My Space, where all the high school kids can post pictures of themselves with their favorite music hoping that the right girl or guy will look at their page and like what they see. Hopefully their page will make them more popular or attract their secret crush or someone new that they hadn’t even given a chance until seeing a great My Space page. It was the beginning of the social networking phenomenon. It starts with high school kids trying to advertise themselves, and then came Facebook. The more professional page for college students who were basically doing the same thing. Once facebook realized they could use their wide consumer base and make big dollars by advertising, the days where social networking was just an after thought were over. Now we have Linked In Twitter and all sorts of other networking sites. Companies realize this is the perfect way to advertise for themselves, as well. Firms can make their own page, post daily updates and send ads throughout the internet to millions of users just by updating a Facebook page or Twitter.
I think the mobile market just amplified the social networking market and took it to the next level. Now you can reach people that much faster through social networking. Whereas before you needed people to be online, now you just need people to have their phone on them. It just means that if your company is not on social networking and accessing the mobile web you are many steps behind your competition in the race to reach consumers. Once users are able to create their own apps, companies will need to spend more time searching what is out there to find what and who can help the company grow. Even the current employees will be able to create apps and add-ons to help their company increase their reach.
As I was writing this blog, CNBC had someone from Netsuite on and he said how his company, which is centered around cloud computing has grown rapidly over the past few years. Cloud computing is real and it is here right now. It all has to do with this idea of sharing knowledge and ideas. As we move forward the more technology is used to share knowledge and ideas and connect people together, the more valuable it will be. Cloud computing is just the newest way to share knowledge and ideas, but I believe there is room for many other ways to share and network. Could the next, newest and better, way to share knowledge and ideas be the next multi-billion dollar industry??
I feel that social networking is a way for the customers to go to the company for information. Most advertising these days is about bringing the customer's to the company in some way or another. Facebook is an extention of the company's website. Before facebook was created, companies would use an online website for customers to search and gather information. Facebook has allowed an alternative to company websites for customers to search for information. This is just one aspect of facebook.
ReplyDeleteThe other more profitable aspect is the demographic specific advertising. This aspect is the portion of facebook that allows the company to seek out the customer.
As Mark mentioned both aspects are becoming more powerful with the implementation of smart phones into daily life.