The Social Media Explosion

Social media may surpass “Big Data” in hype – if that’s possible – but once you cut beyond the exaggerated promises, you find that enterprises are quickly being reshaped by social media tools. Social media is a genuine game changer for business. Many companies recognize the potential of social media as a new communications channel, but the reality is that its impact will be felt in every part of the organization. Companies will be forced to reexamine outdated business practices and create opportunities to leverage these new capabilities in powerful ways – from sales and marketing to IT departments to supply chains. 

If you have become cynical to the term “social media” you have good company.  Big Data paved a road of doubt that new technologies could deliver on the lofty promises of a new customer paradigm.  Numerous social media start-ups have popped up all over the map – so many its hard to keep a reasonably accurate count and hard to believe they will all survive.  While the market will undoubtedly go through some consolidation over the coming 18 to 24 months, social media technologies will continue to impact enterprise customers across nearly all industries.  Many of these start ups have focused on niche areas to solve specific, but complex problems such as web crawling, web scraping, text mining and sentiment analysis. The business models vary considerably among providers of these technologies from direct product sale to an outsourced model.  We see a growing demand for strategy and consulting firms with strong expertise around these tools and capability to integrate new tools with existing systems.  Companies will need to choose carefully and avoid locking themselves into a solution that constrains their future capabilities as the technology rapidly evolves around the social media explosion.