Social Media – A Major Paradigm Shift. Online social networking is causing a shift in the way we do things. This shift, this paradigm shift, is not just affecting personal relationships, but will soon affect all aspects of our lives to include eCommerce. This shift has all the makings of being just as profound as the introduction of the printing press, mass production of automobiles, and the invention of the telephone (hopefully I am not being too dramatic).
The Social Media Paradigm Shift – A Rule Changer for Individuals and BusinessesJust When You Learn the Rules, the Rules Change |
Online Social Networking Upheaving Mass Media, Government, Local Communities, and Business. Online social networking is now affecting how we connect with each other and our personal activities. Online social networks are starting to move beyond personal relationships and activities to actually building communities. These online social networking communities are and will soon become more important social influences and governance than our Governments, mass media, churches as well as local clubs and local community activities. This online social networking shift will also affect how individuals and businesses conduct eCommerce.
Online Social Networking Shift Unfolds – 5 Stages.
Jeremiah Owyang’s article, The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras spells out distinctly how the paradigm shift of online social networking is unfolding. The five stages or eras are as follows:
1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share.
This stage of online social networking is already upon us. Almost everyone on the internet is using social network sites such as FaceBook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn to name a few to connect and share with others.
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system.
This stage of online social networking is just starting to evolve. Many of us are now using social software that is “out on the internet” versus on our isolated desktop. More and more, we are conducting more and more activities on the web using social software. This online social networking software can be called many names to include widgets, rss feeds, software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing, open source, and so on. The key thing is that we are being less-governed by proprietary operating systems and large software companies on what software applications we use and what activities we perform with their software.
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social.
In this stage your social identity is no longer defined or restricted by a given social network. Your online “human” relationships and community transcend online social network applications. Your online ID starts to becomes portable and your particular online “human” community is not affected or dictated to by a given social network, company, or software application. Today you have one logon for FaceBook and another for Twitter. One person uses Yahoo! home page another uses Google. This will no longer matter. Your online “human” community will be fully empowered and governed by its human relationships and interests, and be less influenced by outside interests.
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content.
In this online social networking stage, individuals and businesses will have more opportunities to receive better and actionable information to make better decisions. Today we have limited information or are greatly influenced by mass media, good or bad, on what information we receive for making decisions like what car we drive, how we dress, how we invest, and so on. With social networking, we have the opportunity to quickly and easily get recommendations, transparency, and advice from people who we know, who we trust, who are unbiased, and know what they are talking about on a given subject. Just think about how many of our decisions are based on commercials, marketing literature, celebrities, scammers, and unknowledgable persons. Online communities are currently self-organizing to give us better and better information for us to make better and better decisions about day-to-day decisions, business decisions, and life decisions.
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services.
Businesses more and more will not be able to throw money into marketing campaigns to prop up an inferior product. More and more communities are shaping brands and determining what is good and not good. Businesses will continue to become more and more transparent, where their only option is to provide value to the community (end-customer or business community) or perish. Social commerce will also have an effect on how people and business pay for products and how products are distributed. Examples include people using a collective shopping cart to shop at several online stores at once, businesses providing open access and geo-coding to all their products and services for true supply chain visibility to all their business customers, and so on.
What Should Businesses Do? This is a time for businesses to get involved and see how they should best fit into online social networking. The customer is more and more shaping how we should do business.
