Introduction to Social Media

Introduction to Social Media

The Internet brings about many advances in how people communicate. Today, sharing knowledge and information is a very common thing. By sharing experiences, groups of people with similar interests can participate and contribute to make an idea better.

From the idea of open-sourced software, many great products came from jointly sharing codes, information and knowledge. When people started to expand on this similar idea, they participate with stories, jokes and experiences. By joining forums and different online groups, communities and networks are formed. People can find other folks with similar interests, meet up or even jointly work on a projects when they are miles apart. Isn’t this great?

Social media is not new. Media has been leveraged for sociable purposes since the caveman's walls. Even in the realm of the Internet, some of the first applications were framed around communication and sharing. For decades, we've watched the development of new genres of social media - MUDs/MOOs, instant messaging, chatrooms, bulletin boards, etc.

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What is Social Media?

Social media is the latest buzzword in a long line of buzzwords. Academics still tend to prefer terms like "computer-mediated communication" or "computer-supported cooperative work" to describe the practices that emerge from these tools some might even categorize these tools as "group work" tools. Social media is driven by another buzzword: "user-generated content" or content that is contributed by participants rather than editors. So besides being a buzzword, what exactly is social media?

“Social Media is a group of online media which has the following characteristics.”

Participation – Social media encourages participation and feedback from everyone who is interested, the kind of audience participation blurs the line between media and audience.

Networks – Social media allows networks that share common interests to form and communicate effectively and quickly.

Two-way communication – Social media is a new way of communication which content is distributed by audience, unlike traditional broadcast media, it allows user comments during transmission.

Connectivity – Social media thrives on connecting people, allowing people to share their experiences on the web and add their comments and links to related topics.

Open source – Social media is open to feedback and participation. It encourages voting, sharing and comments and it frowns upon restrictive barriers like passwords.