The definition of SOCIAL MEDIA
This is a quick overview of the first 23 definitions of social media by the following people:
- Ben Parr: “… the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings in more efficient ways”
- Anthony Mayfield: “… a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics: 1) Participation … 2) Openness … 3) Conversation … 4) Community … 5) Connectedness”
- Clay Shirky: “… stuff that gets spammed”
- Robert Scoble: “… Internet media that has the ability to interact with it in some way”
- Brian Solis: “… put the power of media into the hands of the people, which transformed content consumers into content producers” or “Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers.” (see below)
- Stowe Boyd: “1) Social Media Is Not A Broadcast Medium … 2) Social Media Is Many-To-Many … 3) Social Media Is Open … 4) Social Media Is Disruptive”
- Chris Heuer: “… redefining how we relate to each other as humans and how we as humans relate to the organizations that serve us”
- Joseph Thornley: “… online communications in which individuals shift fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and author”
- David Meerman Scott: “… online media with a participatory or interactive component”
- Ike Pigott: “… strange brew of Technology + People + Organization + Freedom”
- Deirdre Breakenridge (PR 2.0, FT Press 2008, xviii): “… anything that uses the Internet to facilitate conversations between people”
- Robert Berkman (The Art of Strategic Listening, Paramount, 10): “Blogs, wikis, digital videos or any other kind of textual or multimedia forms of media and typically generated by ordinary consumers”
- Beth Kanter: “… a way of using the Internet to instantly collaborate, share information, or have a conversation ideas or causes we care about”
- Daniel Nations: “… a social instrument of communication”
- Eric Karjaluoto: “… media that users can easily participate in and contribute to”
- Louis Gray: “… a loose term that largely relies on user generated content”
- Marta Kagan: “… people having conversations online”
- Sarah Worsham: “… it’s about the shared meaning you create with your customers as you interact with them and they with each other”
- Mark Dykeman: “… the means for any person to: publish digital creative content; provide and obtain real-time feedback via on-line discussions, commentary, and evaluations; and incorporate changes or corrections to the original content”
- Ashwini Dhagamwar and Sandeep Arora: “… allows people to participate using Media (text, audio, video, pictures) instantly. Social Media is the story about people participation on a scale never seen before. Social Media is the fusion of technology and social behavior”
- Toby Beresford: “… editorless content prioritised by popularity”
- Jeff Jarvis: “Play is social. Media is play. Social media is fun”
- Susan B. Barnes (Understanding Social Media from the Media Ecology Perspective): “… interpersonal media. It supports the sharing of personal exchanges in new and unique ways”
- Bonnye E. Stuart, Marilyn S. Sarow, Laurence Stuart (Integrated Business Communication in a Global Marketplace): “… a term applied to digital media that enable customers to control content”
- Wayne Kurtzman: “Social media is the use media, including and not limited to text, video, audio and documents within communities where users can opt to consume or generate content.”
- Marc Smith: “Collective Goods produced through Computer-Mediated Collective Action”.
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