Social media and start-ups
Social media and start-ups

Summary/Abstract: Facebook and other social media have existed for more than 10 years. During this time the portals, destined to build relations in different fields, have become tools used intensively by the business environment. Primarily, Baby Boomers haven’t understood the fascination of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), X generation have accepted them with reserve, meanwhile twenty and thirty-year-olds have realized they are powerful tools, useful for promoting their businesses.The purpose of this paper is to present the possibilities of establishing new communication schemes using social media and to present the basic characteristics of new social media and their role for start-ups. To achieve the objective of the article the marketing (especially Internet marketing) literature (both domestic and foreign) has been used, as well as author’s own observation, gained during participation in international projects (while working on this project, the generation Y and Z group survey was made) and during running her own consulting agency.The following theses are taken into consideration:1. Modern companies must adopt to their business philosophy, based on new economy to avoid slow decay.2. Internet community that feels involved in any business project is more likely to support, give advice and share its own experience with the newcomers, because they feel to be a part of the business and responsible for start-ups development without a will to be rewarded.As a starting point, the author defines the term ‘new economy’ and its relation to the term of new business environment (which is a broader conceptual category). The article shows that the types of Internet users in social media are in many aspects consistent with those observed in other countries. Polish Internet users (running often their own start-ups’ business) are present and active in many social networking sites (including all key sites of global reach), in blogs – where they have their accounts, as well as in content communities. They share a lot of media, using them for many different purposes (not only related to making and maintaining contacts), thus new businesses must adopt their philosophy to the new online reality if they want to gain a competitive edge and survive among these larger and more experienced ones.For that reason, this article aims at describing the phenomena of new economy and constitutes an introduction to further empirical research.

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