Dating sites are becoming more and more important in the social lives of single people looking for a spouse. According to Forbes magazine, there has been a booming increase of members of dating sites, even though it’s a time of recession. But according to the article, it’s because of the recession that causes people to prefer a dating site than, let’s say, a night at a bar: joining a dating site is much cheaper, whereas a night in a bar can cost you lots of money that you’ve spent on drinks. And a night in a bar doesn’t guarantee you any result –you may not even meet somebody- but spending time on a dating site at least results in meeting new people. Another advantage is that you can filter your search options to your preferences. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll immediately hit the jackpot, but those chances could be lower when visiting a bar. Here you can find the article: http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/06/online-dating-industry-face-markets-cx_je_0105autofacescan01.html

Can we say that dating sites can also be considered as social networking sites? Yes, but it’s another type of category. Where can we find the similarities? First of all, a dating site is a platform where people can meet other people and interact with each other, just like the conventional social networking sites. Also, it’s important how you present yourself on either platform. You want people to see you in a certain way, which could be anything, even as somebody that doesn’t want to bother too much with social networking sites. But there all also differences. Where the ‘normal’ social networking sites don’t really have a purpose but to engage people with each other, a dating site is there for you to find a mate. So technically, after meeting the first person on the site, you could have met your misses or mister right and you don’t have to look any further on the site. That means you don’t have to engage anymore with other people and that isn’t very social. But this rarely happens and people most of the time end up meeting more people. Furthermore, because of its clear purpose, interaction between people is motivated on other grounds than compared to the regular social networking sites. But one thing that should be mentioned, is that regular social networking sites also involve activities of people trying to find a spouse.

In this day of age, the technological developments in communications contributes to an increase in power and influence people can have. You can find many uploads on Youtube on police brutality for example. Some videos have led to serious cases, endangering the positions of the involved officers. Also, the revolts in Egypt were organized through new mobile cell phone techonologies.

But is it just the technological advantages? Can you create a hype just by uploading a video? The answer is no. You need to involve your network and have people within your network trying to engage their network for your case (or cause). Then together you can achieve something.

So the power of cell phones is not the cell phone itself. It is just a tool. It’s your network (read: contact list) that can start a buzz. But you have to know how to engage with your network. Know what tickles them and how you can get them to spread your news. And then, you are viral and you have achieved your goal.

What we can say, is that the current level of technological developments in communications, contributes to an increase in potentional regarding personal power: it’s so much easier these days to reach a large group of people.

Jim Luce wrote a blog about the impact of cell phones on psychology, community, culture, arts and economics (the blog has the same title). In this blog, you can find examples of how you can fully use your network for reaching certain goals, through your cellphone:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-luce/the-impact-of-cell-phones_b_508011.html

When studying a phenomenon like social media en social networks, it might be insightful to also look at what the role of society is. Sociologist Manuel Castells has written some highly regarded books on the subject of the network society. In his trilogy ‘The Information Age’, which he has written after a study of 25 years in total, Castells discusses the development of a new kind of society. One which has risen from the development of networks (pushed by ICT) and focuses on flows of information. He describes this era as informative capitalism, whereby the cumulation of knowledge can be seen as the most important source of productivity and characterizes a new economy as well as a new society.

The roots of the informative era can be found in the seventies. After a period of capitalistic crisis, a restructuring occurred of capitalistic entrepreneurship. Castells characterizes this as the ‘informational mode of development’. This new form of capitalism uses informational networks to handle business from factory to worldwide marketing.

The rise of the network society cannot be attributed to globalisation alone, but also to the changing organizational structures. Castells describes how hierarchies are being overthrown and how power is shifting to information workers who operate on networks, which he calls the ‘de-bureaucratisation of affairs’. The big organization isn’t sufficient by just itself. It must derive its power to those with access to the network of self-programmed, self-directed units based on decentralization, participation and coordination.

One of the social consequences of the network society is the dependency on the network. “If you’re not in the network, you will not be able to fully be part of the network society ‘. Mentioning the ‘Space of Flows’, Castells puts the emphasis on information flows within the network society. Disparate and distant places can be integrated into international networks. Those networks connect their most dynamic sectors together. Even though regions are important, Castells stresses the geographical discontinuity that breaks down established relationships. Cities are not places, but processes through which information flows. Large cities are the nodes in a network.

The works of Manuel Castells are very insightful, when dealing with a subject like social media en social networks. He describes the impact on both personal lifes as also for companies.

One of the biggest points of critique addressed to Wikipedia, is that, because of its open source nature, the reliability of its data could be questioned. At one hand, people do not trust on Wikipedia, because anybody can put something on it or amend it. At the other hand, it’s that what the power of Wikipedia is: many eyes make all bugs shallow. This means that when more people are involved or at least viewing it, chances are higher that flaws and mistakes will be discovered. There has been a lot of discussion about whether this is true, but according to CNET News, Wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica, which is an encyclopaedia written by a selected group of experts. You can find the article here:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

But even when Wikipedia would supposedly be as accurate as Brittanica, there’s still room for improvement. One way is to appeal to the contributor’s reputation and the importance of its value. When analyzing contributors motivation, one of the most important motivations is building reputation. The next step would be to involve their reputation with the accuracy of their input. This can be done by putting their (user)name with each piece of text/data directly behind it, so people can immediately see who wrote it. And what people can do then, is rate the contribution, which should also be available to see. If a contributor has more than one contribution, all of his or her ratings should be counted and an average rating should be visible on the contributor’s personal page. In short, all the ratings on the input, should form the average rating of the contributor.

When companies created a business strategy before the ‘social media’ era, the marketing aspect mostly used to be a one way strategy, for example, television commercials, radio commercials, billboard-adds and  magazine-adds. Now, the social media era has just started and because it’s a new phenomena, it could be difficult for companies to cope with this new world where different rules apply. And even these rules aren’t very clear and can cause a lot of uncertainties among managers.

The four articles that we had to read in the third week, have a certain perspective on how to cope with this complex world of social media. The main points they have are first of all about the consumer: they are the determining and dominant factor in the social media space. So don’t try to fight that, but try to leverage it in your advantage. Secondly, ROI cannot always be translated into money, but is sometimes translated into social currency. This means you’ll get a stronger engagement with more consumers. The articles show their ways how to involve these main points in a social media strategy.

I want to elucidate these articles by giving two examples of organizations that match with the results found in the articles, but also cope in their own way, with the rules that are part of this social media world. The first example is Starbucks. I thought this was an interesting example, because they showed engagement with their consumers. But they did it on a controversial topic: Starbucks stated to be supportive on same-sex marriage. Immediately, they got a reaction from the NOM, which is an anti gay-marriage organization. They wanted to boycott Starbucks because of this and tried to get people to join them in this mission. But this plan backfired and it made Starbucks even more likeable to the public. So sales weren’t affected and the engagement with the consumer got stronger. A great example of strong social media marketing. But they took a risk though. In a country like the United States, controversial topics can heat things up, which could also lead to affecting a company in a negative way. So, if you do not want to endanger your company, you should know your consumers and where they stand on a certain topic. If you feel certain and secure enough to express an opinion as a company, you can do so and then you will only strengthen the ties with the consumers.

The second example is IBM. As the articles have shown, it is important to thoroughly engage with your consumer when it comes to social media marketing. But this is a time consuming investment with a demand for a lot of efforts. IBM might have found the answer by decentralizing their social media task force: not a small group of people is concerned with the handling of the social media, but all of the employees are concerned with engaging in the social media environment, as the face of the company. This will decrease investments in time and effort and engagement with consumers will be more personal and therefore, as seen in the articles, stronger. And this without even forcing their employees to promote IBM on the social networking sites. Quite an accomplishment one could say, but is this something every organization or company should do? Because this could also go the wrong way: if there are a lot of employees that aren’t that passionate about social media and/or your company, you can have a big problem as an organization. Either, you have nothing going on in the online world, or, even worse, your organization is promoted in a negative way, but the last alternative would be the lesser case. The answer is finding and selecting passionate workers, who are willing to also put this passion in engaging with the consumer in the social media environment.