How to stay relevant in the digital age

In order to stay relevant as a news source, you have to grow. In order to grow (in most cases) you have to be innovative and have what the first article refers to as “momentum.” The golden question is; how do companies gain that momentum? And how do they keep is going for long enough to keep readers interested? It’s weird to think that no website is 100% safe from falling short.

I found it interesting (but certainly not surprising) how large of an effect Facebook has in regards to getting traffic to other sites. While it makes sense to pay one of the largest companies for traffic, I wonder how much buzz article shares/posts give each website. Speaking from personal experience, every time I get on a social media site like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I always see a plethora of articles vying for someone’s time/attention. I understand that only the most interesting (or most “buzz” worthy) will get a read and hopefully a share, but how do these shares help the company monetarily? Especially since reading articles online is free, I can’t help but think that a simple read doesn’t do much.

In the second article, Business Models of most-visited U.S. social networking sites, we also get to see how influential Facebook is in both the U.S. and globally. I found it interesting how Facebook has partnered with so many other giants to expand its footprint.

From when the second article was written (2013) to now, there’s been so many changes in how we use technology and social media. For example, although the article mentions how Myspace was originally used to promote music content, it’s been taken over by other sites (Facebook, Spotify, Pandora, etc.) that can do the same thing and more. The article discussed what made each big social media company “unique,” yet even some of the top marketing ones fell short when it came to earning profits. In regards to Twitter, the author says that the website/app’s “core competency comes from timelines.” I found this interesting because Twitter has changed so much over the years. So much that it’s even starting to become something like a newer (and maybe more improved) version of Facebook. Just recently, Twitter announced that they’re going to have an algorithmic timeline which will definitely change the layout that so many people have come to love. I can only wonder what these new changes will mean for those who invest in the company and for users.

Lastly, it stuck out to me how the author encouraged social media competitors to differentiate themselves from the competition. In my opinion, doing something like this is extremely hard for two reasons: 1) almost everything has been done already, and 2) if you think of an “innovative” idea, chances are you’re piggybacking off of what someone else has already created. Plus, if all of the four leading social networking sites are expanding to global markets, I don’t see a reason for there to be more websites that do the exact same thing as those that already exist.