Silicon Valley and Social Media: Creating Entrepreneurs
Author Alice Marwick outlines the overlap between the usage of social media within Silicon Valley and the way in which venture-based startup companies and start-ups, in general, rely on the social media industry to advertise their startup and build revenue. As some of the biggest venture-backed start-ups today are social media platforms (Twitter and Facebook), it is crucial for these businesses to use social media and take advantage of user-generated content and datafication in order to expand into the world of business and Silicon Valley (Marwick, 315). Silicon Valley is comprised of tech startups and technology-based companies, which have gotten their start online and on the Internet, as has social media platforms and industry. Both social media and Silicon Valley go hand in hand today as neither could be successful without the other, as many of these social media platforms were created within Silicon Valley, the Valley is beginning to look at social media through a revenue-based perspective and understand that through combining technology with social media they are able to reach a greater number of people with their creation. The characteristics as to which Silicon Valley has been founded is innovation and openness, as social media takes these two understandings and is able to create platforms like Snapchat and Instagram that are tailored to openness and openly sharing one's entire life through their social media applications.
Social media has become a place for entrepreneurship, much like Silicon Valley, like many designers, artists, and even engineers and entrepreneurs are found on social media, especially today. With the creation of TikTok, creators are discovered every day and many end up becoming famous through the app and begin their own companies and startups. For example, TikTokers Josh Richards has been able to invest in numerous different companies as well as create his own energy drink company that has been distributed in numerous stores across North America. Much like Silicon Valley, social media has inspired creators to become entrepreneurs as we live in a society today that allows for these ideas to come to fruition.
Questions:
1. Do you feel that social media is crucial in the world of Silicon Valley, and vice versa?
2. How do you think social media is able to add to and contribute to the startups of Silicon Valley?
By: Claire Davidson
Hi Claire, great blog post! I mostly use social media as entertainment and never knew that people are able to use it as a launchpad for products. I guess if you have a large following, instead of advertising for another company, you can instead create your own product and sell that.
ReplyDeleteFor your questions, I think social media is very crucial for Silicon Valley nowadays, as I think most of their noteworthy innovations nowadays are social media focused. Maybe they’ve run out of ideas for profitable innovations that are outside of social media, and now they rely on it because social media is something that everyone uses and can easily be customized to attract more users.
Hi Tony! Thanks for the response,
ReplyDeleteI think social media is crucial in almost any aspect of business and growth today as we as a society have our entire worlds online and with that many businesses and corporations have made the transition to online and use social media as a way of growing their target audiences and reaching a greater following as social media is the world's biggest advertisement and is able to help grow startups greater than before social media as connection and network relationships are able to be formed online quite easily. I think all SV start-ups should use social media to their advantage, especially with the increase in social media platforms that foster network sociality and networked connections.
Great post Claire,
ReplyDeleteI believe that social media is an imperative to silicon valleys success. Having a platforms to promote newly launched products with relatively no cost is a necessity. Although I do not think that social media requires silicon valleys existence, it definitely fosters greater talent which equates to better products but I believe that social technologies can easily exist without all of silicon valley.
Hi Claire,
ReplyDeleteI would argue that social media is crucial to Silicon Valley and just as important for its users. Social media created a online world that has brought attention to politics, religion, culture, economics and so much more and created this mixed world of interactivity. While there are many downsides and the use of social media platforms is still relativley young and always evolving, it has created a globalized world that has created billions of opportunites for those worldwide to see past uses of propaganda and other system structures that have changed the way how people view others. Social media contributes huge amounts of public and private data to Silicon Valley and its startups to reinvent new ways to always bring people back. Sooner or later though, I fear just like mainstream media outlets that it will become so censored by political and economic deals that what was once a place founded on the idea of freedom, has turned it into a unionized world of uniform thinking. I think Silicon Valley and social media has so much power that it the effects are everlasting like a chemical and will hurt a lot of people mentally in the end.