In this blog post, we will look at how social media has changed the way we form networks and share information through various examples.
My friend and I went to a delicious restaurant and ordered food. When the food came, my friend took out his phone and took a picture of the food. When I asked why he was taking the picture, he replied, “I’m going to post it on Facebook.” After finishing eating, the friend logged onto Facebook on his phone and checked for new friend requests. The person who had sent the new friend request was his elementary school best friend, with whom he had lost contact a long time ago. The friend was pleased to accept the request and found his old friends on the “Find Friends” tab and sent them friend requests. What exactly is the social networking service (SNS) that many people have been using recently? SNS, or social network service, refers to a community-type website that is created for the purpose of building online connections. It is a service that allows users to strengthen their connections with friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances on the web, build new connections, and form a wide network of people. It is also known as a one-person media and one-person community.
SNS has three main characteristics. First is speed. Unlike traditional media, information can be transmitted horizontally and spread through networks, and this is done very quickly. Second is personalization, which focuses on sharing personal experiences with others. Third is the openness of information and ease of construction. There are no restrictions on posting content, and it can be freely scraped or linked, and the social networks that each individual has are open and transparent.
SNS with these characteristics can be broadly classified into eight types according to the functions they provide. The first is the profile-based type. Anyone can participate in this type of SNS without restriction on specific users or fields, and examples include Cyworld, Facebook, and MySpace. The second is the business-based type. This is a professional business-oriented service for the purpose of business or business relationships, and examples include LinkNow, LinkedIn, and BizSpace. The third is the blog-based type. This is a service that combines social network functions with a personal media blog, such as NateOn and Windows Live Spaces. The fourth is the vertical type, which is a service centered on vertical UCC in a specific field, such as photos, videos, or reviews. YouTube and 아프리카TV are representative examples. The fifth is the collaboration-based type, which is a service based on collaborative creation or collaboration, such as Wikipedia. The sixth is a communication-oriented type, which is a service centered on user-to-user connection communication such as chat, email, video, and conferencing. An example is NateOn. The seventh is a topic-based type. This is a network service specialized by topic of interest in each field, and examples include Dogster. Finally, the eighth is the microblogging type. It is a short, simple service that targets the niche of the large social networking service market, with Twitter and Me2day as examples. Let’s take a closer look at the three most popular Korean social networking services, Cyworld, Facebook, and Twitter.
Cyworld is a community site launched by SK Communications in September 1999. A personal virtual space called a mini-homepage is given to subscribers, who can create a ‘one-촌’ relationship with their friends to view their access information and mini-homepage updates. In addition, ‘acorns,’ a type of cyber money, allows subscribers to purchase various items to decorate their mini-homepage, such as the background or background music of the mini-homepage.
Facebook was created in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student, and his friends. When you join Facebook, you are given a personal virtual space where you can connect with your friends and see what they post.
Twitter was launched in March 2006 by Evan Williams and Noah Glass of Odeo, Inc., a US venture company. Unlike Cyworld or Facebook, Twitter does not have a special personal virtual space, and users can post short messages with a 140-character limit. This is called sending a “tweet.” You can also “follow” a person without their consent to see their recent activities.
As social media has become more established and its influence has grown, it is being used for new purposes in addition to its original purpose of strengthening connections and creating new connections, an example of which is social commerce. Social commerce is a type of e-commerce that utilizes social media and online media. It is similar to group buying, and is a sales method in which a product is offered at a discounted price if a certain number of buyers gather for the product on each social commerce site. It got its name because people who want to buy the product use social network services to gather co-buyers to secure a discount. While general product sales are highly dependent on advertising and marketing, social commerce has the advantage of incurring almost no marketing costs because consumers voluntarily promote products through social networking services and gather buyers. In Korea, Ticket Monster and Coupang are representative social commerce sites.
In addition, social media is used for various purposes, such as promoting national policies by government agencies, showing the receipt and resolution of civil complaints, introducing a game system like Facebook, and promoting corporate products and services.
So, how much is social media used in Korea? According to the summary report of the Internet Usage Survey released by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), the social media usage rate in Korea is 68% for men and 64.7% for women, and 89.7% of Internet users in their 20s use social media. By type of SNS, 84.0% of SNS are in the form of blogs, 18.4% are profile-based, and 12.8% are in the form of microblogs. As for the purpose and frequency of using social media, 25.7% of users use it for personal purposes at least once a day, and 30.7% use it at least once a week. Among office workers, 15.7% use it at least once a day, and 27.4% use it at least once a week for work. In terms of social media usage devices, 98.7% of social media users use social media via desktop computers, and 31.5% use social media via smartphones, with the number of smartphone users increasing by 29.9% year-on-year.
As more and more people started using social media, especially with the advent of smartphones, it became an advantage over traditional media in terms of the speed at which information could be delivered. People began using social media more easily, more quickly, and more frequently through their smartphones. As a result, they could find out about the latest news from their connections in almost real time through social media. In fact, when people talk to each other, they often start with a question like, “Did you see someone’s Facebook post yesterday?” However, in addition to these advantages, there are also disadvantages, namely the leakage of personal information through social media. Due to the nature of social media, users post their personal information or private messages on social media and share them with each other. In this process, users’ carelessness can result in their personal information being exposed to the outside world and used for criminal purposes, causing damage. In fact, according to an article in ChosunBiz on November 19, 2010, there was a case of a female employee who left her phone number on her Facebook profile without thinking, and a man saw the number and sent her a message. When she changed her number, the man started stalking her on Twitter, and she ended up leaving Facebook, Twitter, and Messenger services altogether.
We have briefly looked at social media so far. Social media is currently used by many people and will be used by even more people in the future. While it has its advantages in terms of networking, it also has the disadvantage of making it easy for personal information to be leaked. If we can cherish the information of ourselves and others, social media can become a great future postman that delivers news between people.
