The Future of Social Media - Essay Sample

Introduction

The ever increasing development in communication technology and innovations has immensely transformed and revolutionized the interaction of people and the way businesses are currently operated. The emerging innovations are geared toward making the world a complete global village. Social media is one of the areas where technological innovations are always experienced due to the high number of users connected across the global. It is important to acknowledge that social media is indeed a wave in the digital transformation and therefore the pioneers are always on the lookout and trying new technologies to provide the users with the best ever experience when interacting in the social media platforms. The paper will explore some of the emerging technologies in the social media with the aim of highlighting their significance in transforming the digital future and demonstrate the training that would be necessary for embracing the emerging technologies.

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The social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn have conventional fixtures that represent the current social media landscape. It is true billions of people and numerous businesses embrace use the social media platforms to execute various functions. The people are using these platforms to interact and exchange new ideas, for general entertainment due to the numerous games and music contents and more importantly for marketing especially for businesses (Cook and Niall). Businesses and people are always at the center of digital innovation to ensure the acquisition of new technologies that are fast, easier to use and affordable. Some of the emerging technologies include social media tools such as the buffer. A buffer is a web-based software application that provides the users especially the social marketers with a tool for managing their social media accounts. It is one of the powerful scheduling tools with an adaptable user interface for sharing contents across various networks and accounts. In the digital future and the emergence of e-commerce platforms, buffer remains one of the useful application for the startups and existing businesses for social marketing (Kane, Gerald, et al).

Socedo is another emerging innovation which is fundamental for generating leads for the social media channels. Socedo is an automated system which uses the guidelines from the demographics and keywords to locate the potential customers for startups through the social media platforms. It is one of the technological innovations that are important for B2B companies and entrepreneurs (Cook and Niall). Socedo enables the market experts to gain audience insight, expand the twitter followers and drive website traffic through the targeted audience engagement on the businesses' or people's posts. The application provides exhaustive reports of the potential clients which are crucial in sale optimization.

The advent of globalization and liberalization of economies has provided an opportunity for people to interact and transact businesses across the world. NUVI is one of the technological innovations in social media that is believed would provide a platform for businesses to engage and benchmark. The innovation provides a fast way to ascertain some of the trending topics and ideas online. The tool incorporates the human data intelligence to analyze some of the latest posts from Facebook and identifies the core memes. The updates provide an opportunity for the bloggers and other users to develop up-to-date contents that can attract massive viewership and reactions from the users (Lamberton, Cait and Andrew Stephen).

Social media platforms are fast evolving in response to everyday dynamics in the world of information and technology. Real-time streaming is one of the emerging technological innovations that most of the social media platforms are embracing and they are integrating features that enable the users to live stream the contents anywhere anytime. The integration of real-time streaming in social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram provide an exciting wholesome experience to the users especially considering the ever increasing demand for original content. Social media platforms will have to integrate and provide live streaming events in line with the ever-changing user needs. It is important to note that there is increasing popularity, for instance, in the Instagram stories among the users and therefore the real-time streaming provides an opportunity for the customer engagement for businesses to market their products to the potential clients (Stemler and Steven). The real-time streaming would be a necessity for the social platforms to provide a variety of contents for the users.

Augmented reality is another fundamental technological innovation trends in social media and businesses are on the lookout on how it would influence the future of social media so that they can take advantage for their businesses. It is argued that augmented reality would transform the social media platforms such as Snap chat, Facebook, Tinder and Instagram because the users can feel and witness the experiences. The augmented reality would bring more new content to the users through social media platforms. The AR-based advertising, for instance, is believed would deliver interactive content with the high definition. The integration of the AR in the Snap chat platform proved successful and therefore many users are actively willing to embrace the new technologies (Javornik and Ana). The move by other social media platforms like Facebook to integrate the AR technology based on the existing advertising features would ensure delivery of more exciting content that suit the users. The AR technology would create a new market for most businesses in the social media since most users would be eager and willing to try the new technology to appreciate the value-attached to the emerging products. Therefore, businesses should be prepared to link the AR technology with the focus on realizing their sales goals. The augmented reality technology will also transform the gaming industry and majority of the gamers will get more entertainment in the integrated social media platforms like the Pokemon-go game application that uses the AR technology (Stemler and Steven).

Some of the technologies and innovation in the social media platforms will integrate the e-commerce platforms to allow users to search for the products and make purchases. Pinterest, for example, is one of the social media networks that has integrated its features to incorporate the "Buy" button to enable the customers to make purchases with ease. A brand is fundamental in the marketing and usage of social media platforms. Some of the emerging technologies are geared towards revolutionizing the e-commerce platform to open up the new markets for businesses (Lamberton, Cait, and Andrew Stephen). Most businesses are heavily investing in influencer marketing to advertise their products and services through social media sites. Great focus is being deployed to incorporate the dynamics of the ever-changing e-commerce landscape. The emerging technologies and innovation are targeting the Generation Z category of the users and it is worth noting that users are rethinking on the power of twitter platform which has great potential for business. The platforms are expected to be more interactive because of the need for more chat boots and the inclusion of more video content is absolutely inevitable in the digital future.

The evolving technologies and innovation in the social media platforms presents numerous opportunities and also challenges to the users and the developers. Data security and privacy remain one of the key areas that the developers are investing on evolving technologies to guarantee data security for the users (White and Connie). Facebook has been on the spotlight on the breach data security legislation that poses a great threat to the users and the political climate of a country. Data security experts recommend that the use of artificial intelligence in building codes to protect the users' data. Another emerging technology is the creation of imaginary zoos to disguise and trap the possible cyber-attacks that can compromise the privacy and the data security of users. The imaginary zoos are aimed at safeguarding and regulating malicious advertisements on social media platforms. Since privacy and data security is quite an emotive issue, the developers of the platform are considering a possible encryption of everything everywhere by the users to ensure maximum data security. The turning of the computer to dust has also been proposed as an appropriate data security technologies that social media platforms would ultimately integrate as a feature in developing the platforms to crack down of malicious adverts that can threaten the data security of its users.

Conclusion

From the above discussions, it is evident that the various technological development are currently being exploited and strengthened to improve the overall user experience on the social media platforms. Some of this emerging technologies will require further training for the users to ensure optimal usage. The augmented reality is the emerging wave of technologies that social media developers are working towards to ensure delivery of more authentic contents in line with changing needs of the audience. The future of social media technologies is skewed towards ensuring a more interactive platform which will be achieved by the real-time streaming of the contents.

Work Cited

Cook, Niall. Enterprise 2.0: How social software will change the future of work. Routledge, 2017.

Javornik, Ana. "Augmented reality: Research agenda for studying the impact of its media characteristics on consumer behaviour." Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 30 (2016): 252-261.

Kane, Gerald, et al. "What's different about social media networks? A framework and research agenda." (2012).

Lamberton, Cait, and Andrew T. Stephen. "A thematic exploration of digital, social media, and mobile marketing: Research evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an agenda for future inquiry." Journal of Marketing 80.6 (2016): 146-172.

Stemler, Steven E. "Content analysis." Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource (2015): 1-14.

White, Connie M. Social media, crisis communication, and emergency management: Leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. CRC Press, 2016.