Social Media
From CreativeBusiness
'Social media' is a term used to describe websites and applications that encourage social interaction between users. The terms 'social tools' and 'social software' are also used somewhat interchangeably with 'social media'. These phrases are generally used to describe tools such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networks and content sharing sites.
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Blogs
Blogs are easily updated websites, with content published in a 'post', each of which is time- and date-stamped. These posts are displayed in a reverse chronological order, with the newest post first. There is often a facility for readers to leave comments on each post, as well as categories for the easy organisation of content, and automatically generated archives and navigation.
Blogs are often used as a venue for publishing opinion, real life experiences, and other personal thoughts. They allow conversation both between author and readers, and between readers. They require a minimal amount of technical knowledge and have been very widely adopted in countries all around the world. The blog indexing service Technorati is currently tracking 112 million blogs, a number that continues to grow rapidly.
Blogs also provide an RSS feed, which is a machine-readable content feed that users can subscribe to in what's called an 'RSS aggregator' or 'feed reader'. The feed automatically updates, so users do not have to visit the blog's homepage to see when a new post has been published, as it is fed directly to their aggregator where it can be read.
Podcasts
Originating in 2004 as a variant of the blog, a podcast uses the same type of software to deliver "enclosed" rich media files, which are generally audio or video.
In 2008, the term "podcast" has come to commonly mean any media file which is delivered via the web. When RSS is employed, media files can be "syndicated" (distributed) to multiple destinations. RSS-subscribed users are automatically notified of updates via their "podcatching" software (e.g. iTunes, or Google Reader), and media files once downloaded can be transferred to a portable media player when that player is connected to the user's computer.
Most podcasts take a traditional, radio or TV-style programme-based format and are released on a regular schedule. Because of the investment of time necessary to make podcasts, they tend to be updated less frequently than blogs, but provide a different dimension to purely text-based communications. Podcasts, like blogs, can cover a range of topics, from discussions of new gadgets and technology, to music podcasts that highlight new artists and songs, to help and advice, to politics and activism, to the highly personal. Many "mainstream media" companies produce podcasts, but the majority are made by enthusiasts and hobbyists.
The culture of podcasting is very widespread. There are many directories both global and local in which to find podcasts, including Apple's iTunes, which software also works as podcatcher - Podcast.com, ThePodcastNetwork, Podcastnation.co.uk,.
Podcasting News maintains a very active news service, and there are various national podcast groups.
Videoblogs
A further variant of blogs, the videoblog embeds short videocasts, often recorded using webcams or low-end video recorders rather than expensive equipment. Videoblogs have been enabled by the plethora of video sharing sites now available, which both host the video and allow people to embed it in their blogs. Prior to the emergence of these sites, video was often too expensive for most people to host themselves.
Wikis
A wiki is a web page which is easily editable without requiring download or upload. With a wiki, you simply click an edit tab or button, type into the text box, and click a save button. Pages can be edited repeatedly and consecutively, potentially by many different people, and a history of edits is maintained. Navigation is not created automatically, as it is in a blog, but instead through the linking of pages within the text.
Wikis are useful for collaboration on documents and for publishing changeable information. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, an open and free encyclopaedia covering almost every subject imaginable.
Social bookmarking
Websites such as del.icio.us, allow users to bookmark interesting or entertaining websites, blog posts or articles in a central online repository. These bookmarks can be tagged with words or phrases which, along with a short description, provide context to the bookmark. As each bookmark refers to a unique URL, it is possible to collate all of the tags and descriptions provided by each user for a given URL, and to surf the most popular content. This helps users to both re-find content that they bookmarked earlier, and to find new content that will be of interest to them.
Social networks
A social network is a website designed to bring people together around a common object, such as wine, or purpose, such as organising your social life. There is a great deal of variation in the area of social networks, the highly sociable networks of friends using Facebook to the professional networks on LinkedIn. Other popular social networks include Bebo, MySpace, and Twitter.
Content sharing sites
Many sites have been set up to allow people to share their creative works, especially photos and video, but also presentations and slideshows. There are many photo sharing sites, such as Photobucket or Flickr, which allow everyone from the amateur holiday snaps take to the professional photographer to cheaply hosts their photographs and make them accessible to Internet users. There are also a large number of video hosting websites, which have reduced the cost of the previously very expensive act of putting video online to nil. Most famous of these sites is YouTube, others include Viddler and Vimeo. There are music hosting sites such as opsound, cc-mixter and jamendo. And there are general purpose media repositories such as archive.org, OurMedia, which is essentially a front end to archive.org, and lulu which provides facilities for making physical versions of works as well as providing downloads.
Many of these sites have a social component, allowing users to write comments on entries and create networks of friends. These social components have a tendency to be very lightweight, and are often not as conversational as in social networks or blogs.
