![]() ![]() Short for “web logs,” these personal sites give anyone a platform to write about anything they want to. ![]() With the explosion of the service and its huge growth among older demographics, “My parents joined Facebook” has become a common complaint (My Parents Joined Facebook).Īnother category of social media, blogs began as an online, public version of a diary or journal. ![]() Facebook, originally deployed exclusively to Ivy League schools, has since opened its doors to anyone over 13 with an e-mail account. It became profitable in December 2009 through a $25 million deal allowing Google and Microsoft to display its users’ 140-character messages in their search results (Van Buskirk, 2009). Twitter has also been useful for marketers looking for a free public forum to disseminate marketing messages. Twitter has proved useful for journalists reporting on breaking news, as well as highlighting the “best of” the Internet. Twitter is openly searchable, meaning that anyone can visit the site and quickly find out what other Twitter users are saying about any subject. Twitter offers a different approach to social networking, allowing users to “tweet” 140-character messages to their “followers,” making it something of a hybrid of instant messaging and blogging. While these two sites have basically the same structure, they fulfill different purposes for different social groups the character of social networking is highly dependent on the type of social circle. Its tagline, “Relationships matter,” emphasizes the role of an increasingly networked world in business just as a musician might use MySpace to promote a new band, a LinkedIn user can use the site to promote professional services. LinkedIn is free to join and allows users to post resumes and job qualifications (rather than astrological signs and favorite TV shows). Whereas MySpace initially catered to a younger demographic, LinkedIn caters to business professionals looking for networking opportunities. It remains to be seen if Google will be truly successful in establishing a vital new social networking service, but its tactic of integrating Buzz into Gmail underscores how difficult it has become to compete with established social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Google has attempted to circumvent the problem of luring users to create new social networks by building its Buzz service into its popular Gmail, ensuring that Buzz has a built-in user base and lowering the social costs of joining a new social network by leveraging users’ Gmail contact lists. For a Facebook user with hundreds of friends in his or her social network, switching to MySpace and bringing along his or her entire network of friends is a daunting and infeasible prospect. But as relational networks become more and more established and concentrated on a few social media sites, it becomes increasingly difficult for newcomers and lagging challengers to offer the same rich networking experience. As Internet technology evolves rapidly, most users have few qualms about moving to whichever site offers the better experience most users have profiles and accounts on many services at once. MySpace has attempted to catch up by upgrading its own interface, but it now faces the almost insurmountable obstacle of already-satisfied users of competing social networking services. In addition, competing social networking sites like Facebook offer superior interfaces that have lured away many of MySpace’s users. Its huge array of features made it attractive to this demographic at first, but eventually it was overrun with corporate marketing and solicitations for pornographic websites, leading many users to abandon the service. Each of these services has its key demographic-MySpace, for example, is particularly geared toward younger users. Social networking services-like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, and MySpace-provide a limited but public platform for users to create a “profile.” This can range anywhere from the 140-character (that’s letters and spaces, not words) “tweets” on Twitter, to the highly customizable MySpace, which allows users to blog, customize color schemes, add background images, and play music. ![]()
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