Has Social Media more impact on your private life than on your working life?

Before the invention of the internet, content creation was done by professionals all controlled by a corporation and/or a board. If you as a private wanted your opinion out in the open space you needed to corporate with the established medias to get your content out. You could not just turn your computer on and set a manifest on your FaceBook wall as there was nothing like this – if you wanted to tell friends or others something you had to use the communication forms existing or just accept that communication was a one-to-many communication.

That is why technology development has been seen as one of the main factors effecting enterprises processes and profitability and getting private communication from on-to-many out to many-to-many, by working in an open innovation environment. 1982 was the start of the commercial internet which opened a whole new world of opportunities to consumers and corporations and its success in changing our way of communicating and working has been largely researched in various subjects and defined in several terms. From 1982 and forward the internet has evolved and created new rules of engagement for companies and people interacting and doing business and social relationships with their costumers and partners. The new applications and services are being developed and offered in order to catch up with changing information society where culture and social landscapes in the various geographies in the world, are being challenged by defining new concepts of doing business and communication.

During the last couple of years, terms as Web 2.0 and today even Web 3.0 and social media and network has emerged, as the definition of the second and third generation of web based services (Eikelman et al 2008). According to Strategy Analytics report (2010) Social media and network users will expand to 1.9 billion by 2015.

GLOBAL SOCIAL NETWORK USERS BY REGION, 2010 VS. 2015

Source: Global Social Network Market forecast 18.10.2010 – Figure 1.1

This huge growth of Social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, flicker among other) blogs, wikis and consumers participation in these platforms forces companies to revaluate their strategies and  

same time have a check on their key values and ethics. The investments (amounts from 53 mio $ up to 1 billion$) which has been done by large corporations such as Google, IBM, AOL and Microsoft 

in social networks gives a clear signal that companies presence in social relationships and collaborations with their costumers gains a new meaning in terms of communication strategy.

It certainly has an impact on you as consumer, user of social media. Your influence of products and business development is one thing. Another thing is your possibility to get new knowledge and enrich your knowledge of other people struggles and possibilities in the world. Suddenly minority groups will be able to raise their problems and hopes, by using the Social Media in a cheap and uncontrolled way without censure ship from authorities. You as a private person are able to send a message to the world without being controlled. You as a private person can communicate your messages as New York Times and nobody can stop you – you may not have the same amount of readers and followers as New York Times but you don’t have to wait for some one else to publish your content – you can do it in a split second. You get a power, which is positive for you as a person, but it also gives you a big responsibility to use your power on a positive way.

The Social Media has shown in the last couple of month to be a part of a democratization process as individuals can use the new technology and medias to show the world how governments acts to support regimes which suppresses the majority of the population in the region. We have seen that private persons have sent You Tube videos on the net with documentation of government suppression and tweets and blogs from new opposition have emerged. Not only in the North African region but also in southern America local people expressing misbelieves of the government policy on various matters.

Everybody has suddenly been their own public spokesperson.  This has an impact on both your private and professional live, it can be difficult to distinguish between when you are on work and when you are a private person. Building on the point above it will be impossible for traditional spokespeople to devote time to the growing number of on the record statements required. Rather corporate affairs and PR departments will need to train the entire organization for influencer engagements. On the private use of Social Media you need to learn to have a certain set of rules so you are not online all the time and you know what content and pictures are on your social account.

Social Media is open source for both companies and private persons and the only controlling factor is you as an individual. This brings possibilities but also responsibilities to you and the companies. My personal believe is, that Social Media has the same impact on private and business relations as the overall ecosystem hopefully will be impacted positively by these new possibilities.