Functions of Social Media and the Benefits of Social Media - Term Paper Example

? E-commerce of the PART A In this part of the study, self reflection of different s of social media will be carried out. The topics which are to be covered will be selected from the textbook or from the classroom materials. The topics which have been selected are history of social media, properties of social media, type of social media, functions of social media and the benefits of social media. History of social media Social media is dubbed as the platform over which people across the globe interacts with each other and shares their emotion. With the robust development of technology, social networking platforms nowadays support text, audio as well as video. Hence, the quality of interaction has improved to a great level. This eventful journey of social media development is marked by several milestones. I will be highlighting 5 of the most key moments in the history of social media. In my opinion, the first one is obviously the development of e-mail. E-mail is probably the first form of digital message. The next one is development of Genie, which was an online forum that led the foundation of social media. I believe the third milestone was a major shift in terms of development (Freeman, 2010). It came in the form of world’s first social platform where users actually got the opportunity to get in touch with their loved ones. The website was known to as classmates.com. The emergence of Friendster, improved and modern social media platform is the next big thing to have happened. The craze was such that within the first month of its launch, around 3 million people joined in. The last major breakthrough came in the form of modern day networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. These networks support online transfer of various types of file and has actually taken communication to the next level. The journey of social media has been an eventful one and it is expected that with a similar rate of development, soon human being will experience a new world through the eyes of social networking platforms. Properties of social media Social media is referred to as a virtual network or community where users gather to communicate among themselves and at the same time create and exchange information about the various topics. Therefore from the above findings I can conclude that social media acts as a mediator between the users. Some of the key properties of social media are quality, reach, frequency, accessibility, usability, immediacy, and permanence. I believe these aforementioned properties create disparities among the different social media forms and are the reason that leads to various types of social media (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy & Silvestre, 2011). For example, due to differences in the features we come across two terms, namely social media and industrial media. The major difference between social and industrial media is that industrial media is more expensive. It includes television, newspapers and films. In my opinion, it is important to distinguish different forms of media because without distinction new forms will never emerge and can even act as a hindrance. In the context of the difference between the new forms of media with rational forms is its ability to go viral. Due to the presence of a million of registered users a small issue can go viral through social media. Types of social media As seen above, social media has various features that allow users to accomplish crucial tasks. However, when a discussion about social media is going on, it is a necessity to underline the different types of social media present in the virtual world. From my personal experience as well as consultation of the textbooks, I have found there are 6 different types of social media namely collaborative projects, blogs and micro-blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds (Gillgian, 2011). According to me, all of the aforementioned types of social media has their own significance and can be described as unique, important and necessary human activities that form the basis of our social lives. For example, collaborative project such as Wikipedia marks to be an important source of information. In the similar ways blogs and micro-blogs such as twitter allows an individual to share their thoughts with others. Content communities such as YouTube, Dailymotion etc. allow users to share or view videos. Thus, in point of view each of the types of social media is unique in their own respect as it serves the requirements in different ways. The impact of social media has reached to a certain stage that human lives would look incomplete without it. For example, during my internship program I have seen that our company makes use of social media to promote their business offerings. Hence, even people from professional world are considering this to be a critical development tool (Holmes, 2012). Functions of social media Some of the key functions of social media are providing identity to a brand, fostering communication, increasing reputation and promoting relationships. It is an obvious fact that social media has the ability to carry out various functions but at the same time it is also true that the functionalities differ from one form to the other (Russell, 2011). I have seen that people using various social media forms to fulfill their needs and this points out that each form has different functionalities. The functional analysis of social media is therefore can be dubbed as crucial as it has helped in understanding the root causes that differentiates one form to the other. Furthermore, it has also helped me understand the inter-relation and interdependence of the features. Benefits of social media Kaplan and Haelein (2010) defines social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (p.61). Studies have shown that social media has actually changed the way business is being carried out and people interact with each other. From my perspective, the biggest benefit of social media is its cost effectiveness and mass reach. However, if I am to underline five key benefits of social media, I will go with the following ones: - 1. Cost Effectiveness 2. Mass Reach 3. Allows effective and efficient communication 4. A great source of information 5. Allow users to keep in touch without the limitation of time and geographical distance. PART B In this part of the study, three peer reviewed academic journal articles will be chosen and key points from those articles will be highlighted in the paper. Furthermore, a comparison of those points to that of what has been learned previously will be carried out. Lastly, the study will also attempt to establish a relationship between the six key points identified from the articles. The articles chosen for this purpose is illustrated below: - Sl No. Name of the Article Author Publishing Date 1 A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health communication S Anne Moorhead, Diane E Hazlett, Laura Harrison, Jennifer K Carroll, Anthea Irwin and Ciska Hoving. 2013 2 What a Tangled Web We Weave: Lying Backfires in Location-Sharing Social Media Xinru Page, Bart P. Knijnenburg and Alfred Kobsa 2013 3 Understanding social media effects across seller, retailer, and consumer interactions Adam Rapp & Lauren Skinner Beitelspacher & Dhruv Grewal & Douglas E. Hughes 2013 Key points from Article 1 The first article, A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health communication by S Anne Moorhead, Diane E Hazlett, Laura Harrison, Jennifer K Carroll, Anthea Irwin and Ciska Hoving is about a systematic review of used, benefits as well as limitations of social media in the health care sector. The article made it evident that social media assists the industry by increasing the interaction rate, making information readily available, offering peer support and health surveillance among others (Moorhead, Hazlett, Harrison, Carroll, Irwin & Hoving, 2013). On the contrary, some of the limitations related to social media in the health care sector are lack of reliability, privacy and quality control. One of the most interesting points or rather a question raised after going through this article is that although social media offer a new dimension in the health care sector, but the matter of concern is whether the information obtained through this medium is reliable? Another interesting fact identified through this article is that nowadays patients, general public as well as health professionals are making use of social media as a medium of communication pertaining to health issues. Even studies have shown that 39% US people seek assistance from social media to gain health information. However, the matter of doubt is that the article has only considered US perspective, in other countries mostly third world countries people hardly think of using social media for health consultation. Key points from Article 2 The second article, What a Tangled Web We Weave: Lying Backfires in Location-Sharing Social Media by Xinru Page, Bart P. Knijnenburg and Alfred Kobsa emphasizes on the uprising technologies. The article basically enumerates about Location-sharing services (LSS) which is being rapidly used nowadays in the social networking platforms. One of the most interexting findings of the article is that Location-sharing services (LSS); the latest technology is often becoming a cause of concern for the users as at times it is affecting the personal life. Another key finding of this study is that people most of the time lies in order to avoid to apprehensive matters. The study further reflected that people who has high propensity of lying has more concerns towards managing privacy (Page, Knijnenburg & Kobsa, 2013). Thus, it is evident that Location-sharing services (LSS) is one side is being considered as a revolution, but at the same time it is affecting one’s personal life. Key points from Article 3 The third and final article chosen for this study is: understanding social media effects across seller, retailer, and consumer interactions by Adam Rapp & Lauren Skinner Beitelspacher & Dhruv Grewal & Douglas E. Hughes. The article enumerates about the role of social media in the interaction process of retailers, sellers and the end consumers. The authors believe that social media has a contagion effect in the communication process of the aforementioned groups. The article highlighted that social media enhances the communication system to a great deal. The article also provided evidence that reflects internet users are spending around 25% of their internet time towards social media (Rapp, Beitelspache, Grewal & Hughes, 2013). However, if the two key findings of the article are to be highlighted, it will be 1: nowadays business houses are also using social media for the purpose of promoting and enhancing the efficiency of business. However, this is more prevalent in the business to business (B2B) community. Another key findings of this article is that social media promotes two way communication. Other communication forms such as television advertisement, radio or newspaper advertisement etc. all encourages the communication system of the firm, but none has the ability to promote two way communications (Ryan, 2011). Hence, it can be concluded that the chosen article provides several information as well as raises a number of questions regarding the viability of the claims made in the articles. If the above points are contrasted with the classroom readings, it is obvious that the claim made in the article shares certain differences as well as some similarities. For example, the question raised about the reliability of social media is justified. In the similar way, the articles are written from the perspective of one country and other perspectives were ignored. In the classroom, it has been always taught that the behavior and nature of consumers differ from one place to the other and similarly social media usage behavior differs. However, one of the most fascinating facts about the question raised or important findings after going through the three articles are that all the findings shares a common relationship i.e. the reliability of social media is always a doubt despite its high acceptance rate (Light, & McGrath, 2010). References Freeman, S. G. (2010). Social Media Compliance Issues. FORC Journal, 21 (1), pp.1-3. Gillgian, T. A. (2011). Social Networking Sites and the Ethical Issues They Create. Retrieved from http://dritoday.org/feature.aspx?id=143. Holmes, T. (2012). Social Media Compliance Isn't Fun, but It's Necessary. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/social_media_compliance_isnt.html. Kaplan, A. M. & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68. Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P. & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54, 241—251. Light, B., & McGrath, K. (2010). Ethics and Social Networking Sites: A Disclosive Analysis of Facebook. Information Technology & People, 23 (4), 290-311. Moorhead, S. A., Hazlett, D. E., Harrison, L., Carroll, J. K., Irwin, A. & Hoving, C. (2013). A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health Communication. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15 (4). Page, X., Knijnenburg, B. P. & Kobsa, A., 2013. What a Tangled Web We Weave: Lying Backfires in Location-Sharing Social Media. Department of Informatics, (February), 23-27. Rapp, A., Beitelspache, L. S., Grewal, D. & Hughes, D. E., 2013. Understanding social media effects across seller, retailer, and consumer interactions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41, 547-566. Russell, M. (2011). Mining the Social Web: Analyzing Data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Other Social Media Sites. California: O'Reilly Media, Inc. Ryan, P. K. (2011). Social Networking. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group. Read More