Social Media on the Internet Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Social Media on the Internet - Essay Example One of the most notable features of social media is that it has grown exponentially across the world within a very short duration compared to other business and communication tools in human history. To illustrate this phenomenon, Lee (2010) points out that while it took 13 years for television to attract over 50 million viewers and 38 years for radio to attract about 50 million listeners, it took 4 years only for internet to attract 50 million participants. He further points out that it took social media platform, Facebook, one and a half years to attract the same number of participants. There has been raging debate on whether the availability and use of social media on the internet is useful to businesses in regard to providing them with new and different useful information. This paper will discuss how the availability and use of social media on the internet really provide businesses with new and different useful information. Historically, technology has been injected and adopted in to the society as well as the business world and it has often required that there be a radical shift in business and cultural processes and practices (Lincoln, 2009). Social media is one such kind of technology in the business world. Unlike other types of technologies, social media technology greatly reflects the social behavior of people. Social media is also unique in the sense that it allows anybody to produce media content and deliver it by interactive communication. Qualman (2010) notes that the available statistics show that social media has established itself as the media of choice around the world over the last 4 years, with over a quarter of the world population using one type of social media or another. The growth of social media has been so tremendous such that social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have grown rapidly and have gradually relegated other forms of advertising such as print advertisements, and threatened them with extinction (Nair, 2011 ). The popularity of the use of social media on the internet can be attributed to four reasons. To start with, users can get the latest information on virtually anything they want. Secondly, it satisfies the desires of the users of expressing themselves. Users are also able to see how individuals and groups that they are interested in are doing therefore getting more satisfaction. Finally, it helps people to escape from their day-to-day routine by providing alternative ways of using time (Lee, 2010). The fact that social media has experienced exponential growth over the years cannot be disputed. However, there has been debate on whether the availability and use of social media on the internet really provides businesses with new and different useful information. The response to this question has been two-fold: on one side, there are those who believe that it does provide businesses with new and different useful information, while on the other side there are those who believe that it does not (Nair, 2011). While the later side has its reasons for taking that position, there is a greater consensus among those engaged in this debate that, indeed, the availability and use of social media on the internet provides businesses with new and different useful information (Hinchcliffe et al., 2012). So, how does the use of social