The last couple of years have showed the power of social media, not only for individual use, but it’s becoming clear that social media can be a vital part within firms. This post consists of three parts. First of all I’ll discuss three articles concerning social network science. Secondly I’ll talk about the new advertisement platform of Facebook, called Atlas. Last of all I’ll discuss the use of Facebook and Twitter for companies, concerning advertisement and customer support.
The first article being discussed is Network analysis in the social sciences, by Borgatti. This article focuses on the beginning of social network sciences, note that it doesn’t specifically talks about online social networks. The main findings of this article is that social networks have been subject to a lot of change over time. In 1932, the researcher Moreno used what he called sociometry, to explain social networks. This was a mix of social- and natural sciences. Later on the network sciences were respectively viewed through algebra, anthropology and sociology. In the 1980s it became an established scientific field.
The second article is Social network sites: Definition, History and Scholarships, by Boyd. This article gives us a definition of online social networks:
Web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system (the nature of these connection may very site by site) (Boyd et all, 2007).
The third article, Business network-based value creation in electronic commerce, by Kaufmann. This article formulates three conditions for a stable business network, being network formation, network demand and network stability. By using data from a couple of cases within the travel hospitality industry, these conditions are confirmed.
The second part of this post is about Atlas, a new way to advertise on Facebook. Atlas makes companies able to follow potential customers on different devices. This way, a firm can see that an individual has seen a laptop advertisement, and later on bought that laptop on his PC. This has been the cause for a lot of privacy concerns, however Facebook states that the identity of the users remain hidden. Atlas could be a tool to increase revenues, since it’s able to target more specific groups, and track the behaviour of those groups. This could result in more clicks on advertisement.
Last of all I’ll discuss Twitter and Facebook, concerning advertisements and customer support. I’ve found that Facebook is very useful for advertisements, since it’s able to target specific groups. It also shows companies statistic data about the advertisements. Twitter on the other hand is most helpful for customer support, since it consists of small direct messages, and users are able to search for specific hash tags to find a solution to their problems.
