What will Social Network sites do Next?

                 Could you imagine a day in which you try to login into your favorite social network site and you find out that it no longer exists. Many of us have become so accustomed to using social network sites on a daily basis that such a scenario seems almost impossible to comprehend. In recent years, social networking sites have become increasingly popular and are still growing as time goes by. Currently, over 800 million people are members of Facebook.com, making it the most popular social networking site in the world. Other popular social networks include Twitter, MySpace and Hi5, in the past. It is arguable that the main reason these sites have become so common and usable in recent years is because social networking has change dramatically. At first, these site were use simply to find and chat with friends that you weren’t in contact with on a regular basis, and that was pretty much all you could have done on them. However, today social network site do way much more than that. On Facebook, for example, you can post pictures and videos for others to see, you can “Like” your friends’ comments, pictures, etc., and now you can even play games against friends on the site. Seems like quite an upgrade from some of the original network sites right? Now what people are wondering are, what’s next for social network sites and how much longer will they be around?

             

                   It is my belief that social network site won’t be disappearing any time soon. In fact, it is more than likely that they will become even more popular in the future, as it begins to gather a wider audience. However, I also believe that the future of social network site also depends on how well the different sites can keep their members interested in their service. In order to be successful in any business, they most keep upgrading, creating and implementing new products or services. It is essential that these sites to move forward as the capabilities of the internet and of technology on a whole move forward. Only the social networking sites that realize this and are able to do it effectively will survive and remain on the top. A perfect example is Facebook. Facebook is one of the social network sites that are most successful at frequently developing new, useful features for their site, and that is one of the key reasons why they are so popular.

                What new features will keep social network sites popular? I always wonder about what feature they will come up with next and ask myself: How can they add something to a site that does so much already?  Sadly, I could never come up with anything that actually makes much sense, at least for now. However, my best guess is that social network sites, well at least the really popular ones, will begin to tap into the retail business. Advertising is already becoming a huge part of these sites with not only business advertisements but personal advertisements as well, for example, when you “Like” or comment on a product, service, song and even events on the site. Although this might sound crazy to you, because it sounds crazy to me as well, my logic behind the whole retail business on social network sites is that they are already advertising many of these products, so why not allow members to buy them directly off of the site, since convenience play a major role in the whole e-Commerce business.

                Nevertheless, no matter what ideas they come up with, crazy, useful convenient or not, they will still have to do something in order for social network site not to become obsolete. To find out what those ideas are, I guess we’ll just have to wait for the future to find out.

E- Commerce, Out to save the World

In recent years, e-Commerce has done much more for the human race than we can even imagine. Many of us see e- Commerce as simply a way to shop online, that that’s certainly true, but when you look at it more deeply, you slowly begin to realize how much more good it does for the world. As I sat, trying to figure out what to write for this week’s blog, I started to think about what other ways e- Commerce can be beneficial to people, and I came up with the crazy idea that it is secretly a way to fight pollution and global warming. I know this might seem a little crazy to you, but think about it. Through e-Commerce, everything is done electronically, which means we, meaning the world in general, save on three important things: paper, gas and time.

As I said earlier, through e- Commerce, everything can be done electronically, including the advertising of a product, the gathering information about the product (research), and the actual purchasing of that product.  In the advertising and research stage, instead of distributing flyers, hanging posters and putting up billboards (which is still done today, but not as much), which all require either paper or plastic, both of which can cause pollution and global warming, retailers can now do all this online thanks to e- Commerce. This not only helps the world and keeps it clean, it also saves them a little money, making advertising and researching online a win-win situation for everybody. In the purchasing stage, instead of printing really long receipts describing the items you purchased, you can now get an electronic receipt. This again saves paper and might be more convenient for people like me who tend to lose their receipts. This way the customer can always have a copy of his or her receipt. Although it might not seem as much, the use of e- Commerce has definitely help lower pollution rates by using less paper, plastic and other valuable or harmful materials.

In recent years, gas prices have been so high that people now have less money to buy other products and services. Not only that, the use of gasoline in motor vehicles also causes the release of greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming. Again, I know this might sound crazy but e-Commerce is a good way to reduce the amount of gasoline we use and lower greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Thanks to e-Commerce, we can now shop for the product that we want from home. Although we might not realize it when we are actually buying something online, but this saves us some money and gas because now we don’t actually have to go to the store, in other cars, to buy what we want.

E-Commerce is also a good way to save you time, time that can be spent doing other, more important things or simply just relaxing at home. Although going to the mall or to a specific store can be a nice way to just get out of the house, it can sometimes also be very stressful and tiring as well. Getting stuck in traffic, dealing with crazy drivers in front of you, trying to find a good parking spot, and even the occasional flat tire or breaking down in the middle of the street can all be very hassling and even worst, they take up a lot of your valuable time. Now, with e-Commerce, you can save yourself a lot of time and a huge headache by doing everything online.

We often take e-Commerce or shopping online for granted and we hardly ever realize what other good things it does for us and the entire world. Along with being easy and convenient, e-Commerce also saves on paper, saves us on gas and saves us time. E-Commerce is definitely secretly out to save the world.

E-Marketing: Influencing the way We buy...

Today, e-Marketing is undeniably all around us. It is so common that we tend to overlook it many times and we don’t really see the significant role it plays in our day to day lives. E- Marketing has a strong influence on our purchasing decision and even live decisions, and we as consumers are often oblivious to this fact.

 How does e-Marketing influence us? 
The question you might be asking yourself is: How does e-Marketing influence my buying decisions? When we think about this question, many of us would probably argue that we make our own decisions and that nothing can influence us. However, if we were to look back on what actually caused us to make that final decision, we would surprisingly find that many times it was because of the influences of e- Marketing. One way, and arguably the most common way many consumers are influenced by e-Marketing is when we look up a product on the Internet. At the very minute that we hit search on Google or select a product on a store’s website, we begin to unconsciously be influenced by e-Marketing and our final decision begins to take shape.

Social media, specifically social networking, is another way in which e-Marketing is becoming increasingly popular, simply because of the wide reach of potential buyers that use social media sites. Many times we, the members of a social media site, notice ads for different products popping up on our walls or in our inboxes, and these ads subconsciously start to mold our perception about the product or service it is advertising, therefore influencing our buying decision.

Is this Influence good for the Consumer?

Many of you might still find it hard accept the idea that e-Marketing influences your decision. Yet, for those of us who do believe it does, we find it almost impossible to deny that e-Marketing and it’s effects are definitely more useful and beneficial to us than harmful and controlling. It allows us to know exactly what we want even before we go to the store to get it and it helps us make the right decisions based on the information we gathered online. In the end, e-Marketing does more good than bad, for both the consumer and the seller. Like our parents always say, “Its better to have a friend that’s a good influence on you, rather than a bad influence on you” and e-Marketing is definitely a friend with a good influence.

Behavioral Targeting- It knows what we want

In recent years, the internet has slowly become a human necessity, rather than a commodity. It seems that almost everything is possible over the internet, including, shopping, entertainment, communication and even education. Who would have thought, just twenty years ago, that we would be able to do all these things online? Well, fortunately, or unfortunately, for us, the internet has a couple more tricks up its sleeve.

 The internet, again, finds another way to make our lives easier. As we may all have noticed, mass media/ advertising has been growing at an increasing rate, allowing stores or retailers to reach millions of customers all over the world and subsequently increasing their sales. This growth is primarily due to the also expanding popularity of the internet. However, mass media and the internet have joined together to take advertising and shopping online to whole new level. The internet is now able to take the websites you have visited and products you have purchased online and automatically advertise products it thinks you might be interested in based on your preferences that it gathered over time. It is now also able to store data about how frequently you visit a site or purchase a product online, what time of the year, week, day and even time you type in a website or click “buy”, and what other products you seem interested in before making your final purchase and use this data to better analyze your online behavior.

This new strategy is called behavioral targeting and it has proven to be very beneficial to both customer and retailer. For consumers, it makes shopping over the internet easier, since we no longer need to browse for every single product we are interested in buying, they simply appear in front of us. If we are interested in the product or service, all we have to do is click on the link and hit buy, if not, we just keep doing what we were doing. It can’t get simpler than that, or maybe it can. Nevertheless, for now it is as good as it gets for online shoppers. As for the retail, it seems as though behavioral targeting is like a gift from God, being able to know what consumers want and advertise it to them even before they search for it online. If they can’t tap into the consumers’ brains, tapping into their online behavior might be the next best thing.

Is e-Commerce the future of shopping for everyone?

The Growth of e-Commerce

E-commerce has grown to be very popular and very successful since it became possible in 1991. Today, one of the most common activities people take part in on the web is shopping. In only twenty years, thousands of businesses of all different markets have joined the e-Commerce movement and have now made it possible for us, the consumers, to buy almost anything online. It was reported that in 2007, online sales accounted for 3.5% of total sales in the U.S. and that it has been doubling every two to three years since 1999, when it was only .5%. Although 3.5% might not sound that significant in terms of percentage, it is actually equal to approximately $175 billion.

The Advantage of e-Commerce

The most obvious reason why e-Commerce has been so successful is because it is so convenient. It provides customers with the luxury of shopping whenever and wherever they want. It also allows us to view a larger array of products and services all at once, while comparing brands, quality, quantity and price. If this isn’t the easiest way to shop, then I don’t know what is. Of course, there are still many of us who prefer the traditional way of shopping, which is actually going to the store to buy what we want. However, with the rapid growth of technology, where we have access to the web literally in the palm of our hands on smart phones and tablets, it is only a matter of time until most of us will have purchased something online without even noticing we just did. It is reported that more than 82% of internet users are online buyers and that this percentage will rise as young Internet users, who are more familiar with e-commerce, replace older users.

E-Commerce does not only hold advantages for the consumers, but for the vendors as well. The internet and search engines such as Google and Bing! provide an easy, cheap and effective way to be found by customers. It also decreases the cost of the goods being sold because fewer expenses are incurred to actually sell the product online that in the actual store. These are the main reasons why businesses choose to go online.

Is It the New way to Shop?

Due to the present trend of e-Commerce and it success, it is very likely that it will eventually become the most common way of shopping for the average customer. Even though the traditional way of shopping might never completely vanish, its popularity will certainly decrease in the future.