How many of us thought, when the Facebook share price started dropping like a stone, we were witnessing the beginning of the end? However, we have found that despite the challenges of getting advertising revenues where so many users are on smartphones, social media is thriving.

The future? Who would bet against the increasing exploitation of social media by companies big and small? Companies are looking at the youth audiences desire for amusing clips and content as a cheap and effective alternative to mainstream advertising. Facebook continues to innovate and show firms how they can gain revenue from fan pages, a cheap and interactive alternative to microsites. These companies are finding the mobile nature of social media gives a huge advantage over other marketing and advertising options.

Never forget, Facebook employs less than 5000 people, but has over 1.1 billion customers. Can any company beat that?

Facebook has introduced a number of new features in 2013 with more still to come.

Pay per message
Anyone who has a Facebook account can pay to message anyone else who has signed up to the site, regardless of whether they’re on your friends list. This is combined with stricter filters that won’t allow messages through to the recipient’s in box unless the sender pays.

Graph Search
Until now, it was easy to miss content posted by your friends unless it appeared while you were browsing your newsfeed. Graph Search allows you to connect with friends who share your interest by typing in criteria such as location and topic; this returns a list of your friends who post about the subject you specify.

Social media is a very useful communication tool to have emerged in recent years, but it doesn’t mean that more traditional methods of communication should be forgotten.

A major advantage of both social media and email is how they aid mass communication, and can build new contacts all over the world. But the phone still remains a more personal and human way of communicating with people, and tends to be more useful when it comes to finding out more about them.

Recruitment agencies in particular need to remember that they are in a people business. Consequently, new technology shouldn’t change the basics, when it comes to how recruiting businesses work. Social media and email should be used in combination with more traditional communication methods, rather than in spite of them.