Social Media and Business
Business Horizons (2010) 53, 59—68
www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor
Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media
Andreas M. Kaplan *, Michael Haenlein
´ ESCP Europe, 79 Avenue de la Republique, F-75011 Paris, France
KEYWORDS
Social Media; User Generated Content; Web 2.0; Social networking sites; Virtual worlds
Abstract The concept of Social Media is top of the agenda for many business executives today. Decision makers, as well as consultants, try to identify ways in which firms can make profitable use of applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter. Yet despite this interest, there seems to be very limited understanding of what the term ‘‘Social Media’’ exactly means; this article intends to provide some clarification. We begin by describing the concept of Social Media, and discuss how it differs from related concepts such as Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. Based on this definition, we then provide a classification of Social Media which groups applications currently subsumed under the generalized term into more specific categories by characteristic: collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds. Finally, we present 10 pieces of advice for companies which decide to utilize Social Media. # 2009 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. All rights reserved.
1. The specter of Social Media
As of January 2009, the online social networking application Facebook registered more than 175 million active users. To put that number in perspective, this is only slightly less than the population of Brazil (190 million) and over twice the population of Germany (80 million)! At the same time, every minute, 10 hours of content were uploaded to the video sharing platform YouTube. And, the image hosting site Flickr provided access to over 3 billion photographs, making the world-famous Louvre
* Corresponding author. E-mail
www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor
Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media
Andreas M. Kaplan *, Michael Haenlein
´ ESCP Europe, 79 Avenue de la Republique, F-75011 Paris, France
KEYWORDS
Social Media; User Generated Content; Web 2.0; Social networking sites; Virtual worlds
Abstract The concept of Social Media is top of the agenda for many business executives today. Decision makers, as well as consultants, try to identify ways in which firms can make profitable use of applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter. Yet despite this interest, there seems to be very limited understanding of what the term ‘‘Social Media’’ exactly means; this article intends to provide some clarification. We begin by describing the concept of Social Media, and discuss how it differs from related concepts such as Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. Based on this definition, we then provide a classification of Social Media which groups applications currently subsumed under the generalized term into more specific categories by characteristic: collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds. Finally, we present 10 pieces of advice for companies which decide to utilize Social Media. # 2009 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. All rights reserved.
1. The specter of Social Media
As of January 2009, the online social networking application Facebook registered more than 175 million active users. To put that number in perspective, this is only slightly less than the population of Brazil (190 million) and over twice the population of Germany (80 million)! At the same time, every minute, 10 hours of content were uploaded to the video sharing platform YouTube. And, the image hosting site Flickr provided access to over 3 billion photographs, making the world-famous Louvre
* Corresponding author. E-mail
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