The Role of Social Media

According to Oxford University, social media stands for websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. Parallel with the development in technology advancement, which allows most of all task and activities to be solved with just one click, leave us no surprise to the massive changes in the communication system, advertisement as well as trade pattern. This is because, social media allows user to interact with people worldwide.

Among the most popular social media are Blogs, Facebook and Twitter. As reported on Statisticbrain.com, at 8^th May 2012, Facebook claims it has approximately 900 million active user, while Twitter claims to have roughly 500, 250,000 active user. The number of blogs user however considerably higher than other micro-blog user.

In terms of functionality, Blogs are more suitable to post a Journal or Article, which the audience may refer to. For Business, blogs may serves as an e-brochure to gives description about a particular product. Besides, once the audience key-in any words that related to certain product, there are bigger opportunity for a business to appear in the search engine. According to Higgins, S (2013), Business are presence social media and use vary kind of channel to get into customer. Here, Facebook and Twitter are the most preferable social media by Business. 

(Source:http://technoratimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/tm2013DIR.pdf)

Beside that, Ellison, N. & Wu, Y. (2008) argues that blog also used for education purposes. For example, IPD subject utilize blog to prepare the students in adapting what they have leaned. Besides, Facebook also once used by Harvard University as University portal, before it open to the public (Munoz, C. & Towner, T. 2009).

Relatively, Blogs, Facebook and Twitter share similar feature and function, but depend on an individual or organization to choose the most appropriate channel to express their idea and thought. Some might have more than one social media.

Meanwhile, defective function of new media also serves to coexist with the traditional media to enhance the distribution of information to the audience in terms of cost-benefit, easier and faster. The idea was supported by Nguyen, A. & Mark, W. (2006),

References:

Higgins, S. (2013). 2013 Digital Influence Report. Available: http://technoratimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/tm2013DIR.pdf. Last accessed 16th April 2013.

Munoz, C. & Towner, T. (2009). Opening Facebook: How to Use Facebook in the College Classroom. In I. Gibson et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2009 (pp. 2623-2627). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Nguyen, A. & Mark, W. (2006). The complementary relationship between the Internet and traditional mass media: The case of online news and information, 11(3) p.259.

"Social Media". Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010.Oxford University Press.

<http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/social%2Bmedia> (accessed April 16, 2013).