Social Networking has increased and enhanced the relationship between consumers and brands. A corporations online presence increases its interactions with customers. This provides much needed feedback to understand how and where to drive and grow their products or services. Without this feedback, corporations would be using estimates and probability at best in moving forward. Explored in "What drives consumers to interact with brands through social media? A motivation scale development study," there are "five distinct motivation factors" which link consumers to the brands on social media: " 'Brand Affiliation', 'Investigation', 'Opportunity Seeking', 'Conversation', and 'Entertainment'."
The benefit of social media can go above and beyond corporations and as discussed in "How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power" by David Carr, help political candidates. Carrr states that Obama got all the things that are boght to the table through a candidates political party: supply brand, ground troops, money and relationships, through social networking. He was the first "post-boomer candidate for president" who successfully tapped into its potential. Through social media, Obama was able to raise a records breaking six hundred million dollars for his campaign. “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television," and Obama has used social networking to raise awareness, money, and ultimately win the presidency.
Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer and money manager who blogs at Mathoda.com states “But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work.” Social networking has created a "post-party" era, where it is not necessary for the democratic or republican party to back you in elections. Candidtes need them much less than the parties needing candidates at this point. We see this with Trump being a backed by republicans as embarrassing as it may be at ties, but trumps successful campaign to Make America Great Again made him republics only hope in winning. We also see this with a democratic party backing Bernie Sander who is an outright socialist, but can be the winning ticket which allows democrats to in the seat back. Social networking might just be the outdated right and left parties worst nightmare who only exist for their network of contacts as their networks becoming less and less powerful due to the utter reach of online networks.
Another connection that social media creates is employers to potential employees which is talked about on NPR's morning edition titled "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting." Social media profiles like Linked In, a network of 8 million professionals, help connect job hunters to recruiters. These sites help market employees and allows users to share their online rolodexes. People can be found faster and connections are made easier. One contact can lead you to 100s of others who might share the same job ethic and/or education. All this information or this this entire network is right at the users fingertips through basic keyword searches. This not only helps unemployed candidates which are actively job hunting but also employed candidates who don't have the time to job hunt but would like to keep the door open for potential opportunities which might pay more or require less travel time. By simply creating a profile, you will always be on the market so to speak. But does this mean we shape and mold our life to what we want others to think about us? Where can we draw the line and keep what is ours within us and not display it worldwide?
So is it a win/win situation? On the top layer it is as corporations are making higher sales by providing products and services which customers want. However if you dig deeper, it seems as if corporations are able to get the upper hand as they are just getting richer, and increasing the gap between poverty and wealth. It can even be seen in politics as social network campaigns can rally up new voters, and target populations for their potential but also for their weaknesses. As we become more and more dependent on Social networking and open our mind to what it is out there for us, it seems we loose more and more of who we are and what can become on our own through our own thoughts and ideas instead of what popular on a network. Do we still have our own lives or are we hung up on others? David Carr summarizes it best stating: “yes, we have met Big Brother, the one who is always watching. And Big Brother is us.”
