During the minor of social media and social networks we learned a lot about what influence social media has on the world, people and the business sector. Lots of perspectives and new things to do have been learned. Even on this blog is there a lot information about different aspects of social media. But reading them and articles on the internet to be inspired for my last blog I thought about what kind of influence social media actually has on my life?

This is not the first time a thought about it. Once, in another course, we had to be offline for a period of 24 hours. These 24 hours thought me that I was very dependent of social media. As in: every morning when I woke up I immediately checked my social media accounts. But after thinking about it, it wasn’t even for the fear of missing out: it became a habit. And an annoying one where I keep checking and checking my Facebook even though I’m not actually reading it anymore. During this period I planned for myself that I’d stop using social media as often as I did and became more active online. Well so far so good, but the plan is still a plan.

Nowadays I stopped using Twitter because of the huge amount of sponsor related Tweets I was reading everyday. But my Facebook and Instagram accounts are still active. Why? Because I still ‘need’ it in order to communicate with friends, family and classmates. Assignments are discussed easily via Facebook where we do not even need to have each others telephone number. And for my case, during this minor, it’s actually the only way to communicate with one of the members of my groups since she doesn’t even own a phone where applications like Whatsapp can be downloaded on.

So the one important reason for me to keep continuing using social media is purely for the communication itself. I don’t post lots of statuses on Facebook and I think my Instagram is still quit empty compared to other users. Even though I do not post much myself I really like to see other peoples pictures of, for example, places I’m planning to see in the future. Or for new ideas for recipes I can make. It is still an easy access to lots of peoples ideas in comparison with Google in my opinion.

So this is also the big influence it has on my life: it made communicating with my network easier. What is the influence of social media on your life?

Whatsapp almost exists for five years now. And during this period of time it recruited 450 million users. The (almost) free application which runs on internet allows you to talk with your friends and family in a chat kind of way. It looks a lot like SMS, except this version does not have the big costs that come along with SMS.

All these users are using Whatsapp for a long period of time now. During this period Whatsapp never had any form of advertisement in it. And for Apple users, such as myself, I only paid 79 cents in order to download it and never had any other payment done. I love the fact that the application is so cheap and does not have any advertisements.

Recently Facebook, the new owners of Whatsapp, announced that they don’t have any short term plans in order to earn money from Whatsapp. However they are talking about short term and not about long term plans. What does this mean for the future of whatsapp?

I personally believe that one day, although it might not be any time soon, Facebook will start with advertisements. And I think that this will be the beginning of the end for Whatsapp. Its users are now so used to now having to deal with advertisements. And I strongly believe that other companies and application developers will advantage hereof, because they will develop something which has the same purpose but without advertisements. Telegram is a strong example for this.

What’s your opinion about this? What will the future of Whatsapp be when Facebook starts advertising on the application?

With all the well known social media platforms, we know (almost) everything about each other. A few popular ones are: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. These social media platforms all have a different purpose. Facebook asks what are you doing, Twitter allows you to shortly update what is on your mind, Instagram shows your life in images and Youtube does the same thing in videos. In this way people get a good look into your life. Even though you do not speak with anyone in real life, you may still know what that person was up to that day. This availability of information about other peoples lives can cause a certain addiction to the social media platform. Not checking your newsfeed may results in the fear of missing out on possible important information. This phenomenon is better known as socialbesitas.

Socialbesitas has different symptons, but three of them are very common:
1: The phantom vibration syndrome. This syndrome makes you think that you feel your mobile phone vibrating, even though this is not the case.
2. The fear of missing out, or better known as FOMO. This is the actual fear of missing some information on any kind of social media platform, which results in checking the platforms obsessively.
3. No mobile phobia. This is the fear of not having your mobile phone with you. Or the fear of a dis-functional phone.

So while reading this and being honest towards yourself, do you think you are an example of someone who has socialbesitas? If yes, would you use your mobile phone and social media less? And what are the (dis)advantages of having socialbesitas?

Reference

http://mens-en-gezondheid.infonu.nl/verslaving/120657-socialbesitas-een-verslaving-aan-social-media.html

We have all been in touch with it, but probably have never heard of it before: social commerce. Social commerce can be defined as the fusion of social media and e-commerce (Marsden, 2010). It goes beyond the familiar, sometimes simple, online shopping. It is shopping via Internet with social media, or often on social media. Which can be a threat to the original retailers, who are still selling their products in a physical shop. But if it’s for Rigby to decide, not any longer. Even the physical retailers can create an omnichannel experience online. Many organizations in fact did. For example Office Depot which integrated a successful review environment on its website which resulted in a gain of revenue of almost 200%! Or Premier Beauty, a beauty salon which offers discount via Groupon and is very active on both Facebook and Twitter. This elaboration of business has ensured that Premier Beauty had an increase of 85% in its customers.                                                                            

Even though Office Depot and Premier Beauty are both successful examples of social commerce, they differ extremely from each other. Where the beauty salon focused on the social media aspect, the office supplier emphasized on the reviews. These details are both strengths and weaknesses of the companies. Whereas the accounts of Facebook and Twitter are a huge strength, they do not give customers the opportunity to review their products and services. The same goes on for Office Depot. Their review environment is also a huge strength, but do not give their customers the probability to be social with other customers. Besides social media is a convenient way of bringing a product to people. Facebook- and Twitter-users are already familiar with the platform. And bringing the product to people is always easier than the other way around. People like to be in their comfort zone, especially when it comes to buying products on the Internet.         

So the two examples of social commerce both have their strengths and weaknesses. But the strength of one it the weakness of the other and conversely. Therefore these two companies can learn from each other in order to be a company which uses social commerce at its best.

References
Marsden, P. (2010). Social Commerce: Monetizing social media. Syzygy Group. White Paper.
Rigby, D. (2011). The future shopping. Harvard Business Review, 89(12) 64-75.