Article Preview
TopIntroduction
ICT revolution has created new channels of communication. The various internet driven modes of communication are email, instant messaging tools, video- and photo- sharing sites and social networking sites (Mooney, 2009). Social media is about the interaction of people, in which they create, share, exchange and comment contents among themselves in virtual communities and networks (Ahlqvist et al., 2008). According to an IBM (2012) study, there is growing emphasis on openness, employee engagement and collaborations in organizations. CEOs regard interpersonal skills of collaboration (75 percent), communication (67 percent), creativity (61 percent) and flexibility (61 percent) as key drivers of employee success to operate in a more complex, interconnected environment. According to Marshall GoldSmith (Harrison, 2012), “If leaders are going to be effective in the future they need to know how to deal with social media, and media in general”. Compare to all other media tools social media was fastest to reach 50 million users (as in Table 1).
Table 1. Number of years taken by a media to reach 50 million users
| Media | Number of years taken to reach 50 million user |
| Radio | 38 years |
| TV | 13 years |
| iPod | 4 years |
| Internet | 3 years |
| Facebook | 1 year |
| Twitter | 9 months |
Source: “ We the People’s Role: The Role United Nation in 21st Century, Chapter 2, page 32(http://www.un.org/millennium/sg/report/ch2.pdf)
Ciber (2012) have found that collaborating, authoring, conferencing, scheduling, meeting tools and social networking sites have become important social media tools used widely for research. Social networking sites are the most actively used mode of communication out of all the social media tools. Boyd and Ellison (2007) have defined social networking sites as web-based services which enable individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system; articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection; and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within a network system. The first social networking site, SixDegrees.com, was launched in 1997. It allowed users to create profiles, list their friends and surf the friends list (Boyd, & Ellison, 2007). The most active age group on SNS are millenials (18–34), followed by teens (12–17), GenX (35–46), Baby Boomers (47–65), and seniors (65+) (Pew Internet, 2012) (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Timeline of evolvement of social network