Page 327 - Using MIS

Q1 What Is a Social Media Information System (SMIS)? 295

Active Users (millions)

Facebook 1184

Google+ 540

U.S. population 317

LinkedIn 300

Twitter 241

Instagram 200

Figure 8-2 Pinterest 20
Number of Social Media
Active Users 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400

Users

Users include both individuals and organizations that use SM sites to build social relationships.
More than 73 percent of people with Internet access use SM, and 40 percent of people access
2
SM via their mobile phones. Social media providers are attracting, and targeting, certain demo-
3
graphic groups. For example, about 70 percent of Pinterest users are female. On LinkedIn, 84
percent of users are 25 or older. 4
Organizations are SM users too. You may not think of an organization as a typical user,
but in many ways it is. Organizations create and manage SM accounts just like you do. It’s
estimated that 77 percent of Fortune 500 companies maintain active Twitter accounts, 70
5
percent have Facebook pages, and 69 percent have YouTube accounts. These companies
hire staff to maintain their SM presence, promote their products, build relationships, and
manage their image.
Depending on how organizations want to use SM, they can be users, providers, or both.
For example, larger organizations are big enough to create and manage their own internal so-
cial media platforms such as wikis, blogs, and discussion boards. In this case, the organization
would be a social media provider. We’ll look at the ways that social media can be used within
organizations later in this chapter.

Communities

Forming communities is a natural human trait; anthropologists claim that the ability to form
them is responsible for the progress of the human race. In the past, however, communities
were based on family relationships or geographic location. Everyone in the village formed a

2
Pew Research Internet Project, “Social Networking Fact Sheet,” Pew Research, February 27, 2014, accessed June
17, 2014, www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/.
3
John McDermott, “Pinterest: The No-bro Zone,” Digiday.com, February 20, 2014, accessed July 7, 2014, http://
digiday.com/platforms/why-pinterest-is-still-a-predominantly-female-platform/. Access date August 2014.
4 Quantcast, LinkedIn.com profile, accessed June 25, 2014, www.quantcast.com/linkedin.com.
5 Amy Gesenhues, “Social Media Use Growing Among Fortune 500 List with 77% Tweeting & 70% on Facebook,”
Marketing Land, July 23, 2013, accessed June 17, 2014, http://marketingland.com/fortune-500-companys-
social-media-use-on-the-rise-52726.