Breaking up Big Social Media sounds great, but how would this look in practice? A number of legal scholars and politicians have proposed reforming social networks by using antitrust law and regulations to create a more competitive marketplace. Leaving this task to market forces, however, is a bad idea that will not solve the central problem: proprietary control of the networks and the exploitation of user attention for profit.

A solution based on digital socialism is needed to transform social media into a global democratic commons. This would eradicate Big Social Media by placing ownership and control directly into the hands of the people.

Various scholars have put forward two main ideas to break up Big Social Media, neither of which can sufficiently accomplish their goals.

The first one seeks to dismantle past mergers and acquisitions. Facebook, for example, bought up Instagram and WhatsApp years ago, and is now seeking to integrate all three platforms into a seamless communications network.

The second idea proposes a solution to this problem: make social networks interoperate. Social media platforms would be forced to allow members of one network to interact with members of another. For example, a Facebook user would be able to post a comment under a YouTube video while logged into Facebook, and vice-versa. Users data would also be portable so they could move their profile to a different platform.

Marketers are complicit in the toxicity of social media, they misunderstand its function and how brands should participate in it, and yet they appear to be held hostage by it. Those are some of the main paradoxes confronting brand marketers, according to a damning new report from the social media analyst at Forrester Research.

Social media and online platforms have been a saving grace in these isolating times. During the challenges of COVID-19, social media usage has surged with a 61% increase worldwide, according to a study of 25,000 consumers across 30 markets. Live video usage has doubled on Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp has seen a 40% increase in usage. Twitter has 23% more daily users than last year. TikTok reported a 27% increase during the month of March alone.

Our technology has given us an imperfect but vital substitute for human connection.

Brands continue to invest more in social media marketing each year. In fact, HubSpot found that 74% of global marketers currently invest in social media marketing. And with this adoption, theres been enormous amounts of data collected in an effort to measure the success of social media campaigns.

But for many marketing teams, its becoming a challenge to sift through the wide range of metrics to understand if their social media campaigns are effective. Thats why we’ve asked social media experts how they determine success and what metrics you should track that actually matter.

Virtual reality media platform, Sensorium, has announced its membership in the Global Blockchain Business Council, or GBBC — a Swiss-based non-profit industry association for blockchain.

Sensorium will participate in GBBCs upcoming virtual forum on May 28, which will see the firms director of technology Alex Blagirev discuss his predictions for how virtual social media will change the way that people interact online.

Identity theft, fake accounts, etc. all will be to a large extent eliminated as human participants in the socially-virtual world will be required to verify their identity via the blockchain.

Social distancing measures amid the coronavirus pandemic have been rather difficult for everyone. While people remain locked indoors, social media companies offer huge respite from boredom that often becomes unbearable.

These companies have not only welcomed new users over the past couple of months but also have taken many steps to ensure engagement and good browsing experience. Let us thus take a look at how these companies have performed since the pandemic broke out and the factors likely to push them ahead.

3 Social Media Stocks That Gained Despite the Odds

Topping the list of social media companies are Facebook, Inc. FB, Twitter, Inc. TWTR and Snap Inc. SNAP that have fared well during the pandemic. Shares of these three giants have returned decently so far this year and year-over-year revenue growth impressed in recently released results.

The rise of social media has changed the information landscape in myriad ways, including the manner in which many Americans keep up with current events. In fact, social media is now among the most common pathways where people – particularly young adults – get their political news.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of surveys conducted between October 2019 and June 2020 finds that those who rely most on social media for political news stand apart from other news consumers in a number of ways. These U.S. adults, for instance, tend to be less likely than other news consumers to closely follow major news stories, such as the coronavirus outbreak and the 2020 presidential election. And, perhaps tied to that, this group also tends to be less knowledgeable about these topics.

Through several surveys over the last nine months, the Center’s American News Pathways project has been exploring the connection between Americans news habits and what they hear and perceive about current events. One important aspect of this project is taking a deeper look at the pathways, or platforms, Americans use most often to access news – such as news websites or apps, social media, local, cable and network TV, radio, or print.

As of late last year, 18% of U.S. adults say they turn most to social media for political and election news. That is lower than the share who use news websites and apps (25%), but about on par with the percent who say their primary pathway is cable television (16%) or local television (16%), and higher than the shares who turn to three other pathways mentioned in the survey (network TV, radio and print).

With all the social media site tools available, often the best way to be effective with your social marketing is to automate the process. First, you need to decide whether automation is right for you and, if so, which automation you should set up. Automation can be key in turning your contacts into profits because you can post less, but at the same time, you get more exposure. Social automation, however, can be considered spamming, so be careful with how you set it up.

How does social network automation work? There are tools like Hootsuite and SocialFlow where you can automate your social networking sites or TubeMogul to automate your video posting. These sites can submit a link or post to not just one or two sites but, in some cases, up to 60.

You can use these completely free platforms to boost your personal brand and grow your audience. Lets look at some winning ways you can enhance your online presence.

1. Keep your profiles updated
2. Use visuals!
3. Use keywords in your profiles
4. Make your headlines attractive
5. Be active on social media
6. Develop a persona

The Trump administration on Monday formally asked the Federal Communications Commission to develop plans to regulate social media platforms.

The Commerce Department sent a petition for rulemaking to the FCC on Monday asking the agency to reinterpret Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which provides online companies immunity from legal liability for the actions of their users.

A new study led by researchers at McGill University finds that people who get their news from social media are more likely to have misperceptions about COVID-19. Those that consume more traditional news media have fewer misperceptions and are more likely to follow public health recommendations like social distancing.

In a study published in Misinformation Review, researchers looked at the behavioral effects of exposure to misinformation by combining social media analysis, news analysis, and survey research. They combed through millions of tweets, thousands of news articles, and the results of a nationally representative survey of Canadians to answer three questions: How prevalent is COVID-19 misinformation on social media and in traditional news media? Does it contribute to misperceptions about COVID-19? And does it affect behavior?

One of your greatest foes as an entrepreneur is misinformation. There is a lot of erroneous advice online, especially when it comes to social media marketing. Unfortunately, much of this guidance seems reasonable on paper. Without the right research or knowledge, you may end up unwittingly endangering the future of your business. Here are seven common social media marketing myths you need to watch out for.

1. Negative feedback can be safely ignored
2. Email is no longer relevant
3. All content represents thought leadership
4. Social media and content marketing are two different campaigns
5. Content topics must be limited to protect your secrets
6. Social media marketing is primarily for generating new customers
7. Social media metrics cannot be measured

COMMON CORE OBJECTIVES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS
Share positive company news
Grow the company’s audience across platforms
Steadily improve engagement
Provide consistent value to followers, through education, entertainment or both

To optimize these partnerships, companies should take the following steps:

1. Put a premium on trust.
2. Establish clear and ongoing communication channels — and do it early.
3. Meld internal and external perspectives.
4. Establish clear objectives and align on metrics.
5. Keep one hand on the steering wheel.
6. Seek partners that adapt in times of uncertainty.
7. Stay attuned to social and political issues through your agency partner.
8. Help the rest of your business learn from your social media agency partnership.

A study from QUOTED reveals the average time spent on social media in North America is 2 hours and 6 minutes. Adults spend 2 hours and 55 minutes on their cell phones a day. It goes without saying that if you are not utilizing social media platforms for your business, there is major leverage that is being missed out on.

Harness the power of social media
Below is a breakdown of each of the major five social media platforms.

Instagram
YouTube
TikTok
Twitter
LinkedIn

Misjudging information can spiral out of control in hours. Researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School highlight that misinformation is a major threat to global public health(opens in a new tab), especially when there is a large lag between the emergence of a disease and an effective solution. Examining COVID-19, they identified that the lag time for vaccine development has created a vacuum for scepticism to grow and misinformation to spread – which has been amplified by bots and trolls.

Social media is designed to share information we believe to be correct, quickly, and works on gut-based intuitions where patterns are rapidly recognised, and biases quickly confirmed.

Misinformation is having a serious impact on our health worldwide.

Ask to connect in your own words, for a good reason--do not use a template.
Be honest and do not spam.
Your profile photo.
Talk to folks.
Read the tone of the room.

When US consumers started spending more time at home during the pandemic, they also started using social media more, providing an unexpected boost to engagement on these platforms. The coronavirus has hastened the development and popularity of new live streaming, video chat and gaming features on social networks.

The Harris Poll conducted between late March and early May, found that between 46% and 51% of US adults were using social media more since the outbreak began. In the most recent May 1–3 survey, 51% of total respondents — 60% of those ages 18 to 34, 64% of those ages 35 to 49, and 34% of those ages 65 and up – reported increased usage on certain social media platforms.

Which consumer behavior trends on social media will continue after the pandemic and how can we prepare for any expected shifts?

Social virtual reality, or social VR, has seen an increase in users too. Social VR apps like Rec Room, BigScreen, VRChat, and AltSpace have all seen an increase in traffic. AltSpace is even hosting one of Burning Man's virtual worlds from this year's virtual event. This week, Facebook announced the launch of the public beta for its social VR experience, Horizon.

Sneak peeks of Horizon screenshots are flooding social media. Facebook dropped the gameplay trailer for Facebook Horizon after months of anticipation. The trailer shows avatars playing games in Horizon, building their own worlds, and having fun with other avatars. Facebook Horizon's beta access is currently invite-only.

By setting boundaries around what you post, when you're online, and who you surround yourself with in real life, you can strike a better balance between Instagram and reality

Of course not everyone can become the next YouTube or Instagram star, but many like Lipovetsky have used social media as a platform to spread a message, and in turn make it a career in the process.

Content can not be more of the same however, and being relevant while standing out remains crucial. Right now more of the same is not going to work. Creators need to think about what is working today and how to change it up for tomorrow.

When US consumers started spending more time at home in March and April, they also started using social media more, providing an unexpected boost to the platforms.

Depending on the research source, up to 51% of US adults are using social media at higher rates during the pandemic. But even though elevated social usage continued at least into May, causing us to upgrade our forecast for time spent on social networks by US social network users, we believe that when consumers eventually get back to their normal routines of school, work and social activities, the trends will moderate. We think this will start to happen later in 2020, with a more visible downward trend evident in 2021 and beyond.

Like any Fortune 500 company, public safety agencies should be active users of social media if they want to thrive in todays information-rich environment. Content on the big four platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube—is accessed by more than a billion people worldwide. For many people social media is the first thing they check in the morning and the last thing they see before they sleep at night.

While most of us all have personal social media accounts where we post our cat videos and vacation photos, there are still agencies that don’t have official social media presences. My argument is that all public safety entities should maintain an active presence on at least one of the larger social media platforms, because the benefits of doing so far outweigh the costs in time and effort.

While there are many reasons why every agency should have a vibrant presence online (many of which are unique to individual departments), my favorite benefits all relate to recognition: staff recognition, agency recognition, and interagency recognition.

Social media has seeped into virtually all aspects of modern life. The vast social media universe collectively now holds 3.8 billion users, representing roughly 50% of the global population.

With an additional billion internet users projected to come online in the coming years, it’s possible that the social media universe could expand even further.

How the Networks Stack Up
To begin, let’s take a look at how social networks compare in terms of monthly active users (MAUs)—an industry metric widely used to gauge the success of these platforms.

Rank        Social Network        
#1        Facebook        
#2        WhatsApp        
#3        YouTube        
#4        Messenger        
#5        WeChat        
#6        Instagram        
#7        TikTok        
#8        QQ        
#9        Weibo        
#10        Qzone        
#11        Reddit

Social platforms are still reporting robust growth — yes, even Facebook — despite a growing chorus of opposition. Social conversation continues to shape everything from culture to the media cycle to our most intimate relationships. And we now spend more time than ever on our phones, with endless scrolling through our social feeds being a chief reason why.

But dig a little deeper, and a more nuanced picture emerges about social media users today that has important implications for the ways in which brands reach customers. Specifically, when you look at who is — and more importantly, who is not — driving the growth and popularity of social platforms, a key demographic appears to be somewhat in retreat: young people.

For example, 2019 findings from Edison Research and Triton Digital show social media usage overall among Americans 12 to 34 years old across several platforms has either leveled off or is waning, while 2019 research from Global Web Index suggests that the amount of time millennial and Gen Z audiences spend on many social platforms is either flat, declining, or not rising as greatly as it has in years past.

If you are reading this article, chances are you found it through social media. And that means the platform that used it to get your attention knows you are here. While you are reading these words, Facebook, Twitter, or Google are likely reading you.

That is the premise of the new Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma from filmmaker Jeff Orlowski, which features repentant Silicon Valley figures sounding the alarm that big tech companies are doing three very dangerous things: (1) Spying on you. (2) Manipulating your feeds to keep you engaged. (3) Deepening your biases and blind spots by pushing away everything else.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told Deborah Knight her agency can compel social media companies to remove harmful content which victimises children.

However, we now have more adult cyber abuse reports coming in than we do youth-based cyberbullying reports.

Ms Inman Grant criticised the leadership of social networks for deflecting responsibility onto victims and regulators.

This year is likely the last one ever in which you can say that more than half the planet is not on social media.

Hootsuite just released a massive digital state of the union report. Some of the high-level findings:

5.2 billion of us now have phones globally
4.5 billion are connected to the internet
3.8 billion are active social media users

That 3.8 billion is 49% of the planet’s population, and it grew 9% over the past year.

The good news is that majority group members and men have an immense source of power at their disposal to prevent and confront bias in the workplace: their social networks. Here is how you can take action.

You have a bigger sphere of influence than you realize. Most people think about their immediate circle of friends as their audience. However, research in the study of social networks has shown they are wrong. Your ideas and behaviors ripple out from you, influencing your friends, friends of friends whom you may not even know, and friends of those friends as well. In fact, a whole range of outcomes are influenced by these third order ties – your weight, your values and beliefs, even your risk of divorce. This is your sphere of influence, in both your place of work and your daily life.

A database of 235 million social media profiles were found unsecured by researchers with Comparitech. While data scraping is technically legal, it goes against the terms of use for the brands affected.

The Facts:
Data scraping is the act of moving information from a website into an actionable form like an Excel spreadsheet or computer file. Such a technique can be benign under certain paradigms. For example, travel comparison sites like Trivago and Kayak deploy a program that scrapes hotel and airline sites for rates which it compiles on their website. Data scraping is commonly used by marketers to paint a clearer picture of their target base and advertise to them accordingly.

However, social media data scraping and aggregating is an effective way for hackers to quickly and easily scale phishing schemes and engage in fraudulent activities. Additionally, scraped data can be sold to companies who engage in spam practices as a means of advertising. Although spam remains legal in most jurisdictions, it is condemned as a legitimate marketing strategy. Finally, data scraping is commonly used on social media sites to steal content from influencers and repost it under a fraudulent account. It is for this reason that Facebook and Instagram banned the now defunct data scraping company,

Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat get all the buzz in the social media investing world. But Pinterest has sharply outperformed them all in 2020.

~ Brands must shift from their pre-pandemic social media strategies
~ More organic and engaging approaches are crucial when it comes to winning back customers or retaining new ones
~ Select the most appropriate platform that fits the target audience, even if it’s uncharted territory for your brand
~ Authentic influencer campaigns, user-generated content challenges and conversational tones are among the most effective ways to engage with customers

Convenience, but not only
At first glance, it could be said that the price of the product and its technical characteristics are decisive aspects when it comes to an expenditure. When two products have the same level of performance, the quality-price ratio always wins. But this is not true! The market is full of examples of products that are more popular even though there are competing goods that have similar characteristics.