This is a Re-Post from Nahum Madrid's blogsite - Social Media Assignment

Social Media

By Nahum on March 16, 2014 in Uncategorized

Social media is any form of media that allows for human interaction. It includes many general types and categories that I will list and describe below.

• Blogs – WordPress
• Microblogs – Twitter, Instagram
• Forums – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums
• Wikis – Wikispaces
• Social Networks, Facebook
• Web Communities – Yahoo, Youtube
• Social Bookmarking – Reddit
• Crowdsourcing – Kickstarter
• Social Gaming – Xbox Live, World of Warcraft
• Any website with a comment sections for posts, CNN.com

There is also the realm of mobile where apps can be considered social media even though many are the same services listed above with applications made for mobile devices, but there are many standalone apps made only for mobile like the messaging app WhatsApp.
The factors that go into what makes some services successful and long lasting are as follows and really apply to any service beyond the Internet;

• Is it a good service?
• Is it multipurpose?
• Are there alternatives? Where are your friends going?
• Word of mouth promotion? Every TV show mentions it now, I should be using it!
• Environment/Community, who do you see using the service, who do you not feel comfortable around?
• The sewer that is anonymous comments, does the service have the element of people who leave the worst in comments.
• It’s tribal, does the service do a good job seperating you from users and content you don’t want to be around?
• Has the service made or raised enough money to buy out the competition? So far the trend has been to nip it in the bud, no one wants to become another Myspace

Twitter is a good example of how it only accomplished a few of the things listed above. Like, Is it multipurpose? While it was neat that there was a 140 character limit and you could suddenly get news straight from the horse’s mouth, the service, even though it had overwhelming herd-style popularity, is limited. Not to mention the fact that most of the content is useless and very difficult to wade through. I think most of the popularity came off piggy backing the Facebook ride to the top. For a while there, all you heard on TV was “Find us on Facebook….and Twitter” so that became a thing, so the growth of both of symbiotic. But now we are hearing about Twitter’s growth tapering off and I think it is because some of the reasons I mentioned above.

One site that I think has become unsuccesful after having a lot of buzz Foursquare. Both had a ton of media attention around its single purpose of social checkins but then came other social coupon sites like Living Social and Groupon that gave users more value for going to the places where you would checkin. Facebook also does checking in. So does Twitter. Even blogs have the ability to geo tag your posts. It is also really telling that I haven’t heard about or seen any of my tech savvy friends sending any checkins from Foursquare any more.
I think the trend points towards monopolies on services we as a people have decided to use permanently. I don’t think there will be another site to replace Facebook in terms of how Facebook replaced Myspace. I think the major companies have so much money that they will just absorb all the new players that are making any waves. I think services will become consolidated and with regulation and patents, any new services will be elbowed out. So I foresee a cable company like service that controls the ways you use the Internet and “social” media. All the popular apps will appear to be different but they’ll all have a “Viacom” like owner controlling the message.