What about Social Media?
More recently there has been a lot of talk of “Social Media” and the term is often used interchangeably with “Web 2.0″. As I see it, there is a clear distinction in that Web 2.0, as discussed in the previous post, is the technology that allows the read-write web or participatory web where as Social Media uses Web 2.0 technology to disseminate information by social methods.
Social Media is the use of Web 2.0 technology which enables interaction and communication between users to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).
It is best understood as a group of on-line media, which share most or all of the following characteristics:
- Participation – social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between media and audience.
- Openness -most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, comments and the sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content – password-protected content is frowned on.
- Conversation – whereas traditional media is about “broadcast†(content transmitted or distributed to an audience) social media is better seen as a two-way conversation.
- Community – social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively. Communities share common interests, such as a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show.
- Connectedness – Most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, making use of links to other sites, resources and people.
Social media are free or relatively inexpensive and accessible tools that, through the use of Web 2.0 technology, enable anyone to publish or access information. It has therefore has become the new “tool” for easy and effective business marketing, and in education and research it provides opportunity to collaborate and network with peers. At this time, there are basically six kinds of social media which over the next few posts we will talk about in turn.
- Social networks – these sites allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with friends to share content and communication. Examples of social networks include Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Blogs – perhaps the best known form of social media, blogs are online journals, with entries appearing with the most recent first.
- Wikis – these websites allow people to add content to or edit the information on them, acting as a communal document or database. The best-known wiki is Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia which has over 2 million English language articles.
- Podcasts and Vodcasts – audio and video files that are available by subscription, through services like Apple iTunes.
- Forums – areas for on-line discussion, often around specific topics and interests. Forums came about before the term “social media†(or “web 2.0″) and are a powerful and popular element of online communities.
- Content communities – communities which organise and share particular kinds of content. The most popular content communities tend to form around photos (Flickr), bookmarked links (del.icio.us) and videos (YouTube).
- Microblogging – social networking combined with bite-sized blogging, where small amounts of content (‘updates’) are distributed online and through the mobile phone network. Twitter is the clear leader in this field.
Related posts: