Marvel of technology social media: An insight into the honeycomb framework of social media

Abstract

We live in a technological jungle where virtuality is present in a form of social media but, still at a complex stage. That complexity can be decoded with the use of honeycomb structure of social media given by J.H. Kietzmann et al. Social media can be called as a marvel of technology because it offers an impressive quantity of information on users and their interactions with society by providing many fresh possibilities for study exploration to researchers, economists and statisticians and many others and we tried to find out the possibility by using the social media model of Kietzmann et al The model reflects the strategies adopted by different social networks to help them out to engage with customers. The purpose of this research is to address the different characteristics or functional construction blocks of social media (i.e., identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation or groups) of a social media honeycomb model is helpful in developing brand awareness and engaging with customers. A survey based empirical study with N=191 social media users was conducted by using a structured questionnaire. Correlation matrix was used to find the connection between the different functional blocks of the model of social media. The results of the correlation matrix show that out of seven building blocks, five building blocks i.e., identity, conversations, presence, relationships and groups are having a strong connection, whereas the two blocks i.e., sharing and reputation are having a weak connection.