I personally feel that New Media works in a way that Old Media doesn’t. Because of the incredible and widespread use of the internet in our everyday life, New Media has transformed every single one of our lives by making its mere presence felt. Unknowingly, New Media has integrated into an important aspect of our everyday life, especially the internet and the conveniences it brings.
Article 1 : http://www.masternewmedia.org/business-applications-of-social-media-inside-organizations-social-networks/
Article 2 : http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_09/b4121048726676.htm
Article 3 : http://www.masternewmedia.org/facebook-business-guide-how-companies-can-utilize-facebook-pages-for-social-media-marketing-part-1/
Article 1 highlights the increase in companies using social media to build social networks as a form of advertising for their business and companies. Companies use social media to build relationships with existing customers and also to acquire new ones. The main reason why most organisations use social media is because it’s free. Like a registration on Facebook takes no longer than five minutes, and the impact it brings after that could be infinite. People get to view your social profile effortlessly with a click on them mouse and it will be made available to people all over the world, certainly more effective than the word of mouth or even printed media like magazines and newspapers. I quote from the article, “According to Brian Solis, principal at FutureWorks, “Human interaction is still human interaction, and what it takes to be successful with it has not changed. What has changed is the places where it happens.” ”
Social Media will alter the meaning of geographic distance, you do not have to actually meet the person physically to communicate, and you can do in the comfort of your bathroom, in the office or even in a random coffee club to communicate. This way, it allow for a huge increase in the volume of communication because of the convenience it brings. Social media makes communication so convenient that sometimes, we tend to overlook the significance of it.
Photo credit: Kheng Guan Toh
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Article 2 talks about the growing advertising that most companies are making online. They are now spending less to reach more people which results in significant cost-saving compared to advertising on Old Media. This is because the Internet has become a large market for companies. Some of the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient nature of low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast number of people simultaneously. New Media also provide the possibility of increasing the speed of communication as well as provide opportunities for interactive communication. Either way, it is an added advantage that New Media brings to us. They allow forms of communication that were previously separate to overlap and interconnect.
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Article 3 summarizes the impact of the fastest-growing social network, Facebook. It is the largest social media in the world, with an estimated 300 million active users. That itself is a major market for companies to tap on. Just imagine, just five minutes setting up an account to advertise yourself or your company and you might have a potential 300 million people getting to know about it. Furthermore, it’s absolutely free. Should it not have the impact you expect it to have, you probably don’t lose out much anyway. So it’s effectively risk-free and cost-free, an attractive viewpoint from the company.
Also, blogging is one of the latest sensations to hit the internet. Hundreds of thousands of blogs exist, hundreds of these blogs exist in the sense that they publish frequently and have a meaningful audience. Like Facebook, setting up a blog is absolutely free. The only thing you have to fork out is time to update the blog regularly. It is another appealing perspective for a company should they want to reach out to the mass media. Updating your social profile on Facebook or through blogging only requires a few taps on the keyboard and a click of a mouse. It doesn’t take a genius to work it out and the immediate update can be seen by people all over the world. It beats taking a week to have your name published on the newspaper or on magazine to reach out to a significant less crowd. For companies, social media like Facebook or blogging is extremely lucrative to them because of the speed in which they can advertise their business compared to using Old Media like newspapers, magazines or even the television.
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In conclusion, I believe that it is inevitable that New Media will slowly oust Old Media. In fact, it has already begun to overtake Old Media as a more convenient, more efficient and more effective source of communication. The rise of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter has played a major role in this happening. It isn’t too hard to find someone with a Facebook account, regardless of whether they are 14 or 40. It shows the wide range of people you can reach out to, from different races to different age groups to different genders. Also, the increase in using blogs to do business is becoming commonplace now.
For example, many teenagers are using online media like blogging to set up their own online boutiques. And then use free social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to advertise their ‘blog shops’, and you cannot deny the impact and effectiveness that New Media has created for us. The speed and ease for us to do business from the internet using social media is too alluring and it is something we cannot afford to overlook. I am not dismissing Old Media as being ineffectual, but you cannot disagree that New Media is certainly the more successful of the two.
