Title: History, Properties, Types, Functions and Benefits of Social Media

Contents

Part 1

1. History of social media

Reflection: In your own words, describe five key moments in the history of social media, based on our class readings. Please reference the readings you have selected, and indicate clearly why you chose those five moments

2. Properties of social media

A number of our readings identified a set of properties that could be used to distinguish between (the new) social media and (the historical) industrial media. These include: quality, reach, frequency, accessibility, usability, immediacy, and permanence. Reflection: In your own words, discuss why is it important to make this distinction, as well as whether there are additional properties that make sense to help.

3. Types of social media

Again, our readings suggest there are (at least) six different types of social media: for example, collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds.

Reflection: In your own words, discuss how these “types” really describe unique, important and necessary human activities that form the basis of our social lives!

4. Functions of social media

Kietzmann et.al., (2011) has created the honeycomb framework to help businesses see and understand important functions of social media: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. Unlike our discussion of properties and types, these functions seem much more inter-related or interdependent.

Reflection: In your own words, describe the value this functional analysis brings to our understanding of social media. !

5. Benefits of social media

Reflection: In your own words, describe five important business benefits of social media, based on our class readings. Please reference the readings you have selected, and indicate clearly why you chose those five benefits. !

PART B

Article 1: Bolton, R.N. et al. (2013). Understanding Generation Y

and their use of social media: a review and research agenda.

Article 2: Blazevic, V. (2013). Beyond traditional word-of-mouth: An expanded model of customer-driven influence.

Article 3: Dewan, S. & Ramaprasad, J. (2013). Social Media, Traditional Media, and Music Sales

Number of words: 5,099 (17 pages)