The History and Use of Social Media Technology in Business

Social Media in Business
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1 History of Social Media Technology
The first social media site that bore a resemblance to modern social media platforms was Six Degrees. It was created in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich and lasted three years, and it was shortly followed by Friendster, Myspace, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Xing. All these social media platforms were created in the early 2000s and had varying degrees of success. Though Myspace and Friendster had an early head start in the industry, they were later driven out of the market by Facebook and Twitter. Twitter was launched a few years later, and it also became popular because the business and user interface did not directly compete with Facebook. Twitter and Facebook have dominated the social media industry in the west until TikTok came around in 2015. Other popular social media platforms in the west are Instagram, Reddit, and Snapchat. In China, WeChat and Weibo are the Facebook and Twitter of China, and they have grown into behemoth tech companies. Google tried to establish its own social media platform, which they dabbed Google+, but it really never caught on and later pulled the plug on it in late 2019. These social media companies have dominated the industries in the last two decades since the technology was popularized in the early 2000s. They continue to innovate and add new features as technology expands, leaving the companies growing in popularity, utility, and revenue streams.
2 Uses of social media technology by individuals and/or organizations
One of the primary use of social media is to connect with friends and family. Social media allows its users to share photos, videos, and text messages with their friends and families. Most social media sites today have other features such as live video feed and instant messaging. Social media users also use it to connect professionally. One social media, LinkedIn, is specifically designed for professional connections. The other social media platforms also have groups of individuals in various industries sharing information related to their industry.
Organizations have also embraced the use of social media. Social media has increasingly become the advertising platform for most organizations to supplement traditional media advertisements. Organizations run social media campaigns to raise awareness of their products and services. Some businesses are entirely built on social media technology, such as companies specializing in marketing on social media sites.
Organizations also use social media to connect with their clients and consumers. The traditional system of relaying information through phone calls or traditional media like radio and TV is slow and unidirectional. Today, businesses, manufacturers, institutions, etc., relay information through social media to engage one-on-one with their clients and consumers. Social media has made communication between organizations and people easier, convenient, and fast. Organizations have employees tasked with social media queries and feedback from clients.
3 The tangible and intangible costs and benefits
Cost
Social media has some direct tangible costs of advertisement. Social media companies act as advertisers, and therefore the users have to spend for the social media companies to push their message to the intended audience. Most companies depend on heavy social media presence for advertisements and connecting with their consumers’ budget for social media expenses.
On the other hand, intangible social media costs are also intangible, such as the human resources required to maintain strong social media costs. Companies and businesses employ social media managers who are solely paid for social media-related tasks. They prepare budgets for campaigns, choose strategies to push the message, respond to consumer queries, etc. The cost of their services is the intangible cost of social media technology to their organizations.
Benefits
One of the tangible benefits of social media technology to organizations is that it enables them to directly contact their consumers, clients, or target audience (Maecker et al., 2016). The ...