There is a lot of ‘buzz’ today with the phrase social media being tossed around by Internet Marketers and Internet enthusiasts. Many people find it difficult to give it one common definition due to the various kinds of mediums such blogs, photo sharing, videos etc., that form a part of the social media system.
Social media essentially uses internet technology and tools by which people can share content, express opinion & perspectives on any topic under the sun.
Social Media can take many forms such as
Text: People write on online forums, blogs, and microblogging
Video: Amateur Videos uploaded by your neighbour
Images: Photo that may be shot by professional photographers or the ones taken by in the holidays by your grandmother.
Audio: Audio of some interesting article or topic which you would want others to listen in to just like a radio station. Podcasting is another word for this.
Social media is a form of communication just like any other media such as Newspaper or Television. The word 'Social' got added, because of the way people could interact with others and express and share their thoughts almost instantaneously.
Since social media has the power to influence the way you think, a lot of companies and brands are now using the social media to market their products to consumers.
Some of the examples of social media websites are:
* Social Bookmarking - (Delicious, StumbleUpon) also called as social tagging- which allow users to tag websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people.
* Social News. (Digg, Propeller, Reddit ) Interact by voting for articles and commenting on them.
* Social Networking. (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut etc.,) these allow you to interact by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and sharing photos and discussions.
* Social Photo and Video Sharing. (YouTube, Flickr ) Users can interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions.
* Wikis. (Wikipedia, Wetpaint) Users can add articles and editing existing articles.
If you still want to know more about social media, then i recommend this nice video made by Common Craft.
Hope this post gave some insight into the meaning of social media, and maybe push you to create that Facebook page for yourself at least now.
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