The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success

Chapter 2. The Social Media Ecosystem

In the previous chapter, you learned that people are going to talk about you and your business. In this chapter, you'll discover that thousands of social media tools are available to help people share information and broadcast their feelings, beliefs, and attitudes. Many of these tools have sprung to life in the blink of an eye. Some of them were born and went extinct during the short period of time it has taken to write this book. Others have been around for a few years. Many of them complement one another. Some of them compete with one another. It's a veritable jungle out there—a social media jungle—and this chapter is going to give you a framework for surviving in this jungle.

A jungle is nothing more than a defined area where things eat each other to survive. What a perfect metaphor for business. Biologists would call a jungle an ecosystem, a good term to use here. A biological ecosystem is a sophisticated association of living organisms interacting with one another. Each single organism and the collective populations of organisms in an ecosystem function as components of an integrated whole. Some organisms cooperate with or complement each other, while others compete for resources essential for survival. The same principles apply when considering the relationships and interdependencies of tools and applications that live, breed, and compete in the social media world. Some compete with each other, while others work together quite nicely. ...