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Social media bubble

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For the media effect, see informational bubble.

The social media bubble is a hypothesis that there was a speculative boom and bust phenomenon in the field of social media in the 2010s, particularly in the United States. The Wall Street Journal defined a bubble as stocks "priced above a level that can be justified by economic fundamentals."^[1] Social networking services (SNS) have seen huge growth since 2006, but some investors believed around 2014-2015 that the "bubble" was similar to the dot-com boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2015, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team and star of the TV show, Shark Tank, sounded an alarm on his personal blog over the social media bubble, calling it worse than the tech bubble in 2000 due to the lack of liquidity in social media stocks^[2]. A year prior, however, Cuban told CNBC that he did not believe social media stocks were on the verge of a bubble^[3]. In a letter to investors in 2014, David Einhorn, who runs the hedge-fund Greenlight Capital, wrote that "we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years."^[4] He went on to write, "What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and what might pop it." Einhorn cited several factors supporting the existence an over-exuberance including "rejection of conventional valuation methods" and "huge first day IPO pops for companies that have done little more than use the right buzzwords and attract the right venture capital."^[5]

Since those claims, services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat have grown to become multi-billion-dollar corporations generating enormous revenues.^[6]

History of Social Networking Sites

SNS have grown and evolved with time since the launch of SixDegrees.com in 1997.^[7] Cutting edge at its time, sixdegrees.com allowed users to create a profile, invite friends, and connect within a platform. At its peak SixDegrees.com had more than 3.5 million users.

Friendster and MySpace were next to enter the social SNS arena, followed by Facebook in 2004. Even though MySpace had a following of more than 300 million users, it could not compete with Facebook, which now has overtaken the social networking world. However, as development of social networking sites started to emerge, a market saturation began to take effect.

The social media bubble has faced some threats including growing concerns about breeches in data, the rise of bot accounts, and the sharing of fake news on SNS platforms. These controversies have resulted in a lack of trust among its users and concerns about the role their platforms played in national elections^[8] (see Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections). Even with these scandals, SNS continue to play an influential role in helping people form real-world connections via the Internet.

See also[edit]

• Dot-com bubble
• Web 2.0
• Digital Revolution

References[edit]

1. ^
2. ^
3. ^
4. ^
5. ^
6. ^
7. ^
8. ^
9. ^

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For upcoming assignment (due 4/14/19):

References practice

References

^[1]

^[2]

Note for Dr. Cunningham: I added citations to Hala Gorani's Wikipedia page.

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Subpage for editing assignment:

User:Ryanccooper/subpage

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For upcoming assignment (due 4/7/19):

Article to improve -- Social media bubble

Write a few sentences about what you plan to contribute to the selected article. Check out the Talk page, too, to see what other Wikipedians are already contributing. This article needs to be improved. There is a header at the top that the article needs a Cleanup to conform to Wikipedia standards. I intend to fix some of the typos and bad grammar. Also, I downloaded articles from the Foley Library to read and research on the topic so I can add additional context and information to the article. I also found a couple newer articles that may shed some light on the topic. I can even source from our own class reading materials about the decline of Friendster! Unfortunately, there is nothing in the Talk page. The entry was written by a former Wiki Education student as part of a class assignment.

Think back to how to evaluate an article. Look at the article's content, tone, and sourcing.

• Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Are some areas under- or over-developed? The content is okay but some of the sourcing links are broken or require a password.
• Is it written neutrally? Yes.
• Does each claim have a citation? Are the citations reliable? I thought Wikipedia did not want us to cite blog posts, but several of the citations are blogs. I will remove some of these and add more nuanced sourcing from the Foley Library.

What can you add? Consider posting some of your ideas to the article's Talk page. See Talk page. I have acquired the following sources:

Benady, D. (2013, September 1). Pricking the social-media bubble. Marketing. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1439791293

Ellul, I. B. J. (2012, April 19). Social media bubble is building up, warns Henderson's O'Gorman. Money Marketing. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1002595117

Gillin, P. (2006). When will the social media bubble burst? B to B; Chicago (91)11. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/209389324

Godwin, R. (2018, March 28). Is the social media bubble about to burst? Evening Standard. Retrieved from https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/is-the-social-media-bubble-about-to-burst-a3799421.html

Ho, T. (2013, October 8). Social media the next bubble? ETF soars 52% YTD comparing current valuations with the dot-com bubble era. Investor's Business Daily. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1439944192

Ovide, S. (2018, July 12). Facebook and Twitter's valuations are baffling. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-07-12/facebook-fb-and-twitter-s-twtr-valuations-are-baffling

Perrin, A. (2018, September 5). Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/

Stewart, J. B. (2012, August 18). Social media, once soaring, are coming down to earth. The New York Times Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1705899898

Link to Criticism of Facebook

Link to Cambridge Analytica

For last week's assignment:

Article evaluation -- Hala Gorani

• Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you? The information was very thorough and had been revised by multiple users. I could tell some of the users were not native English speakers, as some of the writing structures seemed odd. I went through and copy edited the entire article for clarity.
• Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added? The article was missing her most recent Emmy nomination and Emmy win (we were both nominated for one of the same Emmy Awards, so I recognized right away it was not listed). I added it in the Career subheader as well as created bullets under the Awards and Recognitions subheader. I also added a link to the video report that won the Emmy. Also, the link to her official CNN bio was broken; I updated the box that linked to that with the new URL. I also added some citations to the changes I made to support my edits.
• What else could be improved? I wanted to change the photo, but Wikipedia asked if I owned the rights to the photo. I was going to use her professional CNN portrait, but as I do not own the rights to it, I was not allowed. I just left the photo that was there.
• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? The article was neutral. It did not seem fawning or in any way negative. It even addresses the fact that as a journalist, Hala does not comment on her political beliefs or opinions in order to maintain neutrality.
• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? I don't believe so; it quotes from articles in which she has been interviewed, and I believe it paints an accurate picture of her career progression. (I have worked with her since our time together in London in 2000).
• Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article? One of the links in the citations is of a page that no longer exists. However, most of the links do work and support the reporting in the article.
• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? Citations include international newspaper accounts, interviews with Hala, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences page, which lists nominations for Emmys. I suppose some of the Persian Gulf media outlets could be state-owned and therefore exhibit a pro-government bias; however, the stories themselves do not reflect any bias towards Hala.
• What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? This was the most interesting part of the exercise, if not the most strange! People behind the scenes were wondering if she was Albanian (she's not); someone claimed she was a Syrian Christian (she's not). Others are wondering if she really is Muslim even though she covered the Hajj personally (twice), and only Muslims are allowed in Mecca to attend.
• How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? The article is not rated.
• How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? N/A