Social MediaOne of the biggest trends that has taken rise in the past decade is the concept of Social Media. It has taken the shape of many different products, such as magazines, Internet sites, blogs, videos, etc. This phenomenon is seen by many as being a helpful tool in the innovation process of particular products or services. It allows many users to collaborate with the company while funneling down the innovation process. Social media allows employees to act organically and encourages a free flow of ideas between departments. External parties are also included in this process by providing input and feedback to a company in order to better or alter their goods. Many companies are slowly catching on to the idea of social media, but the return of information to them has certainly been an inexpensive way to research and develop a product. Along with this, there are many benefits that are bundled with the concept of social media. Companies just have to learn how to read, collect, and implement the data they receive from social media users. With all this information and the innovation process, a company can develop, introduce, improve, and promote a product all with the help of social media.
Social media can be defined as “a group of Internet-based applications built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” (Empirical Analysis of Internal Social Media and Product Innovation) Broken down simply, it is a social instrument that transmits communication between users. However, it doesn’t just transmit the information; it allows interaction between those that input ideas. This technology allows users to send information on the telecommunication network, and allow other users to respond freely and publicly to the post. It assumes a certain level of trust and reciprocity between users. Without this “social capital” the information generated and collected is almost deemed obsolete and useless. This paper focuses on the Web 2.0 aspects of social media, which include websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Superfly, Tumblr, etc.
With the definition of social media comes the definition of innovation. As defined on the very first page of Strategic Management of Technological Innovation, innovation is “the act introducing a new device, method, or material for application to commercial or practical objectives.” What happens during the innovation process is what determines whether the new product or service will make it all the way through the innovation funnel. An innovation can be the development of a new product or process. It can be a breakthrough cutting edge product or just an incremental improvement to the current good. Companies always look for competence-enhancing innovation that will build on their existing knowledge base. A good way of doing so is through social media, which allows companies to receive a diverse range of knowledge from
Innovations in technologies that are currently in use, whether for small and medium enterprises, startups, startups in technology services, or for major-scale projects in business, are often created on social media.[1] Social media enables companies to create content for their customers in a way not unlike those on paper. In terms of the media industry, we do not see a global trend for increasing the number of tweets and images online.
On social media, social media is an enormous platform with a tremendous reach. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Yahoo!, Spotify, LinkedIn, LinkedIn+ and almost everyone else, on the same network, share hundreds of thousands of followers. According to Google’s 2015 Web Traffic Report, of 16.8 million new search queries, Facebook and Twitter were the most popular social media media networks. LinkedIn, Yahoo!, and YouTube are not, though on average Twitter’s number of subscribers is only 13.1% of all web traffic and LinkedIn leads the search world with over 1.25 billion. This is a massive traffic source for Facebook, where a total of 6.4 million additional visitors each day. Twitter alone has an incredible traffic source for 1.1 billion YouTube users.
However, there are various ways in which these social media innovations affect each other and their users. The biggest of these social media innovations is what’s called “Facebook Media Optimization” (BNOM). BNOM is meant to provide a level playing field in online networking and the production stages of communication, and to enhance both the ability to communicate clearly and authentically, and the quality of a shared and private digital experience. The goal of BNOM is to provide consumers with an optimal solution for their social media interaction. That is, consumers want to be able to make good social interactions that are authentic and private.
The major success stories of Facebook media have included The Social Networking App (Facebook App), which enables customers to see a list of everyone’s friends and family and discover who they come to with, and the popular Snapchat app that gives the users an online interface in which their friends can easily tell anyone what their faces are doing.[2] A number of Facebook sites and services are now operating which provide a way for consumers to share the user information, including with their friends, family and co-workers and with friends who are friends with them. In this way consumers are able to share their friends’ information without having to pay for their own data access from Facebook.
A third feature of BNOM is “Growth-Driven Innovation.” The Social Networking App is created on the assumption of the consumers’ commitment to maintaining the current quality of communication by allowing them to share their interactions with people from across the social network networks. As stated in the Facebook Advertising Week (AP), “Facebook is uniquely positioned to compete with major social media companies in the search arena and to offer a unique alternative to those giants that lack such a robust and robust online platform.”
One of the main factors that has made Facebook so successful at transforming itself into an innovation player is the increasing focus on content marketing and advertising. The most successful advertising brands in the internet marketplace today are Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. A lot of them have succeeded. But those big advertising publishers will have the choice of offering or failing to offer