- Wikipedia: Social Media.
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of social media arise due to the variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available, there are some common features:
- Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
- User-generated content—such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions—is the lifeblood of social media.
- Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
- Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.
The term social in regard to media suggests that platforms are user-centric and enable communal activity. As such, social media can be viewed as online facilitators or enhancers of human networks—webs of individuals who enhance social connectivity.
- Investopedia: Social Media.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Social media is digital technology that allows the sharing of ideas and information, including text and visuals, through virtual networks and communities.
- Social media typically features user-generated content that lends itself to engagement via likes, shares, comments, and discussion.
- More than 4.7 billion people around the world use social media.
- Social media is credited with helping people build community and faulted for facilitating disinformation and hate speech.
- Social media is also an increasingly important part of many companies' marketing campaigns.
- The largest social media platforms worldwide are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and WeChat.
- Britannica: Social Media.
Social media, a form of mass media communications on the Internet (such as on websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos). Social networking and social media are overlapping concepts, but social networking is usually understood as users building communities among themselves while social media is more about using social networking sites and related platforms to build an audience.
The earliest forms of social media appeared almost as soon as technology could support them. E-mail and chat programs debuted in the early 1970s, but persistent communities did not surface until the creation of the discussion group network USENET in 1979.
