Prince Julien › Comments

"Social Media is the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings in more efficient ways." - Ben Parr

"more efficient" compared with what? - Benedikt Koehler

Compared with methods of the past and the present. More efficient than the telephone (one person), more efficient than the television (two-way communication rather than one-way presentation), more efficient than emailing (can be broadcasts publicly rather than just privately). - Ben Parr

Drop the "in more efficient ways" and it fits my idea. - Brian Sullivan

I think it should include email, email lists, usenet and newsgroups in general so your last explanation is superfluous - Brian Sullivan

perhaps the definition should include that it's about many human beings from small groups to mass audiences. Otherwise I'd say face-to-face interaction would be more efficient (more information channels) when dyads or triads are concerned. Maybe it would be possible to replace "electronic and Internet tools" by networked tools? - Benedikt Koehler

Interesting - I don't include email in general, but email lists is a step up, as are newsgroups. However, I have no qualms with "Social Media is the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings." - Ben Parr

the most popular stories, videos pictures here are distributed more via established channels like e-mail/forums than FriendFeed or Twitter. What you're talking about, what you define -- it's been around for 25+ years for early adopters. Are you looking to define something that's new? or just looking for a new label. If it's the latter, you're set, if it's the former, you need a new definition or at least to acknowledge that some forms of social media have been around for decades now. - Robert Seidman

Robert, what's definitely different now is the way we are talking about those technologies. 15 yrs ago we talked about email as a digital letters, about websites as digital books or journals and about the web as such as a digital library. We did not think about those technologies as social media. - Benedikt Koehler

robert, its the latter. Its just that social media has blossomed recently - Ben Parr from fftogo

Benedikt, 15 years ago you may have talked about that stuff that way. Me, Scoble and many others were in Usenet discussion groups and other discussion forums having conversations about how the Internet connected people to have...conversations. I do agree with Ben though, it has certainly blossomed lately. But that's way more via MySpace and Facebook than the stuff I see most "social media" people discussing. - Robert Seidman

Robert, there is always a avantgarde thinking things that flow into mainstream much later. So, I absolutely agree, there has been a conversation about digital connectivity long ago (Rheingold, McLuhan, Flusser, Castells ...). But even now a lot of people think of the internet as an information source, as a virtual library or research tool. - Benedikt Koehler

I was not avant garde in the mid 1990s (Rheingold might have been in the late 80s or early 90s though!). But let's face it, the Internet *is* an information source, a virtual library and a research tool and social media won't change that, nor should it try to. Social media (as Ben defines it) just makes it a better information source, virtual library and research tool... - Robert Seidman

Good definition Ben. It's punchy, yet covers the whole gamut of social media. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately and intend to blog about soon at http://neilojwilliams.net/mission... - in particular, how to answer those pub/lift casual questions that keep coming up: - what is social media anyway (you've answered this neatly) - what is the point in X (facebook, twitter, blogging)? - how do I know it's not just a fad? Can you think of any others? - Neil Williams

Brian Sullivan wrote : "I think it should include email, email lists, usenet and newsgroups in general so your last explanation is superfluous" I don't agree with that... If you incorporate e-mails, the term more relevant is "social software"... Because social software are all the tools used to diffuse informations by Internet network (as email softwares, or instant messagery softwares)... more... - Prince Julien

Prince Julein: Newsgroups,email, email lists, usenet (and instant messaging for that matter) are all also accessible by just using a web browser so I am not sure I buy the disctinction - Brian Sullivan

Kids, kids, kids. It's time we just realize all digital media is now (And to Robert S's point) always has been social. The best rationale i've heard thus far for the existence of the term social media is that agencies wanted to get dollars from the traditional media budgets for SM marketing efforts (aka their interactive divisions). Other than that, I can't see any reason for its existence. - leigh himel