The Common Craft Show and Lee LeFever offers very simple visual presentations that help define and explain social media and social networking. Social Media in Plain English describes social media as a way for regular people to offer “feedback, organization and promotion” regarding an organization’s products or services directly back to the organization through technology such as blogging or video. Social Networking in Plain English describes how social networks, or “people networks” can “help us find jobs, new friends, and partners”. The major benefit that social networks offer is that they act as a map, like a road map, to allow us to see our network and its possibilities.
About.com further defines social media, and breaks it down into several categories…
“Now that we have answered the question of what is social media, we can move on to social media websites. Because social media is such a broad term, it covers a large range of websites. But the one common link between these websites is that you are able to interact with the website and interact with other visitors.
Here are some examples of social media websites:
- Social Bookmarking. (Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Simpy) Interact by tagging 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, Hi5, Last.FM) Interact by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions.
- Social Photo and Video Sharing. (YouTube, Flickr) Interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions.
- Wikis. (Wikipedia, Wikia) Interact by adding articles and editing existing articles.
And these websites are not the only social media websites. Any website that invites you to interact with the site and with other visitors falls into the definition of social media.”
