Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

Social Media has been in part responsible for huge political changes like the ones in the Arab world, has helped shaped huge election campaigns (Barack Obama), and at a micro level changed the way we interact with friends and family. All these changes have a fundamental common factor that makes social media unique and more important than any other media form - It puts us all on the same space. There is no hierarchy, caste, class or status that stops your voice from being heard. While social media has caused so many changes for good, can it also provide the solution for a big problem facing mankind today? Can social media drive sustainability?

There have been a lot of discussions around sentiment analysis and metrics about brands on the internet. To address this area, there are a lot of companies that have designed software that help brands figure out sentiment and other related things in real time. With fancy interfaces that look no less like a NASA control panel, these packages aggregate what people are talking in real time, process it and make sense out of it. All this enables brands to figure out their online sentiment and the profile of engaged netizens. What it does not tell brands is the culture. The big problem with a sentiment metric is that it takes the social out of social media.

Facebook has tweaked its News Feed algorithm that basically displays the activity of your friends and subscriptions. To those who have seen a decline in activity or the number of likes and comments on their posts, there is a surprise. Nick Bilton , a popular journalist made merry of the subscription feature that was introduced on Facebook which allowed people to see others public activity streams without being Friends. Many other journalists and celebrities like Nick made good use of this feature and promoted their content and activity on Facebook. Like in all happy tales, there was a climax.

Entrepreneurship is about innovation and the ability to tackle problems. Doing both means you have a successful venture. Redbus.in is a classic Indian example of a startup that tackled challenges through innovation. RedBus (redbus.in) is now India's biggest online bus ticketing company. Interstate bus travel in India was a highly unorganized sector with many private local players and government buses. A consequence of this was the selling of bus tickets through traditional brick-and-mortar agents. Another problem with bus travel was immediate booking of tickets before journey. There used to be few advance bookings. Travelling to remote corners or on an immediate basis through bus remained a cumbersome task. Moreover there was no guarantee that if you went to a bus stand, you would find a bus.