Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of applied sciences, Marl, language: English, abstract: 1 Introduction 1.1 Problem Definition The relevance of web 2.0 will increase enormously until 2012. This view is shared by 83 % of the 110 companies that were interviewed within the scope of a study carried out by the agency creative360 in cooperation with the International School of Management. Considering the economic circumstances companies face with respect to the buyer’s market more and more effort has to be made to maintain competitiveness. Supply exceeds demand, thus forcing companies to extend their marketing activities in order to receive the consumer’s attention for both itself and its products on the one hand. On the other hand, adequate customer service has to be provided, which is inevitable for obtaining customer loyalty. Especially in the field of marketing, traditional techniques of advertising seem to have lost importance. According to the survey of the Monitor Economic Communication in 2010 television is solely used by 20 %, whereas print media is also used by only 60 % of the respondents. Actually, these are considered as mass advertising, appearing rather annoying to the consumers, likewise referred to as interruption marketing. In addition, call centers or email support as point of contact in case of problems are regarded as insufficiently available and requiring long hold time. Due to the rapid progress of the internet a new communication platform has been spooned - social media, the web 2.0. While there were 45 million of internet users in 1997, the number is predicted to exceed 2 billion until the end of the year 2010. Accordingly, what does social media explicitly mean, how can it be used and which benefit can be generated? 1.2 Objectives This seminar paper aims at giving an insight into the wide spectrum of social media, proposing to demonstrate its re