Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide

Introduction

In the past few years, social media has evolved from just being a basic tool for collaborative creation and the sharing of content to becoming an important part of the present media landscape (Evans & Bratton, 2008; Weinberg, 2009). The recent role of social media in the “Arab Spring” and other pro-democracy movements underscores the fact that social media is increasingly becoming the vehicle for the voice of people and consumers worldwide. From a business perspective, companies are actively leveraging social media to create brand communities and crowd sourcing models, gain consumer insights, enhance product/brand awareness, improve search engine optimization efforts, reduce customer acquisition and service costs, and optimize overall marketing and communication efforts (Weinberg, 2009). According to Burson-Marsteller's (2009) report, 65% of Fortune Global 100 companies have Twitter accounts, 54% have Facebook fan pages, 50% have YouTube video channels, and 33% have corporate blogs. A follow-up 2010–2011 survey found a 25% increase in the number of companies using the preceding four social media platforms (Burson-Marsteller, 2011). Forrester Research forecasts that social media will be the fastest-growing interactive channel in the United States, with a 34% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2009 and 2014 (VanBoskirk, 2009).

A global study of social media usage by UM Social Media Tracker Wave 5 (2010) found that almost 75% of the active Internet universe has used online social networking sites, and almost half of them have joined an online brand community. This shows that consumers are actively using online social media to interact and communicate with companies. However, social media usage is not consistent around the world. Recent social media usage data shows that globally there are significant differences in how social media is being used, content is being created, and “crowd wisdom” is being shared. Global diffusion of social media has led to a rise in the consumption of multilingual content and also barriers to communication across languages and countries. This multilingual and cultural diversity on the web is creating a diverse social media landscape, with unique global usage and consumption patterns (King, 2010). Understanding how social media is delivered, consumed, and leveraged around the world can help global marketers in developing, positioning, and delivering global content to achieve marketing objectives such as increasing website traffic, lead generation, improving multilingual search engine optimization, increasing global brand awareness, and, most important, enhancing global revenues.

Thus, the broad objective of this study is to explore global differences in social media diffusion and usage as well as the challenges of dealing with multilingual social media content. This study will analyze patterns of social media usage of about 4,630 global social media users from the United States, Europe, and BRIC countries. The study will provide unique insights into differences in global social media usage and how online users are translating social media content for personal consumption. Furthermore, this study will provide industry insights into emerging technologies being used to develop dynamic multilingual social media content for global consumption.

Global Social Media Challenges

A global web index survey found that online social media usage tends to be driven by national and cultural factors (Smith, 2010a). For example, this survey found that Asia is now the leading region in terms of consumer publishing and sharing information online. This trend is being attributed not only to high Internet growth rates in Asia but also because of Asians' willingness to share information and be more open in terms of online brand involvement (Smith, 2010b). Based on recent estimates, China dominates the blogosphere worldwide, with 162 million Chinese bloggers (CNNIC, 2009). According to Walsh (2008), blogging in China is not just a pastime for opinion leaders but a form of collective behavior emphasizing the cultural need for togetherness in the Chinese society.

It is hard to ignore the importance of culture and language in the diffusion of global social media as these communications are created “by the people—for the people” in a unique online social environment (King, 2010). A Forrester Research social technographic survey of 13 countries reveals seven types of global social media users. These are creators (publish social content), conversationalists (constantly update social content), critics (critique online social content), collectors (gather content from social media), joiners (join social media sites), spectators (view social content), and inactives (little social media activity) (Bernoff et al., 2010; Li, Bernoff, Fiorentino, & Glass, 2007). These seven types of global social media users differ cross-nationally. While globally most people fall under the category of “spectators,” Chinese dominate this category, followed by Americans. Chinese also lead the “collector” category; Germans lead the “inactives” category; Canadians lead as “joiners”; South Koreans lead as “creators” and are tied with Chinese as “critics” (Forrester Technographics, 2009).

Beyond the cross-national idiosyncrasies of social media usage and development, the diversity of languages is creating effective communication and information sharing challenging on a truly global basis. Facebook has more than 400 million active users, with almost 70% outside of the United States. To effectively communicate with non-English users, Facebook has 70 translations available on its site made possible by a vast network of 300,000 volunteers and translators (Facebook.com). Like Facebook, other companies are exploring better ways to develop and share multilingual content on a real-time basis via their crowd sourcing models and social media applications, respectively. However, even the vanguards of multilingual social media content development like Facebook understand the challenge of how difficult it is to share user content in different languages.

This study will present industry insights into emerging machine translation technologies that can help facilitate the linguistic integration of international social communities, which are currently isolated due to language barriers. Linguistic integration of international communities is expected to provide a true basis for global sharing of information and globalization of social media.

Emerging Global Social Media Trends

This section provides an overview of some emerging research and data on global social media usage patterns. In academic literature, social media–related research is growing in areas such as the evolution of social networking sites (Boyd & Elison, 2008), application of social capital theory to understanding consumer behavior online (Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009), social dynamics in online social networking (Tong, Heide, Langwell, & Walther, 2008), the role of psychosocial variables in online social networking (Pelling & White, 2009), relational online communications (Kim & Yun, 2008), self-representations on social media (Grasmuck, Martin, & Zhao, 2009), and some practitioner commentaries related to using social media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of academic research on global social media usage, adoption, and consumption patterns. In most cases country was used more as a context rather than a comparison parameter (Kim & Yun, 2008; Notley, 2009). Therefore, most of the efforts identified toward profiling global social media usage and consumption patterns summarized were found in the business press.

Various surveys in the business press document the emerging data on global social media usage and point to significant differences in social media usage type and form, as well as how consumers interact with social media. A survey of 23,200 active Internet users in 38 countries by the UM Social Media Tracker–Wave 4 (2009) provided insights into social media adoption, uses, involvement, and penetration rates. For example, the survey found that for 16- to 54-year-olds, Danes have the highest penetration of social media, followed by Malaysians, Norwegians, and Swedes. According to this survey, an overarching global social media trend is that social media platforms are becoming more multimedia savvy with the convergence of photos, videos, music, and widgets (small, embedded informational programs). Building on the UM Social Media Tracker–Wave 4, the new Wave 5 reports data from 54 countries with special focus on understanding consumer needs and motivations relating emerging brand communities on social media landscape (UM Social Media Tracker–Wave 5, 2010).

A 2009 Global Web Index large-scale survey of almost 32,000 social media users reported insights into consumer motivations behind the use of social media (Smith, 2010a). Some of the findings from this survey shed light on how people use social media in different countries. For example, staying in touch with a friend was the most frequent use of social media in China. For Japanese, researching product purchases was the most popular social media activity. In South Korea staying up to date on news and events was most popular, and in India researching for work topped the social media usage motivation. A more recent Global Web Index survey in 2010 reports that social media has now reached maturity and users are moving from just being content creators and publishers to using real-time technologies for sharing other people's content and opinions (Smith, 2011).

Another study by Belleghem (2010) surveyed 2,884 social media users from 14 countries to investigate social media usage patterns for various social media platforms. This survey found that Facebook is the most well-known social networking site (83% were aware of Facebook) followed by MySpace and Twitter. The Insite survey (Belleghem, 2010) categorized social media users into four quadrants based on “social media log-in frequency” and “social media activity frequency.” This study also showed that people connected by social media have on average 195 friends online, with Brazil leading the way with an average of 360 friends, followed by Portugal (236 friends) and the United States (200 friends).

Finally, Burson-Marsteller (2009) takes a firm-level view rather than consumer view. This study analyzed the social media efforts of Fortune Global 100 companies between 2009 and 2010. Based on this study, some country-specific insights include the following: Chinese state-owned companies have been a late and slow adopter of social media compared to Chinese private firms and foreign subsidiaries. Brazilian companies have been slow to engage users on social media sites for fear of losing control of the conversation. In Japan, Japanese language social networking sites (e.g., Mixi) are catching up, but Japanese companies have been reluctant to use social media and prefer traditional online forms of communication via company websites. Similarly, Korean companies tend to use social media channels specific to South Korea, such as Korean online cafes and the social networking site Cyworld. French companies have also been reluctant user of social media tools. In Italy, the situation is different, as companies have been actively engaging social media users with their brands. A more recent survey by Burson-Marsteller (2011) provides further insights into how companies are moving more toward engaging and monitoring their social media users. For example, companies are now directly engaging users by using Twitter and Facebook pages to truly converse with them and not just push their own message.

In conclusion, academic and business press yield rich insights into social media development, usage, and diffusion, but this review highlighted some deficits in the literature pertaining to challenges posed by multilingual online diversity and the emergence of several international communities that are silos due to the lack of linguistic integration. There seems to be a lack of research into how companies can create truly global communities where participation is not hindered by language use. The present study extends the scope of global social media research and differs from the past surveys as it focuses on analyzing global online user language preferences, such as their propensity to translate social media content and tools used to translate multilingual social content, and second, by presenting industry insights relating emerging technologies that can help companies connect multilingual communities through linguistic integration.

Sample and Method

Data were collected over a period of about three months from late December 2009 to March 2010, utilizing an international localization and translation company. A combination of direct e-mail and social media channels were used through a snowballing method to deliver the survey worldwide. Surveys were distributed in 21 languages, with subjects selecting the language of their choice and linking to the online version in the same language. All language versions were translated by professional translators working for the translation company.

This collection method yielded 4,630 respondents; 770 respondents indicated that they had never used any form of social media and were subsequently removed from the analysis. Responses were broken down into economic regions (n_BRIC = 670, n_EU = 1,453, n_USA = 1,027) with the remaining responses falling outside of these three economic regions. We utilized economic region as a selection criteria as social networking is both a social and technological phenomenon. Economic regions allow for control of technological access, as social networking necessarily requires a level of economic and technological development. Further, the role of economic development allows for a comparison of business, as well as social usage. Ninety-eight percent of the sample ranged between 21 and 50 years of age, and the gender was 52.2 percent female and 47.8 percent male.

The survey design consisted of 18 questions asking respondents to indicate their reasons for using social media for both personal and professional use. In order to compare differences within continent/region, a series of analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were run. To compare differences between responses across continent/region, a series of Poisson regressions were run. Poisson regressions (Coleman, 1964; Cameron & Tivedi, 1998) are appropriate here because the dependent variable is a count of instances and the coefficients indicates the probability that the occurrence of the variable is statistically different from a comparison variable.

Survey Results

The survey looked into two broad areas related to global social media usage. The study first investigated how global social media is used for business and personal use. Then the study looked at the role of language and translation in global social media usage. Tables 1 and 2 provide the means, standard errors, and mean differences within regions for the usage of social media for business and personal usage. In order to allow for differentiation of variables, we utilize similar superscripts to indicate no significant differences between variables. Therefore, when two variables share the same superscript the relationship between them is insignificant. The uses of social media for business use are highlighted in Table 1.

Table 1. Differences between Economic Regions' Use of Social Media for Business Use

Table 2. Differences between Economic Regions' Use of Social Media for Personal Use

Results from the three economic regions found the primary business use of social media to be for building business contacts (BRIC mean = .403; EU mean = .429; US mean = .595). Surprisingly, for both BRIC and EU countries, the second-most-common user response was that they “did not use it for business practices,” indicating that the strategic role of social networking has yet to be leveraged in these regions. Following this, the respondents tend to use social media for business purposes as a research and advertising tool, utilizing it to read content, engage in job search, and highlight expertise. Following these, users utilize social media for business use as a search mechanism designed to help find leads and engage in market research.

For US social media users, insignificant differences in social media usage indicates that they hold a wide range of strategic reasons for utilizing social media. This implies that US consumers are utilizing these tools for several reasons and as a multifaceted strategic tool instead of solely building contacts.

For personal use, social media was overwhelmingly used to “connect with friends and family” (BRIC mean = .857; EU mean = .827; US mean = .826). Following this, consumers use social media to read content and engage in connections with like-minded people as well as making friends. This highlights the perceived use of social media as a place to connect and meet others through these electronic tools. Those choices least selected include creating new content, reading reviews, and finding a job, indicating that the use of social networking is not serving as a new replacement for search and information seeking, with individuals preferring different methods for product information search and job hunting.

Table 3 presents the means, stand deviations, and chi-square differences for these questions between regions. Here we find that even though both EU and BRIC regions rate “I don't use it for business” as the second-most-common social media use, the level of difference between BRIC countries and the EU is significantly different from the United States. These results are more telling in that they indicate that different regions have different goals in the use of social media, both for business and personal usage. Globally, both BRIC and EU regions are more similar to one another than to the United States in their business usage of social media.

Table 3. Differences between Question of Social Media for Business or Personal Use by Economic Region

There were several differences between regions regarding social media for personal use. There is more congruency between the EU and the United States on personal usage than within BRIC countries. BRIC nations are more avid users of the media to make friends and connect with others than US and EU users, who instead differentiate their usage of social media on a personal level. By this we mean that US and EU users focus on more individual reasons for using social media. Conversely, the BRIC regions are more likely to share content and do not significantly differentiate their main reasons for using the media. For example, BRIC nations predominantly use social networking to connect with existing friends and family. However, they do not distinguish between making friends, connecting with others, or reading content. This is in stark contrast to EU and US users, who after connecting with friends make a significant choice in their use of social media to read content, followed by connecting with others, and then sharing content. BRIC nations do not differentiate in their primary reasons for using social media, which implies that they are more multifaceted users of social networking, whereas EU and US users are more directed in their supporting reasons for using social media.

Finally, while there are significant differences between regions for both business and personal usage, the overall rankings of reasons behind the usage of social networking are quite similar. When we look at the rankings, globally users tend to rank their reasons for using social networks in a similar manner: that is connecting with friends and family, as well as making new friends topping the list of top social media uses.

In terms of primary social media tools for both business and personal use, MySpace was found to be the most popular across economic regions, with Twitter following. Interestingly, Twitter was found as being equal to MySpace in BRIC countries. However, for personal usage the differences between the four most popular means of social networking are smaller. Facebook and MySpace tend to lead personal usage of social media across the three regions. When looking across regions, we find differences throughout, with the EU leading the way in utilization of social media in business across all platforms, with the exception of LinkedIn for business and Facebook for personal usage. Tables 4 and 5 highlight the differences in social media usage for both business and personal usage.

Table 4. Differences in Usage of Social Media for Business Usage by Region

Table 5. Differences in Usage of Social Media for Personal Usage by Region

When asked about other social networking resources utilized in lieu of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or Twitter, global respondents overwhelmingly chose YouTube as the next resource, with Flickr being in the global top five. Again, there is more similarity between the United States and EU following up, with Flickr, Delicious, MSN, and Digg all claiming top ten spots. The greatest discrepancy comes from the wide variety of selections made by BRIC countries, indicating the role of regional and country level preferences. While the top resources, such as YouTube and Flickr, are globally utilized, specialized and regionalized preferences quickly become predominant players, highlighting the need for firms to recognize these cultural preferences in their selection of a social media platform. For example, Orkut is widely used in our BRIC sample, due to its popularity in Brazil, but falls dramatically in usage for both the United States and EU. In China, QQ, Q Zone, and Xiaonei are popular, as they are local Chinese social media platforms catering to local tastes and language preferences. Table 6 highlights these differences.

Table 6. Comparison of Alternative Social Media Platforms and Translation Tools across Regions

When asked to discuss the role of translation within social media content, BRIC countries made use of translation more than the other two regions. Further, when this translation occurred, they were more likely to use machine translation than the other two regions. Human translation was the most preferred method for EU and US respondents. The most common use of translation across regions was to translate messages followed by comments. This indicates that individuals translate the content relating directly to the page/message they are viewing, but not for information search. This implies that when firms fail to translate information, consumers are not retranslating that information on their own, unless it is a directed personal message.

More specifically, the strongest preference for translated content was seen in the case of China, where 86 percent of Chinese preferred content in simplified Chinese. It seems India is one of the only countries in our sample that uses more machine translation than human translation. Both human and machine translation have their challenges in the present state of the industry. Few individuals are multilingual or have access to translators to help them translate social media content. In terms of technology, machine translation has not yet evolved enough to take into account the grammatical and idiomatic nuances of translation. However, new and existing technologies are being leveraged by companies to enhance the quality of machine translation. In the next section, we explore industry insights into a cutting-edge tool that leverages both machine and human translation to allow for real-time translations. Tables 7 and 8 highlight these differences.

Table 7. Types of Media Translated by Region

Table 8. Mechanisms of Translating Media by Region

Managerial Implications

Findings from this study show that among all world regions BRIC countries tend to be the least proactive in using social media for business use but are avid users for personal use. But even in terms of personal use, the study shows that BRIC nations predominantly use social networking to connect with existing friends and family. While this finding can be related to slower diffusion of social media in BRIC economies, it could also have some cultural explanations. Brazil, India, and China tend to be more collectivist than most European countries and the United States. In collectivist cultures, it is easier to connect and communicate with people if they are part of the culture or “in-group,” and time and trust is needed for “out-group” members to be accepted in the group. Thus, when doing business in collectivist countries like China or Brazil, it is important to first develop trusting relationships before using social media as a business Rolodex (e.g., the role of Guanxi in China). Social media in collectivist countries may play a more important role in terms of nurturing and maintaining existing business relationships than as a tool for developing new business contacts and relations online.

Another interesting finding of this study shows that while Twitter or Facebook may have some global appeal, Orkut is still very popular in Brazil, and in China, QQ, Q Zone, and Xiaonei are better positioned to cater to Chinese local preferences. Thus, when targeting international markets, companies need to consider popular local social media sites in vogue in specific countries.

Our survey shows that there is a paradox when it comes to multilingual social media. Eighty-five percent of people surveyed use social media for business use. Almost 40% of worldwide social media users prefer content in languages other than English, but only 23% are actually translating their social media content. In short, organizations are failing to meet the demand for multilingual social media. The reasons are clear. Historically, there have been two options for translating content—human translation and automated machine translation. When it comes to social media, those traditional approaches face three major barriers: time, cost, and quality.

Human-based translation services provide a high level of quality. Unfortunately, human translation is expensive and time consuming. As a result, human-based translation is typically done in advance, in anticipation that a user would be interested in the content in their language. While human-based translation is certainly appropriate for content such as software and medical devices, it may not be as practical for social media that requires a more immediate or real-time response. In the case of social media and other applications, responding quickly to local language demand is often more important than providing a “perfect” translation.

The other option for translating social media is automated machine translation (MT). This can be a valuable tool, as it allows social media publishers to offer translation instantly and dynamically, as a user expresses interest. Clearly, MT removes the time barrier of traditional translation. Unfortunately, the quality of MT is often very poor, rendering the translation unintelligible and unreliable. Therefore, when it comes to translating social media content, the traditional approaches have largely failed. As a result, the majority of social media content is never translated. The next section describes cutting-edge technological developments that combine human and machine translation to deliver more accurate real-time translation of multilingual content.

Industry Insight Into the Custom Real-Time Translator (CRT) Technology Tool

Emerging technologies can help companies leverage both human translation and machine translation to provide real-time translation capability for social media users worldwide. The “GeoFluent: Custom Real-Time Translator” (CRT) is an innovative technology solution that uses the translation workspace and machine translation engine to provide higher-quality real-time translations (Geoworkz.com, 2011). A nontechnical description of custom real-time translation technology is included here, along with two case scenarios of how this technology can be used for translating user-generated content and providing multilingual customer service.

The GeoFluent tool is an example of a custom real-time translation tool that leverages a technology platform called the Translation Workspace. Translation Workspace is a cloud-based technology that contains “Translation Memories” (TM) or content that has been previously translated by humans. Translation Workspace can be used by a firm to increase the productivity of its high-quality, human-based translation by building upon previously translated content stored in the cloud. The second important technology leveraged for custom real-time translation is an automated machine translation technology that instantly translates content and communications into multiple languages. The design of this machine technology or MT engine is such that it can be trained or “tuned” to increase quality. Studies have shown that the highest increases in MT quality output occur when the engine is trained using domain-specific and even company-specific translation memories. By utilizing this method in conjunction with Translation Workspace, a firm can utilize the high-quality human-translated content in Translation Workspace to train and customize its MT engine. In doing so, a firm can have a fully automated solution that can be rapidly customized using existing content and be configured for social media translation to increase translation quality and availability.

Organizations are failing to reach the 40% of users that desire social media content in languages other than English. Technology solutions that effectively leverage machine and human translation could allow companies to offer a “translate now” capability on their blogs, message boards, and social network platforms so that users can get an instant translation as they need it. In addition to demand in a social media environment, organizations with customer service operations are also rushing to adopt this technology. The motivation is twofold—to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction and avoid costly calls to a technical support center. Next, we discuss two case scenarios to show how companies could benefit from custom real-time translation technology as a solution for translating user-contributed content and providing multilingual customer support on a real-time basis, respectively.

A global security technology company (name withheld for privacy reasons) wanted to increase international sales; it began by looking at how it could extend its user-contributed content to its international and non-English-speaking customers. It soon became obvious that human translation methodologies would be ineffective in handling the continually changing content, and the company quickly realized that it would have to find a real-time language translation solution. With the help of a custom real-time translation technology solution, the company could easily integrate on-demand translation into all of its support centers, forums, and web pages providing its non-English-speaking customers with immediate access to dynamic user-contributed content and rich support resources in many languages.

Another example is the case of a major North American retailer (name withheld for privacy reasons) exploring the potential of custom real-time translation technology. When a major North American retailer specializing in housewares, furniture, and home accessories faced the business challenge of expanding its online and brick-and- mortar retail operations into three new global markets, the company knew that increasing online engagement between agent and customer could play a valuable role in converting interested international prospects into loyal customers. The problem was that hiring in-country French, German, and Spanish agents would cost the company five times as much as hiring English-speaking agents. The immediate need was for a cost-effective solution that would enable the company to engage global customers proactively in their native languages without having to incur additional labor expenses for international sales and support. The company was also concerned with how they could preserve their brand integrity in global markets without having their corporate identity lost in translation. By harnessing the power of custom real-time translation technology, the company can extend the benefits of proactive multilingual chat to its international and non-English-speaking customers in the three target markets. Moreover, because the custom real-time translation technology solution like GeoFluent can be trained in specific linguistic patterns and industry terminology, the company would be able to easily preserve its brand and corporate identity in the new markets. Leveraging such automated custom translation technology can empower the retailer to expand without incurring the costs of additional facilities, in-region hiring, recruiting, staffing, attrition, and everything else that comes along with supporting customers in new markets.

As customized MT gains traction, organizations will learn how to remove the time, cost, and quality barriers that have inhibited multilingual communication. As social media continues to grow at an unprecedented pace in global markets, it will likely be at the forefront of embracing the real-time, multilingual communication solutions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the goal of this study was to address the apparent gap in the current literature regarding language usage in global social media. This study also tried to uncover global social media usage patterns for business and personal use across economic regions in North America, Europe, and Asia. This cross-regional analysis yielded global social media usage patterns and showed that, while there are emerging similarities in social media usage, countries show unique local preferences in terms of how they utilize social media for business and personal use. It is evident that Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter usage is not uniform across the world, and there are significant differences in terms of cross-regional preference for these social media platforms. It is also evident that country-specific social media platforms are, in fact, widely used along with global giants like Facebook, Twitter, and others. Finally, the study showed that local language preferences for social media usage are strong across the world.

This study also took an economic regional view of social networking trends. Thus, our analysis is limited by the economic regional comparisons that are made. Additional analysis and research across countries and among particular cultural and psychological components is needed to address differences between economic and cultural environments. Future research is also needed in terms of further understanding the specific cross-cultural differences in consumer motivations for use of social media and expectations for localization and translation of social media. Research is also needed to further integrate machine translation technologies with human translation to help connect islands of multilingual social communities and bridge language differences on the web. This study provides only a snapshot in time of the global social media usage and language expectations. We are seeing social media platforms like Facebook gaining more traction and MySpace losing market share, and also consumer motivations for social media usage are evolving. Thus, longitudinal studies are needed to assess how global social media usage and consumption patterns tend to evolve.

This research is also subject to some methodological limitations. The use of an on-line survey tool limits the respondents to those who both have immediate access and self-reported usage of social networking. This could create a bit of self-selection bias within the study. Further, the use of categorical responses in determining social media usage is limiting in the analysis that can be performed; additional research would benefit from measuring the magnitude of usage for each category in addition to the type of usage.

Companies need to localize and translate their social media platforms if they truly want to penetrate global markets. We hope the findings from this study will help companies better understand global social media patterns and consumer propensity to translate social media content on real-time basis. The case scenarios of a custom real-time translation tool could serve as an example of how to leverage both human and machine translation for achieving real-time translation of social media.