the charm from this photo sharing app. With the loss in the number of users, the app makers started researching on the stuffs that can make it better and help gaining the popularity in the market (Sofos Ltd., 2013). The three problems that they started to fix were – they made the photos look more beautiful, they added the feature that allows the users to share the photos in multiple networks and finally they made the upload process quicker. With adding all these features, Instagram again became a talk of the town for its users and they started to use it extensively as one of the most popular app for photo sharing. However, with success of Facebook, Instagram could not cope up with the market and the developers of the app had to look for an alternate way to sustain in the virtual world (Turkle, 2011). That time, Facebook had just started to become the most popular and most used social networking website in the internet. It was that time when Facebook approached Instagram for the acquisition. At some point of time Facebook, Instagram and Twitter gave a broad look at the trending events, parties and stories. Though all the three social media channels were progressing hand-in-hand, it was in the year 2012 Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion. The experts saw this acquisition being best ever and it would surely add up to the revenue of the Facebook. The data that supports this argument is the metrics of the Instagram’s photo sharing (Technorati Media, 2013). The metrics show there had been 55 million shares in one day, in comparison to other internet service like SnapChat (350 million), WhatsApp (400 million) and Facebook (350 million). The Scenario of Social Media With the progress of time there has been revolution in the Web 2.0 and it definitely has changed our lives in different aspects (Andriole, 2010). It had swelled so much that both our personal and professional environments have changed big time. Today, there are wide array of social technologies and methodologies being used. For example, Facebook likes and comments, Google+ services, YouTube videos, Twitter comments, professional profiles in LinkedIn, various types of blogs, podcasts and other livestreams are taking rounds in the web and attract attention of the users (Ward & Eid, 2009). Today governments, businesses, communities and organizations use the social media platform to communicate and also gain access to their stakeholders (Socialbakers, 2013). The main driver for this change mechanism is the social networking. It has played a vital role in the advancement of the business scenarios. The behaviors and tools that sprang from the consumers are now the part of the transformation of the corporate world (Weinberg, 2011). Social networking has impacted the business and corporate environment at various levels. The presence of the social networking has opened varied channels of communication. This platform has made innovators to think more and come up with various innovative ideas in communication sector. Two innovations are WhatsApp and Line Chat. These two apps in the Android platform have been very popular among the users. The innovative features of these two apps have made them the most popular ones in the foray. Though there are lot of features embedded in these social apps, these apps are not able to become the number one in the segment. Whenever there is talk about the social networking, the first name that comes to everyone’s mind is Facebook. Because of the availability of the online social media, many businesses use various in-house collaborative social networking options, which help the employees of the company to connect with each other and collaborate. But sometimes this collaboration may take wrong turn and affect the productivity of the organization. Hence though the organizations encourage various collaborative social networking among the employees, it is the duty of the employees not to misuse the liberty. Social media has evolved a great way and played a key role in the success of many companies, irrespective of the status of those companies – whether they are start-ups or big conglomerates (Zive, 2012). Seeing the success of various social networking channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Whats App, Line Chat and many others there has been a trend of acquisitions and mergers in the big corporate world. The recent story line is the acquisition of Whats App by Facebook for $19 billion. Seeing the success of Whats App, which has about 70 million active users worldwide, the acquisition will surely bring revenue success to Facebook. Whats App has been a great innovation on the social networking platform, which has brought the world closer to the people using this platform. The users can communicate seamlessly with the world, share photos and videos. Facebook’s acquisition of Whats App has added a feather in the cap of the leader of social networking. Impacts Because of Social Media Mergers and Acquisitions Acquisitions and mergers in businesses are quite common. Till date, there have been lot of acquisitions and mergers taken place in various segments of business. Some of the acquisitions and mergers proved to be profitable for the businesses and some did not do well as per the expectations. But that did not stop the acquisitions and mergers to be stopped. The social networking channels have opened the door of innovation. Most of the companies bring their employees, customers and other partners closer through varied ways and brainstorm the ideas of innovation. But this platform may not hold well every time, as the loophole in the technology might cause problem and this might leak out the idea that is supposed to be for the betterment of the organization. The social networking plays a big role in driving employee excellence as well. The employees of a corporation makes global contacts with the help of social networking platforms like Facebook, Whats App, Line Chat and many other in-house media. This helps them gain deeper knowledge and also helps them follow their interest. Though the social networking platform gives lot of opportunity for employee excellence, there are chances that they might misuse this liberty. It is the responsibility of the employees to be cautious while using the platform and the organizations should have the precautionary measures in place to protect the privacy. Social networking has played a significant role in increasing the revenue of the conglomerates. It is because of the change in communication patterns and also the innovations that came to limelight. The example best to cite here is the recent acquisition of Whats App by Facebook for $19 billion. The Whats App application has about 70 million active users, which would surely add up to the revenue of Facebook. The search engine giant Google has acquired quite a lot of companies – whether they are start-ups or well settled companies. In the month of April 2003, the company had acquired two businesses – Neotonic Software, which is a customer relationship management company and the other one is Applied Semantics, an online advertising company and is working in collaboration with AdSense and AdWords of Google. One of the significant acquisitions by Google was the mobile software Android, which is running its business under the same name till date. Android is the most popular mobile software that is used in the recent days mobile. Seeing the potential of the social networking, Google had acquired this company in August 2005 and today its success is visible to the entire world. The popular video sharing website YouTube was acquired by Google in October 2006. YouTube is also a kind of social networking website through which users can share videos with the entire world. This successful video sharing website’s potential was identified by Google and the acquisition was not a waste. Conclusion In this thesis, the discussion was focussed on the how the social media has impacted various businesses and social lives of people around the globe. The use of various social media platforms has changed lives of many people – both positive and negative ways. Similarly, social media has changed the business scenario as well. Not only the big conglomerates, but also the small start-ups too use the platform of social media to improve their business. The IT infrastructure and the telecommunication channels of various big organizations have seen a big change in the way they communicate today. It is not only Facebook or LinkedIn, but also various other capabilities that help the evolution of the communication channels in the corporate world. Social media technology has played a key role in driving a brand experience to the customers (Brocke & Rosemann, 2010). A company can capture, monitor, listen and manage the relevant communication from their customers about their products and service effectively through the social media platform. Through the social media platforms, companies extend and implement their reach to a wide array of people and enhance the knowledge base of their employees (Hakes, 1995). This enables the employees to improve their communication and interaction with people globally. The social media channels also help finding innovative solution for problems in the corporate world. In essence, to utilize social media fully, companies need to embrace the experience of their customers and enable the operationalization through the social methodologies and technologies available within the existing resources. This is an important aspect that is brought to the businesses. The business needs to organically enhance in such a way through the social media channels that it can predict as well as influence it. By using the social media channels, the companies can create a sustainable differentiation of the brand in the business market, which is always unique. However, it always needs to be kept in mind by the users, whether it is individual or the business set-ups, that it is always easy to get carried away by the rosy picture of social media. It is up to them how they want to use this useful channel so that it does not cause problem and diminish their image in the broader forum. Just like how social media has capability to enhance the image of the users, it also has the capability to diminish the same. Hence it is advised to use the channel in a wiser way to harness positive effects of social media platforms such as What’sApp, Instagram or Facebook. References Andriole SJ (2010). Business impact of Web 2.0 Technologies. CACM, 53(12), 67-79. Bakardjieva M & Gaden G (2011). Web 2.0 Technologies of the Self. Philosophy of Technology. [online] Accessed at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13347-011-0032-9. [Accessed on 2013-03-23]. Brocke JV & Rosemann M (2010). Handbook on business process management: Strategic alignment, governance, People and Culture: Springer. Bulmer D (2013). Brand and Reputation Management: Four Insights. [online]. 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