Social media—Past and Future
All over the world, especially in western countries, the economic attribute of the media industry is an enterprise, while its social attribute is to provide public services, which is bound to have inevitable conflicts and contradictions. The media maintain such a balance between the public interest and the economic interest through the transformation of different roles so that the relationship between the two is harmonious and the goal is unified.
Today in the 21st century, governments of all countries pay more and more attention to their image in the hearts of the people. Sometimes, the media also carry out propaganda similar to advertising for the government. Before the war in Afghanistan, Charlotte Beers, the “Queen of Madison Avenue,” was appointed Undersecretary of State. Before that, Charlotte Beers served as director of the world’s leading advertising agencies, Ogilvy & Mather and Thompson. In short, the forms of media are constantly enriched with the development of science and technology, and the role played by media is constantly increasing with the diversification of its forms. The media, playing different roles in different contexts, have become an important part of our social construction. With the development of the Internet, the progress of communication technology, and the emergence of new things such as Weibo and WeChat, we have been provided with a new platform for receiving and releasing information, which makes receiving and releasing information within easy reach, and the speed of information exchange and update has also been further accelerated. There is every reason to believe that this will give the media a new role.
As for my personal view of the future of social media, I think the most important point is that social media will lead to the O2O model. The growth of social media will not only enhance online communication but also facilitate more offline communication. Now there are many social platforms holding various activities every three days, organized through the form of social media, and then carried out offline, which will also realize the social O2O model. People ultimately live in reality, so no matter how to communicate on the Internet in full blossom, it is also inseparable from offline communication. Therefore, social media will also bring rich and colorful offline activities in different places, which will bring more splendor and joy to people’s offline life to a certain extent, and also bring some economic benefits to offline businesses.
And the content of social platforms will be more open. Why are social platforms more open? In the simplest way, we can see from the APP that almost all the social media platforms have the sharing function in the APP or the webpage version. Cross-site sharing can be carried out on different platforms without any worries about content theft or copyright protection. The benefits of putting content on social platforms can speed up the dissemination of content and make the content produce more value in the process of dissemination. Of course, social platforms will also protect or declare the original content through some technical means to prevent the interests of creators from being damaged. Moreover, social platforms also have some operating models to ensure the benefits of creators’ labor fruits. As a result, the future of social media will produce more quality content, and it will be more open, and creators will not be reluctant to share and create content for fear that the value of content will be lost.
