What in the world is all of this social media stuff we keep hearing about?
Social Media is defined as “A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content.”
Well, that by itself doesn’t really help one understand what social media is, or why its important. To me, social media is using any user based site (such as facebook, or twitter) to promote yourself and your ideas.
What does it do for us? This is harder to determine what it really does for the world. Yes, we have people that send twitter updates about their trips to the bathroom or their lunch menu, but there are also people that use twitter to communicate and spread ideas and have quite the following. Most of the people that have mastered social media use a combination of services to bring together a community of followers.
One of the first masters of social media that I can think of is Chris Pirillo. Since the late 1990′s, Chris has been working on a web site called “LockerGnome”. His site has newsletters and blogs from people ranging from nobody’s to higher up people in the technology world. In early 2007, Chris went from former TV host (TechTV) to social media master. He created his live streaming site, Live.Pirillo.com. He took a few different types of new and old technology to help promote himself in ways that were very new and still are somewhat strange even 3 years later.
Pirillo took live streaming video from Ustream.tv, incorporated irc from GeekShed.net, and twitter into one medium to create a real time social following, somewhat the birth of social media.
While Chris Pirillo is an extreme example of social media, most people do find themselves using social media daily. From Facebook, MySpace, Ustream, twitte,r and even IRC, many users are finding more creative ways to make their online image different and more appealing. Technology new and old is brought together in different ways to help bridge everything together. Is this Web2.0? Perhaps; to me, it’s more about finding ways to share ideas with friends. After all, how many of us have clicked on a link on Facebook of a random web page that someone has found and thought it was the best in the world and shared with it others? This is social media after all
Tags: Facebook, GeekShed, irc, Pirillo, Social Media
I find it disturbing when people publish stuff about them going to the bathroom. Haha.
Excellent article, Corey! I had to laugh when you used my boss as an example. I DO know that he is a social media guru, but I tend to honestly forget it. He’s just… Chris to me! hehe
I DO agree, also, with your sentiments that social media is a way to promote ourselves and our ideals. However, I also think of it as a way to connect to others, to collaborate on things, and even to get the latest news faster than ever before.
Great work on this hon. I’m proud of you!
Thanks Kat!
Hey Sprout! Very interesting! Glad to see your putting your education to good use!
Dad
Interesting article, Corey. I liked it and your examples made me laugh. Write more!
Hmmm, fascinating! I’m not going to lie, I never really GOT twitter. It just never made sense to me. When comparing twitter to some of the Pirillo stuff you mention, WoW. I’m starting to think twitter isn’t quite so extremely… odd.
Thanks for the enlightenment Corey!
What is the difference between social media and social networking? or are they both the same?
Also aren’t there security risks involved with social media? I mean anything you put online these days is up there for good, do you really need the whole internet being able to read about your daily life?
I have the same kind of conflict that Duffy seems to be getting at.
Media (social or not) is about the materials, the technology, the tools, the stuff you use. Now of course “medium is the message” as McLuhan says, but there’s a difference, for me at least, in what I’d talk about as ‘social media’ and what I’d label ‘social networking,’ ‘social collaboration,’ or if you want to go old-school, plain old ‘communication.’
Pirillo uses a mash-up of social media (streaming video, synchronized chat, static postings) to communicate with an audience. For my money, he’s not really collaborating much, other than with a very small group of folks on his staff. His geeks.pirillo.com, though is a social networking site. He certainly enables social collaboration, even if he doesn’t dabble about with the little people very often.