The Legos of Social Media

As I was reading the article this week on Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, I never really thought about the fact that social media platforms had building blocks.  When I think of building blocks, it took me back to my childhood and playing with Legos.   I was never really a huge Lego fan, but I did play with them from time to time.

This article really caused me to think about the different social media platforms I regularly engage in, and all of them have most of the seven building blocks.  I most frequently use Facebook and it has all seven building blocks, which include Presence, Sharing, Relationships, Identity, Conversations, Reputation, and Groups.  However, I also use Instagram a lot, and this one (unless there is something I don't know about) does not have the Groups building block.  You can connect with and follow others, but it does not have the group aspect.

This poses the question, is the group building block essential to social media?

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