In contrast to previous technologies, the internet and
e-commerce technologies have evolved to be much more social by allowing users
to create and share with their personal friends and a larger worlwide community
content in the form of text, videos, music or photos. Using these forms of
communication, users are able to create new social networks and strengthen
existing ones.
All previous mass media in modern history, including the printing press, use a broadcast model (one-to-many) where content is created in a central location by experts such as professional writers, editors, producers and directors and audiences are concentrated in huge numbers to consume a standardized product. The new internet and e-commerce empower users to create and distribute content on a large scale, and permit users to program their own content consumption. The internet provides an unique many-to-many model of mass communications.
For an example, Amazon are among the top e-commerce site
worldwide that achieve the seventh rank in Alexa Traffic Rank. Amazon utilizes
the use of social network and has about 25 million likes in Facebook and 1.82
million followers in Twitter. Indirectly, these social networks become a
marketing platform for Amazon.