Social Media

Social refers to behaviors, interactions and relationships between people, groups and institutions. A network is a structure of nodes and ties through which information, resources and influence flow. So Silicon Valley didn’t invent the social network: a judo club, a pub or the ultras’ end at Slavia Prague are all social networks. The internet added speed, global reach and measurability. For the first time, every node and every tie can be counted, and therefore monetized.

The scale: according to Kepios and DataReportal Digital 2026, there were 5.66 billion user identities on social media worldwide in October 2025, 68.7% of the planet’s population (identities are not unique people). The average adult uses 6.75 platforms a month. In Czechia, according to DataReportal Czechia, it’s 8.08 million identities, 76.4% of the population, with 9.96 million internet users.

Time is the second currency. The AMI Digital Index 2025 (Stem/Mark, 1,010 internet users over 15) measured 143 minutes a day on social media for Czechs, and 220 minutes for Gen Z. That’s one feature film every day. And the number isn’t growing: it has dropped by four minutes since 2023. The attention market is saturated; the platforms are just fighting over it.

Why did we join? The five motivations of the initial adoption still hold: connection, identity expression (the profile as your digital self), network effect (“all my friends are there, so I must join”), accessibility and social proof and validation (the like as instant feedback). The Czech index puts numbers on the motivations: keeping in touch with friends 81%, entertainment 80%, information 76%, inspiration 65%. People don’t go on social media for brands. The brand is a guest there.

Five eras. Early experiments (1997–2003): SixDegrees.com as the first site with a profile and a friend list, then Friendster and MySpace. Real identity (2004–2010): Facebook with real names, LinkedIn, Twitter with real-time updates; the feed was chronological. Visual and mobile shift (2010–2015): Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest; the photo beat the text. Algorithm and influencers (2015–2020): the feed shows what keeps you there, not what you follow. Social commerce and AI (2020–now): in-app shopping, AI feeds, private communities (Discord, Telegram), Threads.

According to a comparison by Visual Capitalist, Facebook needed 4.5 years to reach 100 million users, Instagram 2.5 years, TikTok 9 months, ChatGPT 2 months and Threads 5 days (July 2023). Threads didn’t do it with a better product, but with login through an Instagram account: the network of ties was simply copied over. And a warning: 100 million sign-ups isn’t 100 million active people; Threads only reached 400 million monthly active users in August 2025.

Web 1.0 (roughly 1991–2004) was for reading: the company publishes, the visitor reads. Web 2.0, as Tim O'Reilly described it in 2005 in his essay What Is Web 2.0, is for reading and writing: users create the content, the platform is the intermediary. Web 3.0 promises ownership of data and identity; in practice, AI is winning so far, and it doesn’t just sort the feed, it generates it. For a marketer: in 1.0 you paid for hosting, in 2.0 for reach, in 3.0 for the model to find you. More in the Internet and Artificial Intelligence chapters.

Around 2015, feeds switched from chronological order to algorithmic recommendation. It used to be “if they follow me, they see me”; now a model decides, predicting what will keep you in the app. Great for virality: a good post from a nobody can reach millions. A problem for brands: reach among their own followers stopped being a sure thing. That gave rise to pay-to-play: if you want even your own followers to see your content, pay for promotion.

The numbers are sobering. According to the Socialinsider benchmark (data from January 2024 to December 2025, retrieved October 2026; 25 million posts, 130,683 pages), the average engagement rate on Facebook is 0.15% per post: out of a thousand followers, one and a half people react. That’s why brands publish less, 39 posts a month, 22% fewer than a year earlier. Status updates work best (0.20%), links worst (0.05%): the algorithm doesn’t like letting people leave the app.

The key advantage over traditional media: television has to produce its content and pay for it. Meta gets it for free from users (user-generated content, UGC) and sells ads alongside it. For 2025, Meta reports 12% more ad impressions and a 9% higher average price per ad: advertiser demand is growing faster than people’s attention. More on metrics (CPM, CPC, ROAS) in the Advertising chapter.

Three rules. Followers are potential, not reach. Plan organic content for engagement (comments, shares, saves); that’s what the algorithm rewards. And the only place nobody can take from you is your own website and email list: social networks are rented land, so bring people home (the Internet chapter).

No network is “the right one”: each has a different demographic, format and reason to visit. The most common mistake is being everywhere in the same way, which means nowhere properly. Watch the units: platforms report monthly active users (MAU), sometimes daily active users (DAU), LinkedIn reports registered members and DataReportal ad reach. They’re not interchangeable.

Before you choose a network, go through the digital strategy framework: target (what it should change) → audience → message → channel → form → result (what you measure and how). The network is only step four; if you start with “should we be on TikTok?”, you’re starting in the middle. And every path should lead to the website, the only place you control. The framework is laid out in the Internet chapter.

We usually don’t count maps as social networks, and that’s a mistake. A business profile on Google Maps (Google Business Profile) or Mapy.com (the Firmy.cz listing) has everything a network has: posts, photos, reviews, messages and “followers” who have saved the business. The difference is intent: people go to Instagram to be entertained, and to a map when they want to buy, visit or call. It’s the bottom and most profitable part of the funnel (the Marketing chapter), and the content there is created by strangers.

Scale: according to Sundar Pichai (Alphabet’s Q3 2024 results), more than 2 billion people use Google Maps every month. The Czech Mapy.com (Mapy.cz until March 2025), run by Seznam.cz, the Czech search engine and web portal, has roughly 5 million monthly active app users, a third of them from abroad (2024), and a goal of 12 million within five years. For a Czech business, that means two profiles: Google for tourists and younger people, Mapy.com for Czechs, drivers and older people.

Reviews are UGC in its rawest form: you don’t decide what anyone writes, only how you reply, and every future customer reads the reply, while the author reads it only once. Reply within 24 hours, to criticism factually and without getting defensive, to praise briefly. A negative review with no reply is the worst outcome: the customer sees a problem and silence.

Marketing is psychology in motion, but sociology gives it scale. Demographic segmentation (age, gender, income) is a good foundation and a bad target: two men, 35, Prague, CZK 60,000 net a month, can be a judoka and a League of Legends player with nothing in common. Psychographics (values, lifestyle, motivations) is more precise. The strongest layer for social media is segmentation by tribes: groups bonded by interest, rituals and identity. More in the Marketing and Psychology chapters.

There are dozens of examples: Harley riders, ultras, foodies, runners, cosplayers, hackers, punks, hipsters, bikers, preppers, skaters, metalheads, ravers, otaku, gamers, vanlifers, sneakerheads, K-pop fandom. Members influence each other more strongly than advertising does, and social networks (a hashtag, a group, a subreddit, a Discord server) have turned local tribes into global ones.

Three rules. A tribe can’t be bought from the outside, only reached from the inside, with a language and people it respects (that’s why nano and micro influencers work). A tribe spots a tourist instantly: badly used slang does more damage than silence. And the most valuable tribes link identity with a regular ritual and a purchase: runners (races, shoes), judokas (tournaments, judogis), club fans (matches, merch). The ritual is a reason to come back, and therefore a reason to publish.

Social networks aren’t optimized for connection, but for engagement, because engagement sells. At the core is the dopamine loop: the variable reward described by B. F. Skinner, which every slot machine uses. When you don’t know whether something great will appear after you refresh the feed, you keep refreshing. Nir Eyal broke it down in his book Hooked (2014) into four steps: trigger (a notification), action (opening the app), variable reward (the feed) and investment (a post, a follow), which kicks off the next round.

The loop goes hand in hand with dark patterns, Harry Brignull’s term from 2010, with a catalog at deceptive.design: interfaces designed to make you do what you wouldn’t do if you were thinking clearly. On social media: infinite scroll (no “done” signal), pull-to-refresh (a slot-machine gesture), autoplay, red badges, “X is typing…”, Snapchat streaks (runs of consecutive days you don’t want to break). These features stay because they extend time in the app. More in the Psychology chapter.

The second mechanism is the comparison trap: you compare your life with the edited highlights of other people’s lives. In September 2021, the Wall Street Journal published Facebook’s internal research (the Facebook Files): 32% of teenage girls who felt bad about their bodies said Instagram made it worse; an internal slide read: “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.” Facebook objected that the sample was small and that 22% of girls said the opposite. A Congressional hearing followed; four years later came the first ban. Since December 10, 2025, Australia has banned accounts for children under 16 on ten platforms, from Facebook to Kick and Twitch (WhatsApp, Messenger and Discord are excluded), with fines of up to AUD 49.5 million; in the first month, the platforms deactivated, removed or restricted 4.7 million accounts.

Time: according to Gallup (2023, 1,591 teens in the US), the average teenager spends 4.8 hours a day on social media, and 51% spend more than 4 hours; YouTube 1.9 h, TikTok 1.5 h, Instagram 0.9 h. Pew Research (2024): almost half of American teens are online “almost constantly,” up from a quarter ten years ago. For marketers: know the mechanism, use it ethically (no campaigns built on fear of missing out) and look after your own hygiene.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) created the 5 Cs of Media Use framework for doctors and parents. The main idea: don’t ask “how many hours,” ask “what does it do.” It works for an adult marketer just as well as for a child.

Why does one post spread and another doesn’t? Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at Wharton, summed up his research in the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On (2013) as six principles, STEPPS. It’s not a recipe for virality (virality can’t be planned), but a checklist: the more principles the content meets, the better its chances.

The textbook example is the Ice Bucket Challenge from the summer of 2014: pour ice water over yourself, film it, challenge three others and donate to ALS research. According to Facebook, between June 1 and September 1, 2014, more than 17 million videos were shared, and more than 440 million people watched them over 10 billion times.

Events, press conferences, tournaments and conferences aren’t just about being there: they are content factories. A well-planned event produces content for weeks ahead: the people, the venue and the technology are already paid for. Most companies’ mistake is planning content only after the event (“send me the photos”). Content belongs in the brief from the start. More in the Events and Streaming chapters.

Three phases. Before the event: a shot list: arrivals, the hall from above, a close-up of hands, audience reactions, the speaker from the front and from the side, the partner’s logo; people for interviews with three questions, and a slot in the program for filming: five minutes after a block, not during it. During the event: a content team, even if it’s one person with a phone and a brief; the photographer shoots for the archive, the phone films vertical video with sound for social media. After the event: slice it up. A 30-minute interview becomes a Reels clip, a quote for LinkedIn, a story, an article for the website and a paragraph for the newsletter.

A press conference is worth a few hours: a journalist wants facts, a quote and a credited photo before deadline. In sports, a result is news for an hour, then it’s a statistic.

Influencer marketing rests on peer-to-peer trust: a recommendation from someone you follow feels natural. According to Influencer Marketing Hub (Benchmark Report 2025), the industry grew from $1.4 billion in 2014 to an estimated $32.55 billion in 2025. In Czechia, according to Lupa, spending is “in the single-digit billions of crowns a year”; TrendIn counted over 16,000 profiles with more than 10,000 followers in Czechia and Slovakia, 29% more year on year. Three quarters of Gen Z follow influencers, and half of regular followers trust their reviews (NMS 2024).

The risks: the wrong partner (values, scandals, fake followers), rising prices without rising impact, and the time spent on contracts and checking deliverables. The rule is bigger → more expensive → less effective: as size grows, reach goes up while engagement and authenticity go down, which is why each of the four sizes has a different job.

You have to label a collaboration. In the Czech Republic, the self-regulatory code Férový influencer (SPIR and Platforma profesionální komunikace) applies: a paid post carries the word “reklama” (advertisement) or “placené partnerství” (paid partnership) right at the start. A gift or a free product is payment too, so such a post gets labeled as well. The general advertising rules are in the Advertising chapter.

Sponsorship rests on the same transfer of trust, except the partner isn’t a person with an account but a club, an event or an athlete. A partner that makes sense works best: since 2004, DHL has been the official logistics partner of Formula 1, moving cars, fuel and team equipment between races. Here, logistics is visible as part of the show. Bigger → more expensive applies here too: a local club often delivers more trust per crown. The sports sponsorship numbers are in the Sponsorship chapter.

The platform provides the service for free, collects attention and data, and sells ads alongside them. Meta had revenue of $200.97 billion in 2025 (+22%), an operating margin of 41%, and in December 3.58 billion people a day across its apps. Simple division gives roughly $56 a year per daily active person. Almost all of it is advertising. Meta plans to put $115–135 billion into AI infrastructure in 2026: the battle for attention is turning into a battle over who will generate the feed.

The second layer is the creators. In September 2025, YouTube announced it had paid out more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies over four years; the standard creator share is 55%. A creator has four income streams: a share of ad revenue, paid partnerships, fan subscriptions (Patreon, or Herohero and Forendors here in Czechia) and their own product (merch, a course, a book, an event). A healthy creator has at least two, because the platform can change the rules at any time.

Czech numbers. According to SPIR, the Czech internet industry association, a record CZK 70.7 billion went into online advertising in Czechia in 2025 (+10.6%), of which display including social media was CZK 51.1 billion and search CZK 18.2 billion; SPIR doesn’t publish a separate figure for social media. Herohero had roughly 1.6 million registered users in September 2025, almost 400,000 paying ones and around 7,000 creators. An extreme case: in the summer of 2024, the YouTuber Mikýř was collecting over CZK 6 million gross a month from almost 30,000 subscribers paying 7–10 euros each.

Not everyone gets a share of ad revenue, though. A channel can join the YouTube Partner Program today with 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days. The 55% applies to ads in videos; on Shorts, the creator gets 45% of a shared pool based on their share of views, and 70% of channel memberships, Super Chat and Super Thanks. A lower tier of the program, also available in Czechia, starts at 500 subscribers and unlocks memberships and fan donations, but not ad revenue. And the bar is rising: in August 2026, YouTube announced that starting February 1, 2027, a new channel will need 8,000 watch hours a year or 20 million Shorts views in 90 days, and only channels with at least 10 million Shorts views in 90 days will get money from Shorts. TikTok pays for views through its Creator Rewards program: you have to be 18 or older and have 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in the past 30 days, and it pays only for original videos longer than a minute. But the program is open in only eight countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. So a Czech TikToker gets nothing from TikTok for views.

From fan subscriptions, the platform takes a much smaller cut than YouTube does from ads: Herohero takes 10% plus VAT, Forendors 15% of subscriptions and 20% of one-time payments, both including VAT and the payment gateway, and Patreon 10% for new creators, plus payment processing and currency conversion fees. In 2025, Forendors paid creators CZK 85 million; the average subscription was CZK 177 a month, and a subscriber stayed for 396 days on average. Since its launch, it has paid out over CZK 200 million, and more than 1,700 creators publish on it. But brand deals still bring in the most. In a NeoReach and Influencer Marketing Hub survey of more than 3,000 creators, 49% earn most of their income from brand deals, and most creators make less than $15,000 a year. On Czech Instagram, a study by the Lafluence agency and the Trendin.io platform estimated the value of tagged content over one year at CZK 3.5 billion, of which purely paid partnerships made up over CZK 1 billion; up to 70% of brand tags may have been free for the brands. The vocabulary people use when they talk about creators’ money:

The third layer is you as the advertiser: you buy attention from the platform (ads), trust from a creator (partnerships), or build your own (content, community, newsletter). The first is the fastest and the most expensive; the third is the slowest and the only one that stays yours. More in the Advertising and Internet chapters.

Social selling is selling that starts with a relationship, not an offer. Instead of cold emails, you share what you know: a case study, an industry insight, a how-to. People file you away as “the one who understands this,” and when they need a solution, they get in touch themselves. It’s a long game: you’re planting seeds with content, not harvesting leads right away. It’s measured by how many conversations start with “I read your post,” not by likes.

On LinkedIn, in practice: a profile that says who you help, two or three posts a week with an insight from work, and comments under posts by people in your field (a comment is cheaper and often more visible than a post). LinkedIn measures its own Social Selling Index (0–100) from four components: professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, building relationships.

A broader frame to finish: network = net worth. Who you’re connected to determines what you learn, what you have access to and what you become. Your network is access to ideas, opportunities, trust, support and even status. A student’s best investment isn’t followers, but ten people in the field who know what that student can do.

This class had one through line: the social network is as old as humanity; social media is a twenty-year-old attention business. The platform earns from time, the creator from trust, the advertiser buys both and in the end is left with only its own content and its own people. A checklist for your first job: