Social Media/What is social media?

Social media is the content created, distributed and shared by individuals on the web. Like create and post their own images, video and text based information and then to share to a select group of friends or as publicly to the internet. Or otherwise Social media is where people are talking, sharing information, participating and networking through blogs, microblogs, social networking sites and podcasts

Conversation (talking)

Social media is better for two-way conversation as well as group based conversations. Like comments and like functionalities

Sharing

Sharing a content like self hosted images, videos and information to a closed group or puclic.

Participation

Participations are contributions, comments and feedback from every interested person to get their view and thoughts.

Openness

Most social medias are open for feedback and participation by encouraging voting, comments and the sharing of information. Rarely some are protected for privacy.

Community / Networking

Communities in social media are quick and easy to communicate or discuss effectively. Communities are formed on common interests like music, artist, photography, political issue or TV show.

Social media can be


 * Social Networking
 * Content Communities (YouTube, Flick)
 * Blogs
 * Micro-blogging
 * Forums
 * Podcasts
 * Social Tagging/ Social Bookmarking
 * Wikis
 * Skype/ IM
 * RSS
 * Widgets

Social networks

It allows users to build personal web pages with portfolios and interests. Then to connect with Friends and other users to share medias, content and communications like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

Content communities

These sites organise and share particular kinds of content like image, video or documents like Flickr, YouTube and scribd etc.

Blogs

The well known form of social media are blogs. Blogs are called as online web journals ordered by date, month, year and category.

Microblogging

Social networking with restricted to 2-3 lines of blogging is microblogging. Like twitter small amounts of content or updates are distributed online and through mobile phone network.

Forums

Forums are sites for online group discussion, around specific topics and interests. Forums are a powerful and popular element of online communities even before social media term introduced.

Podcasts

Like Apple iTunes audio and video files that are available through subscription services.

Wikis

The well-known wiki in internet world is Wikipedia4 - the online encyclopaedia with more than 2 million articles. Wiki websites allow a community of people to add and edit the content or information acting as a community based database.