Social Media (Emerging Industry Overview)

This paper provides an overview of the social media industry, primarily in the United States. The paper gives a snapshot summary of the emerging industry in the US, with additional sections on its development, organisation and structure, current conditions and leading companies.

Emerging Industry Overview: Social Media

Industry Snapshot

Although the term "social media" once referred to games and chat, by 2010 the term was defined as media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Web-based technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues. The opportunities available within social media continue to grow: either for social media managers, experts, and strategists or for social media programmers and coders.

As recently as 2005, the Internet was full of ignored brand messages, hidden e-mail addresses, and essentially a lot of talking in a space where no one was listening....

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands