Paper Title
The Era of Hyper-Connected Society and the Changes in Business Activities
Abstract
A hyper-connected society is emerging in which various connections with people and people, things and people,
things and things are amplified. The development and diffusion of the system and equipment for the hyper-connection is also
rapidly taking place, and relevant media such as SNS and IoT are also frequently appearing. It is not uncommon that there
will soon be a hyper-connected society where all things and people are connected. In the era when everything is really
connected, it can be predicted that companies and consumers will be able to access a wide range of information, easily
accessible to the enterprise. However, recent trends in corporate activities are somewhat different from these expectations.
As the proposition, the activities of individuals are very active in related social media, but the activities of companies seem
relatively passive. There are a lot of publicity posts on companies' homepages, but there are not so many ways to comment
or reply to them. In addition, the system does not seem to replace traditional business activities when hyper-connected.
Although online activities such as shopping malls are increasing rapidly, they do not completely ignore off-line activities
such as the operation of sales outlets. The passive connection of these companies seems to be intentional rather than
coincidental, which is against the active information access of consumers. It is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers
to make direct calls or emails to company representatives. On the homepage, the phone number of the company
representative is hidden, and it is becoming difficult to find e-mail and social media accounts. Although the contact
information of the homepage person or the public relations person is seen, when making a telephone call, it is necessary to
go through several gateways of the answering machine and the direct connection with the person in charge is difficult. In
other words, consumers want to connect with the company's representative to get more information, but companies are afraid
that exposure of corporate information through connection whether it lead to the leakage of corporate assets. Conflicts
between consumers' desire to get the information they want through the connection and the company's efforts to block
information are often expressed through internal corporate accusations. While a hyper-connected society can provide new
benefits to those who have been unable to obtain information in the meantime, but corporations may need to seek
information blocking measures. The passive connection of these companies can have a negative impact on consumers.
Hyper-connectivity is defined as always on, always accessible, rich and versatile, interactive, accessible to people, not
objects, and always stored. It has become an era when companies face the dilemma of actively responding to consumers'
connections while blocking the exposure of important information utmost.
Index terms - Connected Society, Hyper-Connected Society, Social Media, Corporate Information, Information Blocking,
Information Security