Likeable Social Media Analysis

In the first scene of “The Matrix” episode of Broad City, a critically acclaimed Comedy Central show about two best friends and their odd adventures in New York City, the audience is dropped in on Abbi and Ilana hanging out and trying to figure out what to watch on television when they quickly get distracted by the Internet. What ensues next is a hilarious montage of the two dialed into the digital world: their faces illuminated by their computer screens as they look up Judge Judy on google, post on Instagram, read celebrity gossip, watch countless youtube videos, and troll through buzzfeed. After countless hours of scrolling through the internet, the montage is abruptly interrupted by the sound of Ilana calling Abbi on Skype. They both

scream in horror as they realize that they were, as Illana puts it, “ so tapped into the worldwide bloodstream, we fell into the lint roll matrix” (Glazer). They were both so engrossed in their computers that they forgot they were in the same room. This witty depiction of the internet and the stronghold it has on millennials is a great portrayal of how vast and endless social media is.
This first scene creates a launchpad for me to jump into the massive undertaking that is defining Social Media, because almost all of the sites and apps Abbi and Ilana alternate through represent different forms of social media. Professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein of the ESCP European Business School concluded from their research of social media trends that there are six different types: “collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), content communities (e.g. YouTube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life)” (Kaplan and Haenlein). These are significant in understanding and defining social media because each type serves a different purpose. Collaborative projects “enable the joint and simultaneous creation of content by many end-users” (Kaplan and Haenlein). Wiki’s are used to pool collective knowledge on one subject and have created an environment where any information is at the tip of your fingers. Blogs, microblogs, content communities, and social networking -- the most commonly used form of social media -- all promote the sharing of media content, personal information, opinions, knowledge, and ideas between users although they all promote this in different ways. Virtual game worlds and social worlds “are are platforms that replicate a three-dimensional environment in which users can appear in the form of personalized avatars and interact with each other as they would in real life” (Kaplan and Haenlein) although in virtual social worlds there is much more freedom. As we look at the different realms of social media we see a common trend between each of them. This common trend is that social media is the newest form of communication technology and it has rapidly changed the way in which we share information and connect with the global community.
Now that we have defined the many different facest of social media we must look at how social media is described as a whole. A creative way in which social media has been described is as “the world’s largest cocktail party, where people can listen to others talking and join the conversation with other people about any topic of their choice” (Kerpen 6). This definition of social media was developed by Dave Kerpen, the founder and CEO of Likeable Local a company dedicated to helping small business improve their social media presence. Another definition similar to that of the cocktail party is Susan Maushart, an american- australian author and journalist, who describes the realm of social media as a “small town where everybody knows your business” (Maushart 97) because each person creates a brand for themselves through continued use of social media. Both of these definitions however, are geared towards social networking, web blogs, and microblogs like twitter and don’t fully encapsulate the different variations of social media because of this we must turn back to Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein to help us capture the bigger picture. Their overarching definition of social media describes it as “ a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content”. In this context Web 2.0 is the shift from individuals creating and publishing content and applications (Web 1.0) to a collaborative and continues modification of web content driven by global participation, and User Generated Content “is various forms of media content that are publicly available and created by end-users” (Kaplan and Haenlein).
Although all of these definitions describe social media they are applied in different ways by those who use it. The two main social media users are your average joe and corporations. Your average joe will use this cocktail party - small town - collaborative network to create a social presence and participate in the larger global conversations. This can be seen in social media trends such as the ice bucket challenge a viral phenomenon that raised 100 million dollars and had people like president obama participating in the icy challenge. For weeks you couldn’t scroll through your facebook, instagram, or twitter news feed without either seeing post of friends and celebrities getting ice cold water dumped over their heads or articles and status commenting and questioning the campaigns effectiveness -- “Where people actually following through with donations? Was the stunt overshadowing the actual disease? Was the whole thing actually raising meaningful awareness?” (Wolff-Mann) -- and it’s environmental impact, especially in California due to the drought.
Corporations on the other hand will use social media to listen and comprehend their consumers needs, engage them, and organically get their name into the global conversation.

A great example of this is described in David Kerpen’s book Likeable Social Media in his introduction he describes a vacation to vegas where he had to wait in line an hours at the trendiest hotel in town, the Aria, in his frustration he tweeted “No Vegas hotel could be worth this long wait. Over an Hour to check in at the Aria #Fail”. Just two minutes later a competitor of Aria called Rio hotel tweeted back, “Sorry about the bad experience, Dave. Hope the rest of your stay in Vegas goes well” (Kerpen 1). The hotel used social media to listen and empathetically respond to their consumer like a friend which gained them a customer for life and possibly countless others if Kerpen decides to endorse and recommend Rio on social media. This idea of endorsing business through social media is revolutionary as well as quite exciting and daunting for companies. Before if you had rave reviews about a company you would share it with 10 or 15 friends but now with one click you can share your thoughts with with 350 Facebook Friends, 300 twitter followers, or 150 LinkedIn connections (Kerpen 8), with that power the consumer can have positive or negative impact on that company's

success.
Social Media is here to stay so we must stay aware of its effects. Finally although there are a lot of positive effects of social media we must stay away of its determinants and its overuse. We must still stay grounded in our reality and not get too sucked into the virtual world like Abbi and Ilana on Broad City.