It is from the consumer side where the picture is much more competitive and
illustrates a better equity distribution among firms. Most social media applications
and sites are free to the user, so there is no investment other than time to access a
site. Consumers sample different social media tools, and gravitate towards those
that provide the most to the user in terms of utility and value.
Progress
Progress is normally thought of as the ability of the- firms in a market to collectively
increase output over time. Such action would indicate growth in a market, and if
firms are efficient in allocating resources and there is a good distribution of equity,
progress should follow naturally.
Output among social media firms must be measured differently; at best we can
consider trends over time like the number of subscribers for a particular site or
application, the time people spend with the actual sites, the growth of advertising
or other digital revenues among the firms, and the global reach of the site or
application. While these are simplistic, they offer two data points for both the
consumer side and the producer side to gauge trends in progress.