Next to last blog post . . . Benefits & Limitations of Technological Developments

Benefits & Limitations of technological developments in mass media and these developments’ impact on culture

I want to start out by sharing my discussion post on Twitter's business model and how its benefits and limitations affect the way media companies use news and communication. 

According to Das Sourobh, "Twitter business model is similar to the business model of other social networks and requires users to create a profile and then those users can post short status updates or “tweets” under 280 characters" (2019). In addition, "registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them" (Sourobh, 2019). Also, "users can post using the website, app or even SMS. It is also called 'SMS of the Internet'" (Sourobh, 2019). Additionally, "the users can follow other user accounts and then they can view the tweets of the accounts they chose to follow and can share videos, images, and links through their tweets. The users can also directly message each other" (Sourobh, 2019). While most of this information comes as nothing new, I'm surprised to read that Twitter is starting to incorporate more video content into its platform, which is behind the times to Facebook and Instagram (Sourobh, 2019). It's also behind in terms of revenue listed as 9th (Sourobh, 2019). 

The biggest benefit of Twitter is its global reach and can reach tons of followers and I think the hashtags reach more people (Sourobh, 2019). In addition, "Twitter has always tried to strengthen its business model through acquisitions and partnerships instead of internal user or revenue growth" (Sourobh, 2019). The biggest limitation, in my opinion, is its use of limited characters (Sourobh, 2019). For news and communication, I think Twitter is good because of its hashtags. I can look up things in this way. I like it better than Facebook for news but not so much for personal communication.

To compare and contrast Twitter's business model with other social media sites' business models, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ is that it is behind that of Facebook, probably compares more to LinkedIn in terms of its content (although its very dissimilar from a professional site like LinkedIn), and, of course, it's ahead of Google+ since that one is going away very soon! As far as where Twitter stands in comparison to the success of other business models? I think it's behind Facebook and Instagram (IG). If it wants to remain strong- it needs to get with the current users! 

Technological developments with mass media, including the inventions of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others, have brought great change and along with mobile devices versus the great big monitors that encompassed our atmosphere and filling up the landfills- well, it's been a lot of change. There are still desktops but today's society prefers an on the go desire and instant gratification and I'm right there as well. Much impact has been brought to our culture with businesses. Many have went remote and allowing employees to work from home, thus cutting out costs. Also, it's allowed more individuals to develop their own business since it can be created all online. While this has been great, it's eliminating brick and mortar. Retail is failing and people's experience in retail could be coming to a halt, unfortunately, so I'm looking for ways to do that with companies and make even more money. 

-londonblogger2011

Reference: 

Das Sourobh. (2019). "How Does Twitter Make Money." Feedough. Brand Study: Business Models. Web. 2 March 2019. Retrieved from https://www.feedough.com/how-does-twitter-make-money/.