What is Social Media?

Social Media

Social Media is the future of communication, a countless array of internet based tools and platforms that increase and enhance the sharing of information. This new form of media makes the transfer of text, photos, audio, video, and information in general increasingly fluid among internet users. Social Media has relevance not only for regular internet users, but business as well.

Social media embraces web-based and mobile-based technologies to facilitate interactive communication between organisations, communities and individuals. 

Platforms like Myspace, Facebook, and Linkedin have created online communities where people can share as much or as little personal information as they desire with other members. The result is an enormous amount of information that can be easily shared, searched, promoted, disputed, and created.

This social media map provides a visual summary of some of the most common types of social media platforms, and their purposes. 

Characteristics of social media

Online platforms that enable users to:

• create, share, adapt and reuse content engage in digital dialogue and collaboration
• create linkages, groups and communities
• have peer-to-peer contact
• have social interactions with other users
• create and maintain their own user
• profiles and IDs

Online platforms:

• are largely public, but walled gardens exist within some platforms
• are accessible 24/7 from a range of devices and locations
• generally expose users to an unknown audience

Content on a social media platform is:

• discoverable
• community moderated
• persistent
• subject to conditions of use