The Benefits of Social Media: Economic Development

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The Benefits of Social Media
Introduction
Around 100 million people had access to the internet by the year 2000, and they had an active social online presence where they interacted and exchanged ideas on different topics. Social media has facilitated communication and connectedness between people from different geographical regions.
Social media has made the theory of six degrees of separation a reality because people are able to connect fast. In addition, through social media, friends can invite their friends to those social platforms and the list of friends for each individual grows by the day. There are currently thousands of social media platforms that people are using such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and individuals are getting closer to each other every day.
Social media has a positive affection because of promoting economic development, reducing the subjective judgment in the presidential election and preventing natural disasters.
Economic Development
Social media usage is very high, and a lot of technology-oriented companies have come up with different social media platforms. Due to the high online presence across the globe, many businesses have adopted the use of social media in advertising and marketing their products and services. Snap Inc., the largest IPO since Alibaba went public and the company’s shares closed up 44percent on its first trading day (Glinton). Advertisers are highly interested in the company because its core users are the main targets of the majority of businesses. The majority of social media users are the young generation, and they are usually targeted by companies as they create a favorable and wide market. Through this, social media has promoted economic development since businesses are able to reach a wide market in the shortest time possible.
The market value of Snap chat is high although according to Glinton, their main challenge right now is how to grow and reach more people. He says that the company is “now valued at more than $28 billion”. The use of this platform by businesses in advertising their products and services is evident in the fact that the platform is sought out by many advertisers. The platform allows users to share pictures online and this has worked for many businesses since they are able to share images of their products and services offered, hence increasing their sales through the platform. As a result, businesses have made huge profits by utilizing social media hence promoting economic development.
Presidential Election
Social media has enabled politicians to reach out to their supporters all at once and are even able to increase the number of supporters by communicating to them through different social media platforms. This is the case because the number of social media users is high and most young people are users of one or more social platforms. This has not been any different in the presidential election where presidential candidates use social media to sell their ideas and development plans to voters. For example, “Barack Obama used Facebook to connect with young people during the presidential election. He eventually won the election, thanks to the ...