Social Media (SoMe)
by Brett King
On top of Social Media has come a plethora of “Apps”,
marketing initiatives, communities and the like. Instagram, Foursquare,
Pinterest, Vine, Cinemagram and many others have been designed on top of
Facebook’s capability to provide a common user platform, but also allowing for
rapid sharing and adoption through the social network in the form of posts,
links back to the App, etc. If a friend posts an Instagram Photo, it shows up
on Instagram, but also invariably on Facebook as someone shares their pics, and
when your friend clicks on your pic they are then invited to try Instagram for
themselves. Instagram, Foursquare and others maintain their own ‘network’, but
you always tend to find new friends from Facebook or Twitter to build your
network within the App’s ecosystem.
The biggest challenge for these businesses is finding
revenue models as they evolve. Many of the same challenges occurred for
businesses starting out on top of the Internet layer. Business like “Pets.com”
and “Webvan.com” found this out as revenue didn’t come quickly enough to save
their businesses. We’ll have a few fits and starts on the social business layer
also, but those that emerge triumphant will not necessarily be the network
owners (Facebook, G+, Twitter), but businesses that marry community,
collaboration and the reach of social in entirely new ways. As before with the
web, these businesses will disrupt traditional players massively, and emerge as
some of the new giants of the next decade.
Some interesting examples of entirely new businesses
that are emerging on top of the social layer are business like Kickstarter,
Peer-to-Peer lending, AirBNB, Yelp, Uber and others. Business that thrive on
community and work by using social as the glue to commerce, creating value
through the community, but monetizing it in unique ways also.
Not sure where the ROI is coming on social? By the
time you wait to see others find it, it may already be too late for your
business. Social is here to stay, and it’s just getting started. View Full Text at Brett
