Social Media’s Role in Shaping the Daily Communication Ecosystem

It’s not a secret that the presence of social media has affected the way people communicate between each other. Its massive application within the society offers a fresh method of communication with social aspect attached on it. It’s captivating to see how certain chats on social media influence people’s daily interaction, especially in term of business development.

Titans like Facebook and Twitter have passed their existence socialization phase already. Their focus is no longer introduction, but how to distribute the right content to the right channel.

Considering that Indonesia is a mobile-first country, there are definitely more challenges that social media giants face to reach more mobile users in the country. This has been confirmed by Shailesh Rao, Twitter for Asia Pacific’s Vice President, who admitted that Indonesia is one of their most potential markets.

“Twitter is a communication platform. You may comment about anything, and share your real time opinion,” he said during yesterday’s SummitID (12/2).

Rao further revealed that organic chats are the mechanism which form a perfect communication ecosystem. This is eventually better than ads which give no room for interaction, whereas it’s an essential thing that people demand.

I later came to Sebangsa’s Founder Enda Nasution who attended the event as well. He argued that each social media has different benefits, thus creating a positive diversity. If people want a social media which is full of visualization, for instance, they can go to Instagram, while short actual news are available on Twitter. In the end of the day, it’s not about having millions of users, but how to make the right content reach the right users.

This is no doubt a beneficial insight for Indonesian social media developers who seem to still have difficulties in securing niche and last long. They need to be extremely patient and keep their consistency on the board. Mind you that Twitter needed four full years to draw Indonesians’ attention.

Making use of the mobile exclusivity, as Path and LegaTalk do, is indeed an interesting and effective alternative to take. Alexander Rusli, Indosat’s CEO, claimed that the penetration of smartphone usage in Indonesia is quite positive. In fact, the sales of smartphone dominated the total sales of phone in 2014 (60%), and people use their smartphone for at least eight months in average.

The massive usage of mobile devices, along with dominant application of social media, may well re-define the concept of communication in the current digital era.