subject: Social Media From The Inside Out [print this page] Social media can be defined as a collection of web sites that allow users to share information be it text or picture through an interactive platform. It can be one-to-many whereby one user shares information to a group of people or many to many whereby many users share the information with other users.
Social Media has, in the recent years grown drastically and is now used by a lot of people for different purposes. Most companies have started using social media for marketing purposes making them obtain new customers and retain old ones and this has increased the number of consumers that can be reached by producers. Producers are now able to improve their products as a result of constant interaction with their consumers and are also able to market their products in multiple languages to reach out to the ever increasing number of consumers. Social media are not only for business purposes, some are designed for socialization.
Social media comes in different ways and some of them include
-Social book marking; theses sites offer users a chance to have their favorite online sites shared by others simply by bookmaking them. They also view sites bookmarked by other people making resources easy to find. Examples are Digg and Delicious.
-Social networking: this is an online community of likeminded people. These sites allow friends share content, send messages and have discussions. Facebook is an example of such network sites.
-Blogs. They are online journals that provide the platform for any blogger to write anything that interests them; it also allows them to share information from other sites. Example is Twitter and Word press.
-Photo sharing and video sharing: it allows users to share photos privately or publicly and one can get the photos after getting license rights and they can comment on photos or video submitted. The best example is YouTube for video sharing and Flicker for photo sharing.
-Search: A lot of people use internet to get information and this sites allow one to personalize search. Its benefits are that it reduces time and has a high level of efficiency in giving out information. An example is Google.
The above are example of social media sites available and they can be selected and used in different ways for different purposes as it allows users to interact with a diverse community and share information in many ways depending with the target audience and content to be shared.
