Digiqom Decoded: The Social Qom
Do you remember a time when people believed that computers and technology, in general, were destroying relationships and creating a rift between people? Probably not.
In recent years, we have all witnessed the power of social media. Indeed, social interactions powered by social media has been successful in getting the world closer together. And in doing so, social media has moved from the margins to the mainstream.
A recent study by the University of Milan and Facebook found that the average number of links between two random people is not six but rather 4.74. That number drops to 4.37 in the United States. Most of you will remember psychologist Stanley Milgram’s research on the subject in 1967 which led to the popular “Six Degrees of Separation” theory, which claimed that you can connect any two people in the world in six steps or fewer.
“The experiment took one month,” write John Markoff and Somini Sengupta in the New York Times. “The researchers used a set of algorithms developed at the University of Milan to calculate the average distance between any two people by computing a vast number of sample paths among Facebook users.”
Social networks provide individuals with tremendous reach. People can share ideas, influence public opinion, even topple governments! Look at what happened in Egypt.
Businesses are still grappling with this new medium. Many companies still say social media is an experiment as they try to understand how best to use the different channels, gauge their effectiveness, and integrate social media into their strategy. Fifty-eight percent of companies are currently engaged in social networks such as Facebook, micro-blogs like Twitter, and sharing multimedia on platforms such as YouTube – but research from the Harvard Business Review Analytics Services report “The New Conversation: Taking Social Media from Talk to Action” finds that much of the investment in social is future-oriented.
We, at Digiqom, also believe that.
The Digiqom (from Digital Qom; qom means ‘community’ in Persian) has been working with companies, helping them harness the extensive reach of social media by building like-minded communities on food, fashion, travel, sports among others. Going forward, Digiqom, through its ventures will be powering the three agendas – The World going Mobile, Local, and Social – through mobile communities, through social communities, and engaging global marcom networks.
Watch this space for more.