You probably know many of the sites, programs and services we call social media. You probably have a profile on Facebook, or a user account on YouTube, and most likely you have used MSN or Live messenger for some time in your lives.
But what exactly is social media?
Social media is, in short, the services and the channels we use when we share information with others, and the most important common characteristic is the dialogue. That is what's important with social media: just that they are social. We chat and update each other about things we are concerned about. We add friends, and share links with them. We produce content through blogging and YouTube. We share content, anywhere. And that's why the Internet was made.
The largest
It has in the past year been a sort of competition about who is the greatest of Twitter and Facebook, partly because Twitter has generated much blest in the traditional media. It caused a lot of celebrities that are very active on Twitter, and a couple of cases where ordinary people have gotten the news long before your newspapers or television has managed to grab the case. But this battle between Twitter and Facebook is media created.
Twitter to send short updates or to share links with others, while Facebook on the other hand is more about keeping in touch with old friends, share photos, and keep track of concerts and events. But Facebook has in recent years increasingly become a gathering place for protests and signature campaigns. We go along with many others about which we burn for, whether it's Urge, politics and greater community involvement, or you will make your house into a pirate ship.
Many people use Facebook rather than MySpace to keep up with what's favorite band doing these days, and it is probably one of the reason why you see that MySpace will lose traffic to Facebook.
A couple other social network services that are worth knowing about is Digg.com and LinkedIn.
Digg.com is a great portal for sharing news and useful links, and the system is based on that match the case to the front, by that "love".
LinkedIn is a site for social networking at work,
Much more than just social networking
Although most media I've mentioned so far are based around the closed or open social networking, social media can be much more than that.
Podcasting, and other television and radio actors' recordings of broadcasts, can also be seen as part of the social media, since most involve the listeners or viewers. Podcasts and Web television is going to be a worthy challenger to television and radio.
Blogging is, if we look away from the blog portals like blogger and iPublish, a relatively stand-alone medium, where we share opinions, create debate and comment on each other's posts.
Open Web Awards - Social Media Edition
Mashable, the self-proclaimed guide to social media, arranges for the time the third annual Open Web Awards, and you may nominate both individuals, companies, websites and other relating to the social network in a bunch of categories. The nominations progress through 15 November. You can vote until 13 December and 15 December this year the winners are announced .
Look in on Mashable for more info.
Social media in the future
Podcasts and Web Developers predict that Twitter could be dead within five years, one could well imagine. Twitter will not disappear anytime soon, but will gradually change to fit into the niche it is trying to dig out. Now Twitter has reached an agreement with Microsoft Bing and Google, and will be able to make money in the context of their search services. A good step on the road to a financially secure future, but Twitter is still far behind Facebook in terms of income sources. No wonder, since Facebook has more room for ads.
In the future we will see a bunch of new web apps, or web-based applications, online communities who come and go, and hopefully, a better way to collect our personality on the web.
