The leverage of Social Media

Social Media: The unintended excessive leverage of it

Since the beginning of this new era, government agencies, NGOs, companies, brands, etc had all been busy engaging with their fans, citizens, audiences-via social media platforms. With more of such platforms gaining excessive followers and users, one should really wonder if it is effective at all. Currently, the perception is that to reach out to mass of people at a short time, and with a limited budget, we use social media. What majority of people tend to not remember is that with so much information overloading within our brains, we, the audience are quite sceptical of advertisements and promotions of the various brands and products offering.

Just like the dot com bubble burst almost a decade ago, social media, one day, might prove to be somewhat saturated, causing the downfall of many. Social media, evidently being utilised by local audience since the early 2000s with many using Hi5 and Friendster, later Haboo Hotel and Live windowspace. Now, a majority had migrated to yet another new offering- Facebook. Even though netizens had been using and leveraging social media since donkeys years ago, however, it is not till now they realised how effective social media is. Social media have the ability to mould the mindset of it’s users, usually by other users of social media. 

As the word, social media goes, a vital tool to ensure each and every social media application success is first and foremost, people. A person logs onto his social media application accounts (like Facebook or Twitter) is to connect with friends, colleagues, ex-lovers, girlfriend, ex-classmates, etc. And if we apply social media to everyday normal life situation, if their friends uses this applications, they wil bound to follow suit. Because it is of no point If my friend have a Facebook account, but I have a Friendster account. There is no way the both of us are ever going to connect with each other, unless both applications reach a state of cross-platform (which I’m going to cover in another time). Only via cross-platforms, then will social media be truly effective into connecting friends together.

So, the ultimate question is: When will there be a social media bubble burst? And what comes next, after all the exciting hulas and fanfare of social media? How, as some industry leader predicts, change our lifes drastically. For sure, we know social media will not change the way we live, not for another decade, given how the pace of developments is currently right now.