What's the value?

In her chapter, “Business Models of Most-Visited U.S. Social Networking Sites, Jiyoung Cha sets out to analyze and point out the key differences between the business models of four prominently used social networking sites in the United States: Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The business model framework she sets out is composed of four components: 1) value creation, 2) target market 3) source competencies; and 4) revenue.  What I found most interesting was the value creation found in social networking platforms; as a user of all platforms except for Facebook, the way I interact with each platform highly differs depending on the value I see in it. And so although each site has a business model, the value creation aspect of each is what I find most fascinating because everything that is put on these websites suddenly becomes an extension of oneself. And that’s when things get personal.

When Facebook took over Myspace as the most popular networking site in high school, I completely ditched my Myspace profile because the value that it was offering to me could be found somewhere else. However, as I progressed into college, other popular platforms started to emerge such as Twitter and Instagram (not mentioned in the article). Facebook used to be the area where I could voice my opinions freely and wait to see who ‘commented’ or ‘liked’ my angsty teenage thoughts; see below (please note the date, 2009):

This changed with Twitter. When I became a college freshman, Twitter started to become my outlet to voice opinions and connect with friends and celebrities on a different level. As stated earlier, the way I interact with a platform highly depends on what it can do for me—and new social media networks who want to succeed as businesses need to keep this fact in mind when considering every consumer.

Value creation is the most important aspect of social media platforms, in my opinion, because even with all of the money and resources in the world, if one’s product is undifferentiated and lackluster, what was the point of creating the new product in the first place? Value creation goes hand-in-hand with target audiences and audience segmentation. Below is a link to a Forbes article that discusses 7 new social media platforms that could explode before the end of 2016. Will these stand the test of time and millennials? Only the future will tell!

Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/08/13/7-social-media-platforms-that-could-explode-before-2016/#39c52f7141af