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Social media will probably change a lot in the next couple of years, we have already seen a lot of different social media sites come and go. In the Netherlands for most people it started with MSN and Hyves, nowadays both do not even exist anymore. And even though Twitter still is one of the biggest social media sites you see a big decline in the Netherlands. Last year 1.5 million people used Twitter every day, now this is only 1 million, a decline of 33%. Every year you have one or more new social media hype, as you can see in the table below, Pinterest really grew last year. So what will happen to social media in the future?

In the article by AJ Agrawal, he says that the thinks social media will be a lot more personal in the future, a lot more people will complete their profiles as much as possible. They add more pictures and put a lot of information about themselves online. This does not only help companies with targeting the right people, but also keeps the users focused and engaged with the respective social media platform.

In a different article by Jason Falls, he talks about the future of social media, he thinks it will probably be good in the long term, but on the short term not so much. A lot of businesses right now are rushing into social media, if you don’t have social media as a company already you need to make it now. The problem with this is that most businesses don’t do it right. And the results will not be as clearly visible or be as fast as with normal ads on the television or the radio. With those ads you get immediate payoff, but with social media you have to think long term, this will be new and too much for most companies according to Jason Falls.

This is mostly short term, but how do people think social media will look like 10 years from now? In an article on the site of the Webber University, they talk about the battle for the share of engagement. Existing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter will try to make the content more engaging, instead of just looking on the sites. Also the ads will be a lot more valuable on the internet instead of the old fashioned advertisements on television and radio.

So there are a lot of different opinions about what social media will look like in the future. Will it grow until we live our lives mostly online and with social media, or will it completely disappear? What do you think will happen to social media in the future?

References

(2015), In the Netherlands, Pinterest Gains, but Facebook Still Reigns, http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Netherlands-Pinterest-Gains-Facebook-Still-Reigns/1012345.

A.J. Agrawal (2014),  5 Predictions for the Future of Social Media,        http://www.inc.com/aj-agrawal/5-predictions-of-the-future-of-social-media.html.

J. Falls (2008), The Future of Social Media: Hope Or Hype https://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/the-future-of-social-media-hope-or-hype/.

Weber, Social Media in 2025 http://webber.edu/social-media-in-2025/.

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Elderly being lonely is a well known phenomenon. Research shows that social media might just be the answer for this. The use of social media improved the cognitive capacity, the sense of self-competence and helped the mental health and physical well-being overall (Morris, 2014).

In England and Italy researchers gave 120 elderly training and special computers so that they would and could use social media like Skype and Facebook. They also had a control group to compare it with. It showed that the elderly felt less isolated because they could easily connect with friends and family trough Skype and Facebook. While in comparison the control group steadily declined in mental and physical health.

Thomas Morton, of the University of Exeter’s psychology department also mentions that people are social animals and that it is not surprising that people do better when they connect with others. There are many examples in the article of people who’s live changed after using social media. Examples like dying their hair and taking care of their physical appearance again, or joining friends at a campfire trough Skype. Also shown in the research is that Skype and e-mail is found to be more useful then Facebook by the elderly, over 75% liked Skype and e-mail.

This research shows that the health of elderly really can improve by the use of social media, and that the increase of elderly using it has increased a lot over the past decade. But there still is a lot of work to do, only 37% of the elderly used social media in 2013 and there will be a lot more elderly in the future, the idea Tony Watts has is to stimulate the use of tablets instead of computers, because tablets are a lot easier to use.

The benefits for elders are widely spread, like mentioned before they can connect with friends and family, but they can also meet new people with common interest (Pendykoski, 2013), on social networks you can meet people of the same age with the same interest and have interesting conversations or discussions.

Also they can learn stuff, with almost every bit of knowledge being available on the internet, elderly can search up everything they want and learn new things about topics they like, or search for things important for their health or financial side of live.

besides learning things, they can also share things, the elderly have probably experienced a lot in their lifetime and they can share their stories on social media. They can also help other people with their knowledge and connect with people this way.

Concluding, elders benefit a lot from using social media,  they improve with mental and physical health. They can connect with other people and learn and share new information. And even though more elderly are using social media, others still need to be helped because as research has shown, it helps the elderly.

Morris, S (2014) Study finds social media use beneficial to overall health of elderly.

Pendykoski, R. (2013) Seniors Going Social: Benefits that Social Media Proffers to the Elderly.

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This week the subject was online social networks. The first article is about the social network sites (SNSs) and their history.  They summarize many different articles in one and tell you a lot about the history of SNSs. The article is pretty interesting but does not tell anything new, it summarizes the articles clearly but it does not give a lot of information that I didn’t already know and didn’t give a lot of new insights.

The next article is in line with the class of 30 September, it tells a lot about the social network analysis (SNA) and how networks are created with nodes and circles, at the end of the article it talks a lot about the different views and ideas of the social scientist and the physicist even though this was not discussed before. The article explains a pretty difficult subject clearly but misses a conclusion at the end.

The final article talks about business network-based value creation. This means that you combine the skills of multiple firms and you create something you could not do on your own. In comparison with the other 2 articles this one has a lot of new insights and has done research to test their propositions. It is a pretty though article to read through, it has a lot of text and is difficult. But it is very well structured and is a lot more in depth than the other 2 articles.

Coulon, F. wrote an interesting article about SNA, he looked at a lot of prior articles about innovation research and talks about the positive and negative side of using SNA, he explains that you cannot always you SNA and also need to do case studies to understand some networks, especially the specific actors in the network. He did not do any research himself though so he does not show a lot of proof for the claims he makes in the article.

The cases I discuss are about red bull and Microsoft, they both use their social media network a lot but in a different way, red bull post a lot of pictures and videos and have interesting stories behind them, they really sell their brand and not the product. Microsoft also posts a lot of visual stories but they are a lot more professional about it, they show success stories on their social media.

The strengths of both companies are that they promote their brand well, they both have different audiences and they adapt to this. They use a lot of visualization and use a lot of different social media. Red bull might promote their stories a little too well, people might like red bull just for the cool videos and photos and don’t buy any of the products they sell. Microsoft has a lot of feel good stories that to me are very exaggerated a lot of times, they don’t appeal to me and a reach only a certain type of their audience in this way.

References

– Boyd, D.M., and Ellison, N.B. 2007. Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1) 210–230.

– Borgatti, S.P., Mehra, A., Brass, D.J., and Labianca, G. 2009. Network analysis in the social sciences. Science 323(5916) 892-895.

– Kauffman, R.J., Li, T., and Heck, E. 2010. Business network-based value creation in electronic commerce. International Journal of Electronic Commerce 15(1) 111-142.

– Coulon, F. 2005. The use of Social Network Analysis in Innovation Research: A literature review

– http://linkhumans.com/case-study/red-bull

– http://linkhumans.com/case-study/microsoft