SOCIAL MESSAGING TREND

Hello dear readers!

For the first topic I’m going to talk about the social messaging trend nowadays. When people discuss social media, there always seems to be more focus on social networks than social networking. Well, that’s pretty strange, considering that messaging apps have a much wider community of users than social network. In fact, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber and WeChat together have more users than the big networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Over-the-top (OTT) messaging and SMS messaging are millennials’ preferred form of communication. Sixty-two percent of millennials are more loyal to brands that engage them via those channels and an estimated two billion users will be messaging through OTT apps by 2018. Why is this so? Millennials want the personal touch, transparency and collaboration that the one-on-one communication allows. In today’s world, people particularly young people are continually finding and adapting new ways of communicating electronically to fit their needs.

However, there are differences between cultures when we talk about social messaging. Cultural values and norms strongly influence effective communication and cooperation (Li, Rau, & Hohmann, 2011). Cultural scholars have identified several dimensions along which cultures vary that may impact the use of instant messaging. For example, Western cultures stress “individual initiative” and “independence”, whereas Eastern cultures emphasize “group solidarity” and “collective identity” (Kayan, Fussell, & Setlock, 2006). The cultural dimensions of individualism versus collectivism (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001) and high-context versus low-context (Hall, 7 1976) are believed to be most likely related to users’ appropriation of the instant messaging apps.

References:

Li, H., Rau, P. L. P., & Hohmann, A. (2011). The impact of cultural differences on instant            messaging communication in China and Germany. In Internationalization, Design and Global Development (pp. 75-84). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Kayan, S., Fussell, S. R., & Setlock, L. D. (2006, November). Cultural differences in the use of    instant messaging in Asia and North America. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 525-528).

Hofstede, G. H., & Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations. Sage.