Before you drink the Kool-Aid and recognize you can’t afford wasting time with social media, take a step back and understand what social media is — and what it is not.
If Wikipedia is the king of definitions then social media is “used to describe media which are formed mainly by the public as a group, in a social way, rather than media produced by journalists, editors and media conglomerates,” stated the human-written encyclopedia in July 2006.
That wasn’t good enough for Joseph Thornley, who, in April 2008, wrote of his frustration with Wikipedia’s changing definition and developed his own:
Social media are online communications in which individuals shift fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and author. To do this, they use social software that enables anyone without knowledge of coding, to post, comment on, share or mash up content and to form communities around shared interests.
Simpler, social media uses “technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value,” suggested John Jantsch in September 2008.
I included Joseph’s and John’s definitions in a similar-veined article on social media last year. Is it time for a revision? Let me know in the comment section below.
At workshops I conduct, I reference Christopher Penn’s diagram of old media (TV, radio, newspapers) and new media (comment-less blogs, podcasts, YouTube); and indicate social media is essentially new media that enables commenting, collaborating, and (as Amber Naslund reminded me today) reengineering.
Angela Siefer pleases the eye with a simple sentence that teases you into a longer elaboration if you click that link:
Social media is a collaborative means of sharing information online.
Ditto for Hayden Sutherland who includes this bit:
Social media are online functionality that support the human need for social interaction.
Are their single sentences sufficient for you? They better be because we are living in a progressive, innovative, and time-crunched world where it behooves you to memorize and recite definitions quickly.
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I like the simpler definitions. I have found that the simpler something is explained, the better I understand it.
That said, I like Thornley’s definition best of the ones you present. It is both simple and yet also comprehensive. The only thing he doesn’t cover is how spammers take advantage of social media.
Ari,
I heartily encourage you, and all others, who understand the need for common understanding of current buzzwords (and phrases) like: Web 2.0, social media, Gov 2.0, new media, etc.
Otherwise, there will be problems, as we move down the road of adoption and implementation, when some people take these terms to mean things that are different from how others understand them. It’s called “miscommunication” and it happens in all kinds of well-meaning relationships.
“But, Honey, I thought you wanted me to do it this way.”
But, back to the proposed definitions. When I came online 20 years ago, I used to “collaborate” and “interact” through the use of bulletin-board systems (BBS) and email-listservs (which, BTW, are largely unchanged, but known now as “google-groups”, etc. So it would appear these “older” tools meet the criteria for “social media”.
But when I see the term “new media” being used as the equivalent of “social media”, then it makes me think that the people who are throwing these terms around may really only be talking about those tools have been introduced after THEY came online.
For many people whose only starting using the Internet AFTER the introduction of Websites, it is very hard for them to conceive of how “collaboration” and “interaction” could have happened at all in the 25 years of the Internet preceding the introduction of websites.
After all, it is hard for people to imagine something that they haven’t experienced (like the pre-Web Internet). Just imagine how hard it was, in the early 1990′s, trying to explain to people about the the Internet. Most people were incredulous to the point of denial. “How could this be?!”
(It wasn’t as easy as just showing them YouTube, becasuse it didn’t exist yet.)
So now, I say to those who think that “collaboration” and “interaction” on the Internet only really started taking off in the last ten years:
“Welcome to our group. You may not have known about us, but we’ve known for a long time that this day would come. We’ve been waiting for you.”
.-= New from Stephen Buckley: Open Government Intiative: Chapter Two of "Reinventing Government" =-.
Heh. Like you, I remember dialing (err, my father did the dialing) into CompuServe and Prodigy around 1982 to download files and read the news. About 10 years later, I interacted on VAX discussion forums, telnetted to internet game sites, and transferred more files. And then there was the time teaching myself HTML when the web was commercially launched on browsers like Mosaic, Netscape, and the textual Lynx. Maybe we “saw” each other then.
Ari, I’m enjoying the insightful thoughts here. Your questions are relevant and are supported by tangible + impressive research.
What truly distinguishes new media from social media? Agree, we need a clearer common definition. Is the word “social” is a clue? New media is perhaps a more infinite and extensive category.
Ideally, people who have previously been hesitant will commit to take part in social media to get a sense for the nuances + scenarios that may arise. Definitions grow from familiarity. I like simpler definitions as well; after taking time to explore the various facts + angles.
Please keep sharing valuable information and asking/exploring these interesting questions.
My take is anything can be called social if there is interactivity. A call-in radio show is social, which is no different than a call-in internet radio show. Technology shouldn’t determine social media; focus on the message and how it’s delivered and reacted, not the medium.
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