Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Social Media: What's it all about?

Social media has been making a buzz in every part of the globe. People consider it as the next big thing to hit the online world. It is utilized as a powerful tool in online digital marketing, as well as in media, and communications. Those in the know-how would easily pick up what's the buzz all about. But to a newbie or a non-IT person, it can be a bit difficult to grasp.

So what really is Social Media?

Social media, as defined by Wikipedia, is an online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. This technology takes in different forms with a common purpose. And that is to bring people together to create a unique community that allows its members to share and publish information about themselves or their common interests, and to connect or communicate with people outside their communities.

Basically, all activities are centered on people generating relationships online with other human beings. There are diverse tools and applications of social media that users can utilize, depending on the type of information they want to share and the manner users want to interact with others.

So if a user wants to make a personal web page, wants to meet friends and keep up on what they are doing he can go to social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Xing, Hi5, and Bebo. Some users would like to join forums like phpBB and Phorum for online discussions on specific topics and interests. Others join content communities where users share particular kinds of content like bookmarked links (del.icio.us), photos (Flickr, Zoomr, Photobucket), and videos (YouTube), or subscribe to audios and videos thru podcasts like Apple iTunes. There is also another form of social media, the wiki, which allows the users to create or edit the actual site contents. One best known example is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

Another form of social media are online journals called blogs (Blogger, Live Journal, OpenDiary, TypePad, WordPress), with entries displayed in reverse-chronological order. A blog may contain a photo, video, commentaries, events, or it's more like a personal online diary of an individual, with links to other blogs or web pages that are related to its topic. Also, blog pages give readers the ability to leave comments in an interactive format. Twitter, a combination of a micro-blogging service and a social networking website, enables its users to send updates and read messages or tweets through SMS.

There are still a lot of social media applications that users can avail of that are free. It can be through emailing, instant messaging, wall-postings, or file-sharing, the list can go on... Social media has been here for quite some time and it's not going away. As long as there are human beings in this world, social media will continue to exist. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what social media is. It is simply about people...

By: Jenette Chiong


Marketing & SEO - Top Blogs Philippines

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