Defining Social Media
In a broad sense, Social Media refers to a conversational, distributed mode of content generation, dissemination, and communication among communities. The Internet and mobile technologies have been the primary force behind the rise of social media, providing technological platforms for information dissemination, content generation, and interactive communications.
For profit businesses are tapping into social media as both a rich source of information and a business execution platform for product design and innovation, consumer and stakeholder relations management,and marketing. For them, social media is an essential component of the next generation business intelligence platform.For many individuals, social media has become a unique information source to deal with information and cognitive overload problems, find answers to specific questions, and discover more valuable opportunities for social and economic exchange. In addition, it has become a platform for them to network and contribute to all kinds of dynamic dialogues by sharing their expertise and opinions.
From an application perspective, many websites dedicated to social media are among the most popular - Wikipedia ( collective knowledge generation), MySpace and Facebook (social networking), Youtube (social networking and multimedia content sharing), Digg and Delicious (social browsing, news ranking, and bookmarking), Second Life (virtual reality), and Twitter (social networking and microblogging), to name just a few.
Social Media Research
Social Media Research has primarily focused on social media analytics and social media intelligence.
Social Media Analytics is concerned with developing and evaluating informatics tools and frameworks to collect, monitor, analyze, summarize, and visualize social media data, usually driven by specific requirements from a target application. Social media analytics research serves several purposes:
A research conducted by Fellows of the Society for New Communication Research (Barnes, Cass, Getgood, Gillin, & Goosieaux, 2008) found evidence to support the significance of social networking to current promotional mix decisions. Consumers aged 25-55 years, college-educated and earning $100,000 or more are among the most savvy and sought after consumers. The same group is using social media to research companies when making purchase decisions.Not only does Social Media Networking allow communication between consumers, but also allow retailers to develop a relationship with their consumers and thus reduce churn.Research purports that companies who use social media networking see higher sales and greater profits.As companies become more and more involved in developing social media and participating in the most popular social networks, they must also attempt to recognize those variables that have a causal relationship between customer attitudes about the information and their willingness to become or remain a loyal customer.
Consumer Activity in Social Media
Information Technology is empowering consumers, and their role is shifting from being passive recipients of information to becoming active generators of information. Consumers are taking part in a variety of activities ranging from consuming content, participating in discussions, and sharing knowledge with other consumers to contributing to other consumers' activities.
Consumers' activities in social media has been explored based on how actively or passively consumers behave online.Community members have been grouped according to their communication behavior and six virtual community member types have been identified on members' communication/participation patterns:
In a broad sense, Social Media refers to a conversational, distributed mode of content generation, dissemination, and communication among communities. The Internet and mobile technologies have been the primary force behind the rise of social media, providing technological platforms for information dissemination, content generation, and interactive communications.
For profit businesses are tapping into social media as both a rich source of information and a business execution platform for product design and innovation, consumer and stakeholder relations management,and marketing. For them, social media is an essential component of the next generation business intelligence platform.For many individuals, social media has become a unique information source to deal with information and cognitive overload problems, find answers to specific questions, and discover more valuable opportunities for social and economic exchange. In addition, it has become a platform for them to network and contribute to all kinds of dynamic dialogues by sharing their expertise and opinions.
From an application perspective, many websites dedicated to social media are among the most popular - Wikipedia ( collective knowledge generation), MySpace and Facebook (social networking), Youtube (social networking and multimedia content sharing), Digg and Delicious (social browsing, news ranking, and bookmarking), Second Life (virtual reality), and Twitter (social networking and microblogging), to name just a few.
Social Media Research
Social Media Research has primarily focused on social media analytics and social media intelligence.
Social Media Analytics is concerned with developing and evaluating informatics tools and frameworks to collect, monitor, analyze, summarize, and visualize social media data, usually driven by specific requirements from a target application. Social media analytics research serves several purposes:
- facilitating conversations and interactions between online communities
- extracting useful patterns and intelligence to serve entities that include, but are not limited to, active contributors in ongoing dialogues.
A research conducted by Fellows of the Society for New Communication Research (Barnes, Cass, Getgood, Gillin, & Goosieaux, 2008) found evidence to support the significance of social networking to current promotional mix decisions. Consumers aged 25-55 years, college-educated and earning $100,000 or more are among the most savvy and sought after consumers. The same group is using social media to research companies when making purchase decisions.Not only does Social Media Networking allow communication between consumers, but also allow retailers to develop a relationship with their consumers and thus reduce churn.Research purports that companies who use social media networking see higher sales and greater profits.As companies become more and more involved in developing social media and participating in the most popular social networks, they must also attempt to recognize those variables that have a causal relationship between customer attitudes about the information and their willingness to become or remain a loyal customer.
Consumer Activity in Social Media
Information Technology is empowering consumers, and their role is shifting from being passive recipients of information to becoming active generators of information. Consumers are taking part in a variety of activities ranging from consuming content, participating in discussions, and sharing knowledge with other consumers to contributing to other consumers' activities.
Consumers' activities in social media has been explored based on how actively or passively consumers behave online.Community members have been grouped according to their communication behavior and six virtual community member types have been identified on members' communication/participation patterns:
- Core members were those who contributed to the community the most by retrieving, supplying, and discussing information.
- Conversationalists focused on discussing information
- Informationalists mainly retrieved and supplied information
- Hobbyists focused on maintaining and updating their personal information on the website.
- Functionalists were interested in retrieving information
- Opportunists only retrieved marginal content from the website
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