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Barriers Of Social Media Essay

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European Business School
International University Schloss Reichartshausen

Seminar Paper
Seminar Subject
Fall Term 2010

Opportunities and Barriers of Social Media Marketing – A Critical Evaluation against the Background of Social Network Theory

Table of Contents
List of abbreviationsi
List of figures and tablesii
1.Introduction1
1.1 Problem Definition and Objective1
1.2 Course of Investigation1
2. Theoretical Foundations2
2.1 Social Network Theory2
2.1.1 The Strength of Weak Ties2
2.2 Web 2.03
2.2.1 Historical Review of the Internet3
2.2.2 Definition Social Media Marketing4
3. Why Social Media Marketing is Important5
3.1 Changed Internet User’s Behavior5
3.2 Reference to Social Network Theory5
3.3 The Decline of …show more content…

Social Network Theory, as we know it today, refers to the structural analysis of social relationships between people, based on systematic empirical data (Marsden, 1990). These relations are commonly displayed by nodes and ties, where nodes represent the individuals within the network and ties the connection between them, showing the degree of interdependency such as close friendship or loose business contact (illustrated in figure 1). Generally, these connections can be divided into strong and weak ties in order to denote the respective closeness of the individuals’ relationships.
2.1.1 The Strength of Weak Ties
A very popular and renowned researcher in the field of sociology is Mark Granovetter who thoroughly investigated the marginal value of strong and weak ties in social networks. He concluded, that “social systems lacking in weak ties will be fragmented and incoherent. New ideas will spread slowly, scientific endeavors will be handicapped, and subgroups … will have difficulty reaching a modus Vivendi” (Granovetter, 1983, p. 202)”. To sum it up: the more links between several dense

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