Editorial "Strategic management and social media: the leading edge"

This volume is a bridge made up by exemplary contributions linking strategic perspectives with the use of social media — the most recent family of technologies that are evolving rapidly and exciting businesses as well as all sectors of society. Social media, defined by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p. 61) as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content,” is a term that describes a wide variety of ICTs whose common denominator is the ability to connect users in ways that enable bridging distance, time, and other traditional barriers. Even though several “electronic facilities” have captured both general and business attention, it is clear that a high degree of environmental turbulence or high velocity exists, as both software (e.g., social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Xing, facebook, Google+, Orkut, or MySpace; blogging sites such as Wordpress, Blogspot, or Twitter; personal or organizational rich-media facilities like YouTube, Skype, Spotify, etc.) and hardware platforms (e.g., tablets, smartphones, thinbooks, and other emerging innovations) keep evolving at a very rapid pace. Whatever software or hardware context we may take, social media aims to complement or even replace traditional media and communication, and will be the locomotive via which the World Wide Web evolves during the next decade or so (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 68)