1.Introduction

Social media has permeated everyone’s life. The vast majority of smartphone owners have registered or are using social media platforms. Regardless of nationality, race or age, social media platforms unite users in one area. There are 3 billion monthly active users on Facebook and 1 billion active users on Instagram [1]. All these data show that social media become one of the potential parts of everyone’s life. Compared with traditional media, social media has brought users not only visual and auditory differences but also many changes in the content and the way they use it. In other words, social media are changing people’s life.

How social media has changed people’s lives is now a widely discussed topic. People can learn about other countries’ news from social media instead of television or newspapers. According to Instagram or Facebook, users can communicate with friends from all over the world. Users gravitate toward this thing. Mobile advertising can push products users will likely like through the record they leave. Everyone can create their own channel and receive followers and ‘like’. All this change has come through the rise of social media. It helped people bridge the gap between space and time and helped the whole society become more globalized. Although people speak different languages and come from different areas, they can discuss the same thing on social media.

At the same time, social media has created a great business model for this era. There are an increasing number of advertisers turning their focus on social media, which is a cheaper and more effective way to distribute their products. Partly celebrity endorsements are replaced by influencers. Multi-Channel Network (MCN) company has also become one of the most significant industries. For advertisers, social media provides a platform for them to spread viral forms [2].

Therefore, this essay will introduce social media characteristics and analyse the effect on users, creators, and advertisers. In addition, while providing convenience to people, social media also erodes people’s lives. While stealing people’s personal information to improve the experience of using it, the information cocoon and echo chamber formed by social media will make society more polarized.

2.The Characteristics of New Media Platform

2.1.The Diversity of Social Media Content

Social media, as a communication platform for users to spread their minds, has a lot of forms of communication. In the beginning, users can type words to share their opinion, like blogs. The function of adding photos was also added later, like Facebook or Twitter. Then, an increasing number of videos and audio appeared on social media, like TikTok or Instagram. Users can choose the platform and their preferred form to look through online news. Compared with traditional media, like newspapers, readers only can look through the content, including photos and words. Therefore, the appearance of new media offers readers a wider variety of forms of reading.

2.2.Content in Real Time

Content can be updated and disseminated to users worldwide in a real-time based on the social media platform. With the development of technology, the content on new media can also spread rapidly in a short period of time. When users post content, it can be quickly distributed. Whenever and wherever the content is posted, it is viewed by their followers. This feature is realized with the development of technology. Users can receive information on any device, anywhere. Compared with the previous traditional media, such as newspapers, this feature has greatly accelerated the efficiency of communication.

2.3.Social Media Globalisation

The globalization of social media is also a very important feature of social media. This is reflected in the rise of transnational social media, multilingual support, the development of multiculturalism, and global topics. The embodiment of transnational social media means the rise of sites such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. These websites have already become the most popular social media and have hundreds of millions of users, which are including in worldwide. Multilingual support relies on the development of technology. Regardless of the platform, users only need to choose their language to view the content. This feature is largely reducing the barrier to international content and enhances reader communication and interaction. Moreover, multiculturalism is also a significant factor for globalization. The content of social media is multi-cultured. People from all over the world can post content by using different languages. This content will also find their readers, either through sharing by others or re-posting. Global topics and the globalization of the world are inseparably linked. More different content can lead to more discussion about the content. At the same time, for social media, the increase in discussion also means an increase of platform traffic. Globalization help reader wonder the global content, and more global content will help globalize the world.

2.4.Content Personalization

Social media is also increasingly helping users specify personalized content in each social media; profile is a key feature for users to share their personal information. Users can write their details so that other users can know more about them. And based on this personal information, user portraits will be formed to present more interesting content for users, thereby improving the online user experience. At the same time, social media will also capture user preferences according to the user’s usage habits to form a personalized form for each user. By capturing users’ preferences, users can receive more content and advertising they are interested in. Users’ content on social media is also personalised, allowing users to post their own content and share their experiences, opinions and ideas with other users. Each user has their own individual expression, which makes the Internet’s content diverse and personal.

3.The Internet Operation Model of Social Media Platform

3.1.For Individual Social Media Creators

The characteristics of social media can help creators to find their own style of video and to target their audience precisely. Based on the characteristic of social media, the creator can find their specific style by several ways. First, creators upload their videos, and if the creator’s video is compelling enough, they will receive likes and comments. Otherwise, it will not receive likes, and the creator can consider other styles of video content. At the same time, creators can look through a lot of people from all over the world. It is also a good time to learn the skills of how to create the video better or find the topic of their videos. Moreover, social media will provide a lot of tools for creators. Instagram provides a lot of filters for users to take the selfie. These filters can help users make selfies look better and make more users want to use Instagram to record their lives. TikTok and the red book, one of the social media in China, also offer simple editing tools. Users can make a video and post it. Users who don’t edit themselves can then try to create their own videos. Some photo stickers are also an excellent way to help users represent themselves. Some exciting pictures and stickers help users express their emotions very well, which makes users use the platform frequently. By using the number of views and follower ratio, creators can get a better idea of what type of videos their fans like and can better help them find their own style.

3.2.For Commercial Marketing Users

Social media platforms will provide business users with assistance in promoting product content. Because of the real-time and globalization spreading of social media, it can help marketer distribute their content more quickly. Compared with the advertisement in newspapers before, social media can spread the content once they uploaded. Advertising in the newspaper has several steps before they are published. It should take some time. However, the thing about social media is changed, it can be delivered to consumers’ mobile phones across time and space [3]. There are no more tedious steps but instant distribution. On the other hand, the globalization of social media also helps marketer spread their content wider. The content of advertising is not only the specific area people views; instead, people from all over the world can also look through the content. The traditional media, like newspapers, magazines, or radio, has their limited spreading region. Their publications are usually precise to a region and at most a country. It means only the people from this region can look through the content. However, when it comes to social media, the website can be clicked on by people from all over the world. It greatly increases the view of advertising and improves the effectiveness of advertisement.

Meanwhile, social media is cheaper than traditional media to promote advertising. Traditional media, like television, radio, or newspaper, has a high cost for promotion. It is relatively difficult to produce and requires a great deal of technical support. Compared with traditional media, social media is a relatively cheaper price to promote. It is not as official as the traditional media, and it has a lot of forms to promote, for example, some placement marketing. It brings us to a well-known social media platform, YouTube. At the beginning of the rise of YouTube, it is the only share video platform and has no commercial benefits. With the development of social media, more commercial information is flooding YouTube. At the same time, MCN company appeared. These companies help influencers to connect with advertisers, which forms an adverting chain. The influencer needs to take incorporate commercial products into non-commercial videos [2]. It will reduce the cost to a large extent. Moreover, a lot of advertising in traditional media needs to invite celebrities, which costs more than an influencer. Therefore, the promotion in social media is cheaper than the traditional one. Finally, personalization distribution can help advertiser focus their target audience more precisely.

3.3.For Common Social Media Users

For audiences, social media provide more personalized content which can satisfy them. Personalization on social media means creating personal content based on your personal information [4]. Compared with traditional media, which only has certain content in each channel, social media provides more content for the audience because of individual creators. Because of too much content on social media, creators need to think of more interesting content to catch people’s eyes, so that the content will be more diverse. At the same time, both creators and the audience have their own personal styles, and the audience only follows the creators who are similar to himself/herself. In this way, it will increase audiences’ likes for social media. Because the content in social media is more personal to the users, users can present the personalization on social media better, which can help users to increase engagement to improve the online experience [5].

4.The Flaws of Social Media Platforms

Although social media have diverse content and provide a lot of benefits for both users and advertisers, it still has some problems. First, the truth of the contents is uncertain. There is a lot of content and creators on social media, so there must be competition on each channel to catch more audiences’ eyes because of this competition between users and businesses. It leads to some fake content. Creators or business use exaggeration to illustrate the video and make a misunderstanding their audience. Unlike social media, traditional media is an authority. Although sometimes the traditional media also have fake news, they have a more authoritative and rigorous review system to help them produce and review news content, which will help them to avoid potential risks and misinformation. The contents must be truly before they can be published. However, the creators on social media always are little teams. They try to get their largest benefits so that the content cannot be certainly true.

Second, the data will record users’ privacy. With the development of technology, the Internet tries to record people’s personal using ways to provide a better online experience. For example, the viewing history or purchase history can be the evidence for technology to know about what users like and push relative content for users. This communication way of social media tries to make people add their self-presentation on it [6]. People can always look through their favorite content and try to engage in the discussion. Nevertheless, it also adds security problems for online users [7], which is also offensive. When people feel they are too much exploring in advertising disclosure, they will decrease the credibility of marketing [8]. Advertising catches too much information for their audience, making them feel offended and decreasing their trust in online advertising.

Lastly, the personalization of social media also will make the filter bubble for online users. Because of the data internet captures, users can always watch the contents they are interested in. There is little content out of people’s interest. Through this process, people only know the content in their interested field. The echo chambers and filter bubbles can reinforce people’s views by connecting with like-minded people, avoid meeting people with other voices and form a growing polarisation of voices on the Internet, especially in politics [9]. At the same time, this form of content dissemination will easily form a self-centered ideology [10]. This ideology in real life will increase the polarization of society. People become self-centered, and they only pay attention to the content they agree with and are unable to conduct a more dialectical form of thinking, which will put society in a passive state of polarization.

Despite social media providing a lot of benefits for the user, it provides more content and more personalized using modes for users. It still exits some problems between users, creators, and advertisers. Technology steals users’ details to make them more ‘convenient’; advertisers make more advertising because of the small cost of advertising investment, and users are immersed in it and distrust it; users only hear the voice which is the same as theirs, and make the ideology of their own echo chamber. All these have become the problem in social media currently. While giving people convenience, social media still has many problems, which need to be solved in the future.

5.Conclusion

To sum up, the characteristics of social media presence in the diversity of content, the real-time content, the globalization content, and the personalization content. Compared with traditional media, such as TV, newspapers, or magazines, these features have realized the span of space and time dimensions, helping the content spread faster and wider. The media is no longer a general concept but has become something in everyone’s hands. A personalized Internet is hidden in their phone. The development of social media also provides many benefits for creators, users, and businesses. For creators, they can no longer only create authoritative and official content but can have a variety of content with their own style. For the audience, they can look through diverse content in social media instead of content tedious like traditional media. Everyone can find their own like-minded channel and create a personal page to find friends. For advertisers, social media provides a more effective way to spread their brand. Because of the characteristic of social media, it reduces the time of spreading, and the advertisement can be watched by viewers worldwide. However, the characteristics of social media have both sides. First, the content on social media is not authoritative, so that it might have fake content on it. Second, the privacy of users is unsecured. In order to improve users’ experience, social media will steal users’ information, such as purchasing information or wandering information. Third, because of the big data will form an echo chamber or filter bubble for the users, which will make society more polarized.

This study summarizes the characteristics of the development of general social media. However, it is not a particular focus on specific media. Future research could examine the utility of social media using a specific platform as an example. The development of social media is an important link in the development of the Internet. Therefore, with the development of science and technology, social media forms and types will become more diversified. Although there are still many problems with social media, it must be solved to coexist with human beings.