What is Social Media?
It drives me batty when people explain that Twitter is like Facebook except only the status updates. That is such a hideous explanation.
Yes, that is true, but one giant difference is that Twitter messages are completely out in the open whereas Facebook status updates are a) only shared with friends, and b) imprisoned within the walls of Facebook.
Along those lines, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the actual words “social media”. What is social media? What do those words mean? Let’s break it down:
- The word “social” talks about the relationship or connection between people and/or groups of people.
- The word “media” is the plural of “medium” which is the means by which something is transmitted.
In our lexicon, we think of media as transmitting content. So, in sum, “social media” is a form of content transmission that occurs between people.
Think about the implications of that for a second…social media is putting the power of transmission in the hands of the people. That’s a very powerful idea.
So, lets go back to my original point: in some sense both Twitter and Facebook are social media because it is person-to-person transmission of content. However, I would argue that Twitter is a more pure social media because the content is transmitted openly…to all of society.
