How the internet and social media are shaping the world

Twitter has made the cover of Times Magazine. Michael Jackson’s death froze the media and caused a massive rush to the internet. Facebook continues to get ‘poked’ by DTS for a piece of the social network empire.

What do they all have in common? It all revolves around the Web, but not only that, the online is also outperforming all other media.

Take a look at the graph below. It’s taken from an article by Luca Conti, featured on today’s IlSole24Ore technology supplement, Nova24. It’s a comparison graph between Web 2.0, Email and Video that shows how Web 2.0  surpasses email and video.

We can certainly attribute this growth of the online medium to social networks due to the fact that brands continue to see more opportunity to exploit the digital enviroment as an effort to increase brand visibility and overall revenue.

The big story here is that social networks have opened up a whole new world for brands and marketers. Now, instead of anticipating what consumer’s reactions will be after the launch of a product or new brand design, brands can instead turn to the different social platforms for feedback and valuable opinions.

In like manner, brands are also realizing that they can change the way in which they communicate with the consumer and use these social channels to listen, interact, answer questions and share experiences with their own target markets.

According to Nielsen, Social networking sites eclipsed E-mail in global reach at 68.4% vs. 64.8% in February 2009.And even more significant, in only the first few months of 2009, the reach of these sites is growing at a brisk pace, faster than any other online sector.

Twitter, as we’ve mentioned before, has been and will continue to be the biggest social media story in 2009. However, MySpace and Facebook are not left too far behind as it clearly shows on the following buzz graph.

It’d be interesting to see some corporate social media stories revealing how companies have decided to tap into this whole new world of connectedness and interactivity and how it’s proven to be effective for them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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