A Look At The Core Concept Of Social Media 0
Today, the term social media is being used with gay abandon though not everyone is actually aware about what it really means. You may wonder whether it refers to social networking or social bookmarking or even whether it refers to a wiki.
If you want to find the true definition of the term social media it is important that you break the term down to its constituent parts. Media for example refers to a means of communication and is best exemplified by things such as radio and newspapers which should mean that anything to do with media implies some form of communication.
To take things a step further, when you consider the term in the context of Web 2.0 you would be given to believe that it refers to a website that does more than provide information; it also helps people interact in order to get more information. Such form of interaction can be simple such as providing comments or allowing people to vote on the contents in the website.
It can also be quite complex and this is seen in the example of Flixster that recommends movies to people according to ratings given by other people who share common interests. In normal life, media is more of a uni-directional street in which you can do things more passively such as listen to a radio/television report or read the news but there is not much opportunity for you to also express your opinions.
This is where this new form of media is different as you are on a bidirectional street where you can read and also interact and communicate with others. This brings you to the next question which is whether this form of media is not the same as social news and in fact there are many that confuse the two together. This is because both are so closely related to each other that often it is hard to distinguish between the two.
In truth, the two are different though each may be a form of the other. Now that this has been understood it then pays to find out more about which social media websites exist and how do these function. The truth of the fact is that this particular kind of media is quite broad in its interpretation and so it can cover a wide variety of websites. The one common thread that runs through them all is that there must be opportunity to interact if the website is to be considered one that is of a social medium.
In fact these websites can be classified according to categories including social bookmarking, social news, social networking, social photo as well as video sharing and finally there are wikis. Each type provides their own unique way in which people can interact and in fact if a website allows you a chance to interact then it can be one that can be considered a social media website.
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