Social Media As a Market

I do not read many market reports partly because I find the few that i have read monotonous and not illuminating in many respects in addition to the fact that I do not have access to many. However, i have recently tried to understand whether the phenomenon of social media can be understood using the conventional tools of price theory. To start with, it is clear to me that there is a huge market for a number of the most popular and that they exhibit characteristics of power law in respect to popularity. For that reason,I found the TED talk by Johanna Blakley truly novel.

To start with, she states that many media corporations tend to describe markets entirely through social a demographic lens. It must be that this is informed by the legacy of the industry. However, I agree with Johanna to the extent that social media may render this conventional approach less useful and has already overturned the dominant feature of male-driven media. So while I am less sure about her predictions and conclusions, I think that social media is being over hyped but holds potential for media corporations in ways that are seen and that are not easily understood yet. To say the obvious, social media is not a free pass to profitability.