Smith Business Close-Up: Social Media in Business

Thursday, August 18, 2011, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, August 21, 2011, 7:30 a.m.

Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. You probably use social media – or at least you’ve heard of the major platforms. But how does social media fit into your business?

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, William Rand, assistant professor of marketing, talks about social media at a business tool.

Rand serves as the director of research for the Center for Complexity in Business, the first academic research center focused solely on the application of complex systems techniques to business applications and management science. He also has an appointment with the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and affiliate appointments with the departments of decision, operations & information technologies and computer science. Over the course of his research experience, Rand has used computer models to help understand a large variety of complex systems, such as the evolution of cooperation, suburban sprawl, traffic patterns, financial systems, land-use and land-change in urban systems. His current research examines the diffusion of information across social media platforms.