What’s Social Media? A Guide to Digital Networking

If you ask a typical teen what social media is, the response will most likely be “stuff like Facebook.” If you were to ask me the same question, I could take you one step further.

Social Media

Social media is a platform that connects you to the entire world, whether using text, video or image. It can be used to connect with people, to market, to interact, to learn and to understand. Today’s most widely used networks include: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Myspace, WordPress and Linkedin.

Wikipedia also gives a great explanation.

Social media are media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratizati

on of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.

Why waste your time with this? It’s time consuming, invades your privacy and is wrought with annoying marketers. The bottom line is,  using social media can be enjoyable, profitable and a highly sociable experience. For some, it might even be nostalgic if they reconnect with people from their past.  If you are a social media newbie and want to get started, now would be a great time to register on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin.