see­ing how big and pop­u­lar social media has become the last few years and that nit­ty­Griddy is an exam­ple of such a site [not the big and pop­u­lar part — at least not yet ], i thought it only nec­es­sary and rel­e­vant to post a brief 101-style piece on the sub­ject. also, it’s very prob­a­ble that many of you have been using social media for years but just didn’t know it. so, if you know exactly what social media is and does, then go ahead and zap this post. but if you don’t, aren’t sure or are the least bit inter­ested, then read­ing on won’t hurt you!

as we can see today, social media has com­pletely trans­formed the way peo­ple con­nect and com­mu­ni­cate with one another. more­over, it has altered the way in which com­pa­nies mar­ket their products.

click on image to enlarge.

as explained by wikipedia, “social media is media designed to be dis­sem­i­nated through social inter­ac­tion… social media uses the inter­net and web based tech­nolo­gies to trans­form broad­cast media mono­logues (one to many) into social media dia­logues (many to many).” “it sup­ports the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion, trans­form­ing peo­ple from con­tent con­sumers into con­tent pro­duc­ers.” these sites are places where peo­ple can share news, per­sonal expe­ri­ences, favorite web­sites, reviews, etc…with other people.

this group of rel­a­tively new online media includes 7 dif­fer­ent kinds:

1. social net­works - the biggest being face­book, myspace, bebo…
2. blogs — prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar, they are a form of online journals.
3. forums - these came about before the term ‘social media’. they are areas for online discussions.
4. wikis — the­ses sites allow peo­ple to add con­tent or edit the infor­ma­tion on them act­ing as a type of com­mu­nal data­base. the most famous is wikipedia.
5. pod­casts — audio and video files that are usu­ally avail­able by sub­scrip­tion through ser­vices like apple itunes.
6. microblog­ging — social net­work­ing com­bined with bite-sized blog­ging where online updates are dis­trib­uted. the best exam­ple is twit­ter.
7. con­tent com­mu­ni­ties — com­mu­ni­ties that orga­nize and share con­tent. the most pop­u­lar being flickr for pho­tos, del.icio.us for book­marked links and youtube for videos.

in gen­eral, social media will share most if not all of the fol­low­ing characteristics:

• par­tic­i­pa­tion — feed­back and con­tri­bu­tions from people
• open­ness — con­tent acces­si­ble to all
• con­ver­sa­tion — tra­di­tional media is about broad­cast­ing whereas social media is based on two-way conversation
• con­nect­ed­ness — exces­sive use of links, resources and people
• com­mu­nity — social media allow for com­mu­ni­ties to quickly form and communicate

social media sites are not just a fad; they are here to stay and evolve.

there you have it; a brief intro­duc­tion to social media. check again soon for more infor­ma­tion and sta­tis­tics about this rev­o­lu­tion­ary form of online communication.

[image credit: fredcavazza.net]

[sources: an e-book by antony may­field from icross­ing, wikipedia]

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plu­gin.