Talk:Social media/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

As i look at it after studying it for almost half a year, i think it isn't about the definition but about what has changed since traditional and new media. I think that social media should refer to all media (most likely on the internet) that facilitates social behavior like sharing, debating, recommending, playing games and so on. So in terms of definitions i would prefer - also for future and earlier forms of this kind of media - to define it by the sum of channels that facilitates social behavior. Social behavior will only occur when 2 or more people communicate with each other. This doesn't have to mean they have to speak to each other as a form of communication but also can be other forms of communication like smiling et cetera.

If we would define it like this a phone call or text message could be defined within social media. I don't think a phone call or text message shapes a new term but together with all other technologies - which we can communicate with each other today - do.

SJ v Eijk

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.147.221.156 (talk) 00:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

--69.126.178.19 (talk) 03:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC) I agree with most of the above, but have suggested some modifications to the core definition. I wrote a book on social media entitled "Content Nation," in which I define social media in terms of highly scalable publishing technologies that enable people to influence others. I've refined that definition here to focus on the fact that social media is, first and foremost, content, not technology. Please reference the Wikipedia definition of [Content_(media_and_publishing)|content], which I defined four years ago and contributed to its development here on Wikipedia. If content is both information and experiences, then this aligns with your concept of communications such as phone conversations being social media.

The other factor that I think distinguishes social media in today's sense is the availability of readily accessible and highly scalable publishing technologies. Personal phone calls don't scale up easily into global audiences. Social media is significant in that a very personal set of communications can be shared rapidly with a global audience through the highly scalable communications of the Internet and mobile communications networks. The technologies that make this possible are highly accessible, many of them available for free or for minimal expenditures. This makes them more readily used as a direct extension of human communications abilities: you don't have to be an "elite" person to access them or to control them.

In general I think that the article is quite good, I think that only the base definition needed some tweaking. --69.126.178.19 (talk) 03:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello all, here is one for discussion. We have coined an abbreviation for Social Media, useful for hash tags #SoMe http://socialmediamafia.com/2008/07/socmed/ the play on words of course is highly amusing. Chrishambly (talk) 22:12, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The term "social media" will only be hijacked by the marketers if sources like Wikipedia allow them to. Social media is a valid term to encompass the phenomenon of social constructs that arise out of user-generated content. This is perhaps the most significant phenomenon to occur to media since the rise of mass media. If someone has a more appropriate name for this phenomenon, let's hear it. But don't delete this entry. (I also don't understand why some of the background around its origins has been edited out.) J.D._Lasica 22:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it's completely inappropriate to take down the campaigns section of this post. First of all, those campaigns UTILIZED social media to make a difference, how is that not related to social media? Social Media is certainly not a stagnant topic, it changes everyday. This is not an entry for something like "Charles Darwin" where the information is finite and irrefutable. As social media changes, and part of those changes involve campaigns, there should a. be a history of these changes and fluctuations in the entry, and b. be left up as a forum for discussion. People editing these pages on Wikipedia, are obviously maintaining some personal definition of what social media is. Wikipedia is not a place to promote your own agenda. You can not just unwittingly take things down because you do not fully understand the topic and are not open to changes within the field. Do a little research, Social Media is no longer Myspace.(Saramcgo 16:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)).

Please go easy on this article... it's definitely a worthy topic for wikipedia.. but it's just getting going. I don't get the whole business section at all and maybe it shouldn't even be here... but I'm leaving it in in the hopes that someone will revise it and work it out. The only thing I removed was this http://affirmativesolutions.com/ from the examples of social media services... because it's a blog... for a company or something... maybe it should be under the businesses section.. but wikipedia is not a directory... so I'd advise against any such links altogether. Nothing personal aggainst affirmativesolutions.--mmeiser 21:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

What's the deal with the whole "campaigns" section? What do charity campaigns have to do with social media? I think that section should be removed. (thinking it over...) So I did. nep 19:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

hey im find == 'Social Media': A marketing buzzword and a neologism (WP:NEO) == 'Social Media' appears to be a marketing buzzword of limited currency. WP:NEO provides:

To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term.

The current references of this article contain nothing that qualifies as a reliable source (WP:RS), and in fact they all appear to be marketing fluff. Does anyone else agree that this article should be nominated for deletion? EdJohnston 21:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The term seems to be getting widespread outside of marketing and investor types, and is not much different than "Web 2.0" and other similar fuzzy terms. The danger is that it's defined so broadly that it can cover just about anything on the web. I'm not attached to the article in its current state, and would be happy to see a more critical discussion — in the meantime, I've added a link to Robert Scoble's discussion of the term. David 23:47, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This article is better after user:Dpm64's revision, which cut it down substantially. Even after the revision, I note that there is still no citation for the first use of 'social media'. We should be sensitive to the issues of WP:NEO, and to the fact that people will cite Wikipedia for this as though it were a well-defined term. The article still does not appear to meet this WP policy criterion (mentioned above):

To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term.

Dpm64, I followed the new link to Robert Scoble's blog that you just added to the article. It does lead to some complaints about our Wikipedia article (probably the one before your improvement). Here is one of the complaints, by Dare Obasanjo:

I tried reading the wikipedia entry for social media but ended up more confused than ever. The first paragraph seems OK and it reads

Social media describes the online tools, platforms and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.

This seems like an explanatory definition until you consider that this pretty much describes the majority of the Web today...

Here's my own final comment. I found the addition of the link to Robert Scoble's blog interesting, but I wonder if it's against our current guidelines against linking to blogs. There may be some fluffy topics (like this one) where blogs have the best copy, but it's not clear that we will do a good job trying to cover such topics. EdJohnston 01:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Apologies, I wasn't aware of the blog policy. Personally, I'd prefer to evaluate blogs on the same criteria as any other source — most are rubbish, some are useful, and a few are authoritative — but I'll defer to any standard Wikipedia policies. I repeat that I think that the term social media is widely-enough used (i.e. not just one small group promoting it) that it justifies a short article, just as equally fuzzy Web 2.0 does. Perhaps the article needs to include more critical commentary on the term itself as a term. David 11:17, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Under 'Links normally to be avoided', WP:EL has:

Links to blogs and personal webpages, except those written by a recognized authority.

I imagine that a link to Scoble might be used to liven up a discussion, but I'm not sure we could use such a link as a reference for anything factual, under WP:RS. I assume that John Baez's blog could be cited in a physics article, since he's a recognized expert in mathematical physics, but the blogs that have something to say about Social Media are presumably just offering opinions or editorial comment. EdJohnston 20:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Scoble is well-known and thoughtful. He might not be authority enough to prove a controversial fact, but what he says *does* matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby (talk • contribs) 02:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Citations showing first large scale distribution of widgets to the masses on the Internet. Miniclip's Dancing Bush game was freely syndicated to all websites via a portable chunk of code (widget):

- Wall St. Journal, Jan., 2002 article referring to 2001 Dancing Bush sensation: http://www.domainmart.com/news/WSJ_ecommerce-marketing2.htm

- Library of Cogress, archive, Oct, 23, 2001 : http://wasearch.loc.gov/sep11/2001*sa_/dancingbush.com/ clearly shows Dancing Bush freely syndicated via the widget code: "Put on your site for free" widget code link under Dancing Bush game. This is the earliest archived example of a large website freely offering widgets.

- Google: Go to google and type in "dancing bush" to see the thousands of websites that Dancing Bush was syndicated to via the widget code.

- Comscore Media Metrix Industry reports: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?id=254 showing Miniclip as a top newcomer to the Internet (a major website) in 2001 with over 1 million users.

- Dancing Bush game with 2001 copyright notice and syndication widget code link under the "more" button: "Put this on your website for free" http://www.miniclip.com/games/dancing-bush/en/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 222.155.173.208 (talk) 01:30, 25 February 2007 (UTC).

- Miniclip sharing precedes all the sites mentioned here cited by Alexa.com: see charts: http://www.alexaholic.com/Miniclip.com+wikipedia.com+myspace.com+youtube.com+secondlife.com http://www.alexaholic.com/miniclip.com+digg.com+flickr.com

I've seen this term and couldn't make much sense of it - this is quite likely because it seems to be a type of 'buzz' word, anyway, definition problems/confusion may come out of the fact that all media has a social nature (media is a form of communication, communication is social). Maybe this term came about because these types of websites seemed more social-oriented. I assume the term refers to something like '[fast] public viewable, mass public affected/altered/contributed communication' or '[unprofessional] mass public media' or 'socially acting media' or something (pardon the lack of decisiveness today). Spur 07:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

See my comment above at #'Social Media': A marketing buzzword and a neologism (WP:NEO). Social media seems to be a term used by marketers to promote certain kinds of advertising. It is not clear it has any neutral descriptive meaning for which there is general agreement. After all the time that has passed, this article still has no reliable sources. A line from Scoble and a web site created by Dion Hinchcliffe that claims the name 'Social Computing Magazine' is not enough to go on. Note this quote from policy:

To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term.

Can anyone explain why we should retain this article and allow new non-referenced material to be added to it? Isn't deletion a logical option? EdJohnston 01:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

It is three years later now. There are 17 references to this article. Time for the flag to be removed?!?!Anneaholaward (talk) 21:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the flag should be removed as social media is no longer just "buzz" and plenty of credible references are available to validate the content. I will continue to clean up this article and add more content as it becomes available. New World Tech Girl (talk) 01:38, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I think OneWorldTV is a prime example of Social media, an open documentary platform that caters for people with both slow and fast connections. Why cant this be added as an example of this topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakeyjamie (talk • contribs) 24 August, 2007

You are requesting that OneWorldTV should be added to a section that features 'prominent examples' of social media. There is not much evidence that this is a prominent web site. OneWorldTV gets 53,000 Google hits, while YouTube gets 317,000,000 hits, i.e. YouTube is better known by a factor of 6,000.

Far from being universally known, OneWorldTV suffers from a lack of third-party sources to show its current importance (the references date from 2002). The article on OneWorldTV has been tagged for notability. Please improve it if you have information available. EdJohnston 15:46, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Including external links might help frame the topic and show evidence that 'social media' is a well defined concept. I had added a link to the the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. The entry page focused on the 2008 conference, but links to the pages for the 2007 conference and earlier symposium. The 2007 pages have links to tutorials and papers. AFAIK, ICWSM is the only conference that covers all aspects of social media including perspectives from mathematics, computer science, sociology, anthropology, business applications, computational linguistics, etc. Full disclosure: I'm involved in helping to organize ICWSM 2008. Tim Finin 14:49, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying your connection to the conference. Inclusion of this link would be more plausible if there were third-party reference attesting to the notability of this conference. 'Social media' is now a popular term among marketers. The Social media article is destined to become a spam target unless there is a conscious effort to keep the content simple and well-sourced, and avoid using it as a vehicle for advertising or promotion. Unfortunately, mention of upcoming conferences might be thought to fall in the promotional area. EdJohnston 15:12, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Would pointing to the past 2007 conference (ICWSM 2007) be less so? It does have links to papers, tutorials and other material from the conference that would be valuable for someone interested in getting a deeper understanding of the issues. Tim Finin 19:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The most valuable change would be the addition of actual content to the article, rather than a link, from a paper whose importance can be shown via third-party commentary. If such content were added then including a reference to the original paper in the reference list would be appropriate. To get you started, note that the main paragraph of the article has no references at all for any of the information there (except for one single link to scobleizer.com). Getting references for the claims made in the article would be a big benefit. EdJohnston 19:44, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

While I think it is warranted to be critical of advertisers and their desire to hijack the term social media, I think that we also have an opportunity to define social media. I suggest that social media serves as an umbrella, defining all of the activities that come together in a medium that uses one or more senses of sight, sound, and or motion to create visual displays, picture-sharing opportunities, connection points, as well as the opportunity to create, post, and react to pictures, text and videos.

Social media uses the “wisdom of crowds” to create information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Technologies such as blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, chat, music-sharing, group creation, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), iTunes (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), and Flickr (photo sharing). --Dpeck0404 21:40, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that your recent addition to the article adds nothing to what is already stated in the section lower down. Unfortunately your explanation above makes no sense to me: a combination of social constructs presented in a manner that utilizes a technology utility so as to create collaboration through the integration of words and pictures. The language is extremely vague, and why would people come to an encyclopedia to read such a diffuse definition? Please clarify, or simplify, your addition, and please provide reliable sources for the claims you are adding to the article. EdJohnston 22:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I have made some changes with my recent additions. Forgive me for potentially using the wrong language or focus, as I am new to Wikipedia. I hope the changes add clarity. Social media should be self-descriptive of what it is, a tool or utility that allows for the collaboration of the masses to provide customized information that furthers community development through the posting and sharing of pictures, and words. Let me know what you been by citing or adding reliable sources. Thanks. --Dpeck0404 01:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You need sources to justify the claims you are making. Wikipedia is not a place for people to write their own editorial commentary on technology trends. If reliable sources have defined what social media are, then let's hear what they have said. See WP:RS. Your personal opinion is not sufficient. When you write, Social media should be self-descriptive of what it is, that sounds like your own value judgment. EdJohnston 02:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Robert Scoble, co-author of the book, Naked Conversations, summarizes his qualifications and bullet point definition of social media with the nine points listed below (Scoble, Israel, 2006):

1. Can be changed (updated) in real time.

2. Allows audience interaction.

3. Popularity is transparent.

4. Permanently available archives.

5. Can be a mix of media.

6. Author = Publisher.

7. No limits on the quantity of content.

8. Freely Syndicated.

9. Can be mashed up.

This mish-mash presentation of items appropriately gives context to not just a specific venue or medium, but rather a greater perspective of an ever-changing field integrating social behavior, technology, and media.

Mark Zuckerberg was recently quoted in Newsweek by Steven Levy's in an article called Facebook Grows Up stating, "Facebook is not a social networking site but a "utility," a tool to facilitate the information flow between users and their compatriots, family members and professional connections" (Levy,Aug. 27, 2007, p. 42).

Media, technology and culture are critical components linked together in the creation of community. According to David Giles in his text Media Psychology, “the intersection of mass communication, culture, and technology” are key drivers of change" (Giles,2003, p.7). These drivers of change provide the mechanism or mediums needed to create shared meaning. Marshall McLuhan believed that each new medium shaped society, and that the media was simply an “extension of ourselves” (McLuhan, 1964, p.11).--Dpeck0404 04:52, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. These quotes are interesting, and if possible, can you obtain the complete references? Including the Steven Levy article in Newsweek. If you can find a URL we can put in the reference it would be even better, though the author, date and title are otherwise sufficient. EdJohnston 19:32, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Is one link from Robert Scoble really the best outside link we could find? One could argue that Robert is not a leader or expert in that field, and many other much more detailed, authoritative, and expert references exist. MichaelGray 02:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

If you have more authoritative sources handy, please suggest them here. This article could certainly use some reliable sources. As suggested above by Dpeck0404, it seems possible that Scoble's book Naked Conversations could be used. Since it's a book, it can be considered a reliable source (which blogs normally are not). EdJohnston 03:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Buzz seems to be more of a term that demonstrates the manner in which information travels through networks in social media. It also comes from marketing as a demonstration of a pull message (passed along through networks of people) that creates buzz or interest, as compared to a push message that is advertising driven and not audience selected. More appropriate terminology may include "social graph," as cited by Facebook's Zuckerberg. He states, "A social graph links us all. People communicate through those connections" (Levy, Aug. 27, 2007, p.43).--Dpeck0404 14:39, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It looks like people are getting caught up in either self-promotion or anti-self-promotion in the discussion of this page. Given how many people want to know what it means and the fact that Wikipedia is itself social media, the idea of deleting the entry is ludicrous.

The single defining characteristic of social media is simply that the users are providing the content as opposed to one "godlike" hand the way we see in traditional media. Timeliness, tools and platforms, the fact that it is often multimedia, are all red herrings. Social media doesn't even have to be online to be social media. The op-ed page of the New York Times is social media. New Moon magazine for girls (https://www.newmoon.org/) is social media. It just means it's created by society and not "the man".

I started one of the first social media websites in 1996 - SmartGirl Internette Inc. (now in a slightly altered form at http://www.smartgirl.org) and under new management since 2001. All the content was written by the audience, not by our website staff. I now work as a social media consultant, so I'm one of the "experts" this article is seeking. I'm not trying to self-promote, just explain to the many people out there who are seeing this term and wanting to know what it means. You can find my brief definition "Any communications format where the users publish the content" on my blog here: http://blog.isabelhilborn.com/2007/10/a-simple-defini.html 71.232.227.153Isabel Walcott Hilborn 10/23/2007 —Preceding comment was added at 20:05, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

"It looks like people are getting caught up in either self-promotion or anti-self-promotion [...]"

Full Ack - Armin B. Wagner (talk) 16:29, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I really dislike all the definitions that are up their now, and I disagree that social media is about 'user generated content'. I still like the old definition from Jan 2008 "internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings." It is simple, and to the point. I don't believe it is about user or 'godlike' figures of traditional media, are comments on the Wall Street Journal or discussion about their articles not considered social media? Robert D. Fraser RN 17:28, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Posting your outside urls kinda seems like advertising to me... A. Ward (talk) 01:22, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to submit a definition, and suggest some sources for verifying "social media" as a both a discipline and an emerging personal norm. Like Isabel and others here, I work in the industry *and* (as an end user) see the potential of "social media" as siginificant cultural happening.

The definition: Social media: "A form of communication where the users publish the content with the specific intention of sharing it with others. Social Media is often associated with marketing, advertising, or persuassive communication, though this is in actuality a special case of its application."

Rationale: I think the business and personal aspects of social media are tighly linked because of the motives in our use of any form of media--specifically our deep-seated desires to communicate, influence, persuade, help--as we seek to build and improve ourselves and our communities (including for selfish reasons). Our media is part of who we are--something that extends across a range of activities.

Traditional media makes a reasonable general comparison because most people understand what it is, and, it exemplifies the differences between centrally controlled and produced content as compared with user generated content in a culturally significant way (see J.D._Lasica above) It also exemplifies the difference between communication with a for-pay motivation (essentially, all traditional media with the possible exception of the editorial page in the newspaper) and communication for the simple purpose of sharing an experience. Either way, the objective is still influence or persuasion: "Look at this cool campground I found" (so...you should check it out sometime) and ... "Look at this great watch" (so...you should buy one) are very much the same thing in this sense.

We can point to credibility sources. Here are a few: 1) the documented trends in the blogging and UGC participation; 2) the fact that (from the Center for Media Research and PEW, among others) that the number of content producers will soon roughly equal the number of content consumers; 3) the documented (Forester, others) perception among consumers of referrals and personal word-of-mouth as a highly credible source of information (47% of consumers say it's most important); 4) the use of leading social networking sites (e.g., there are more people using LinkedIn than live in Sweden); 5) the fact that men check an avergae of 4.7 websites when making a purchase; women check 4.0. If the manufacturer or retailer was the "definitive" source, those numbers would both be closer to 1.0. They aren't--people are looking around and using social media to verify marketing claims.

In summary, we should have no problem at all 1) defining social media; 2) pointing to verifiable sources that attest to its use and the trends in its use, in both personal and business applications; 3) separating "social media" as a personal channel from social media as a business channel (both are important culturally; 4) creating a robust Wikipedia entry as a result.

dave evans 04:21, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Dave, While I appreciate your definition and defense, I think it is too narrowly defined to aptly serve as a broad-based definition for social media.

While I appreciate that you come from an industry perspective (work in the industry), I would purport that it's wider than an industry, and that an amendment to a previous definition may serve as a stronger expanded definition.

Before moving to the definition, I suggest that we allow for the inclusion and contributions of all involved, both experts and not. Many times, a non-expert can provide better clarity on a definition or set of terms than those who are in the middle of it. In education, I am always amazed at how quickly we begin to use "edu-speak" and begin talking in terms that only those involved in the discourse of higher education utilize. As such, I might suggest that we review a text from James Surowiecki, called the Wisdom of Crowds (2005). In this text, Surowiecki talks about the benefits of technology and the ability to create shared learning and outcomes today that are better, and have stronger levels of expertise because of the ability to include diverse groups of people and expertise. The end result of Surowiecki's book focuses on the collaborative nature of social media, and the benefits provided through this new conduit.

In your presentation you talk about different forms of media (pay vs. not for pay, etc.) and such I would move toward a more common ground of calling or labeling the medium of communication simply media, falling back to Marshall McLuhan's quote and discovery as he investigated patterns of information, and began to identify that social aspects of media would create inherent definitions. His famous line, "the message is the medium (or media)," provided for us an aspect of how the media and message are interconnected, and cannot be separated.

Said differently, David Giles in his book, Media Psychology quotes McLuhan and his book, Understanding Media. According to Giles, McLuhan states, “each new medium shapes society by its own terms (Giles, 2003, p. 6).” And thus, according to McLuhan the media will always be defined as an “extension of ourselves (McLuhan, Gordon, 1994, p. 19).

Moving to this level, social media becomes a much broader definition and discussion. It is broader than the discussion of content producers and content users, broader than word-of-mouth, persuasion, and utilities such as LinkedIn, and terms such as social networking and social networks.

So, I might suggest that we consider the shortened original definition, listed below as an opportunity to serve both those in the industry and those who are not, those who are users, and those who are producers, and maybe allow for a constructivist viewpoint so as to capture everyone's thoughts and expertise in the definition:

Social media is an umbrella term, defining the activities that come together in a medium using more than one sense of sight, sound, or motion to create displays, picture-sharing opportunities, and connection points through content. A collaborative opportunity to create, post, and react to pictures, or videos is critical to social media.

Additional thoughts on SISOMO can be sourced from Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi at http://www.sisomo.com/sisomo/article/sisomo_media/.

--Dpeck0404 06:49, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Kevin-

I agree with you, for exactly the points you make. There are really two (or more) separate but related concepts being presented here. One is social media itself, the other--and subordinate to social media--is the application of social constructs in marketing and advertising. Given that the entire topic is still in a very early stage I'm OK with keeping the two within a single Wiki page. Splitting them out now--creating pages for social media, social media marketing, social media optimization...etc-- weakens (I think) the impact that this group can have on putting some good knowledge out there for people interested in learning about social media. That is, afterall, one of the prime uses of Wikipedia.

Your proposed definition highlights the key aspects of social media in any form: collaboration, community, multiple forms of media. I like it.

If we build off of that we can use the associated Wiki article to show how social media marketing and other applications of social media come about. This would seem to serve well visitors seeking informaiton about social media, as it would establish the umbrella context and then provide specifics as to its implementation for a range of purposes. As the discipline becomes more establshed, the specific examples can be broken out onto specific pages when/if warranted.

dave evans (talk) 16:05, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

"Umbrella Term" is not a descriptive term that helps us narrow down and define this important but vague term in social media.

I want to propose the first two sentences be replace with the following:

Social Media is the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings.

Here is the logic behind this definition proposal:

• http://friendfeed.com/e/a17f269c-2e0f-bb6d-9fa6-f406f265571a
• http://www.benparr.com/2008/08/its-time-we-defined-social-media-no-more-arguing-heres-the-definition/

Summarized: If you break down the term, you have social and you have media. Social is about human interaction, media refers to the tools used to transmit data and information. Together, you are talking about the transfer of information between humans. But social media is primarily electronic (Internet, phones, and computers) and the difference between it and traditional media is that the information is shared and discussed rather than presented.

I want to use this definition as a starting point of a debate to make an encompassing definition of social media. Yes, this definition is a bit wide ranging and can construe things like email, but that's fine - email is a form of social media, just not a very effective one (only two-way and private) and not one you'd present as a modern example.

Thoughts?

Mystalic (talk) 21:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

[Thanks for bringing this issue up, sorry in adv for the terse language.] My first issue is that the grammar is awkward; "social media" is made to feel like a verb ("...is the use of"). Second, is "social media" really only about the transfer of information between humans? Every time we enter a tag into delicious, we're simultaneously keeping ourselves organized, using simple machine language to talk to a database, AND assigning a description to an object that will help others find it in the future; this definition oversimplifies processes such as this to such a degree that substantial meaning is lost. All that said, the main issue that I have with this definition (and it is shared by many definitions being discussed here) is that it attempts to define "social media" in relief to "traditional media". "Social" is a qualitative judgement while "traditional" feels more like a temporal judgement; we're already comparing apples and bananas. As inadequate as it was, I feel that the previous definition, by being more general, is a little more accurate than the current version. Not sure what action to take at the moment, I haven't really been involved in a Talk page before. Sorry I can't offer my own take on this for now ;-) Thanks! Spimeco (talk) 07:37, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Good points. Let me answer.

• Perhaps on the verbage problem. Social media is a noun, after all. Social media are the tools used to transfer information possibly? the definition of media states that it is tools.
• Social media is meant to be about people. The computer and the database are only the tools we use to send that information out ot others.
• Traditional media, as in the citations, is one-way, a presentation of information, while social media is two-way, a conversation around a piece of information. A tag is shared and other tag it, then talk about it on Twitter, Digg, and FriendFeed.

So if I were to do another rewrite, I would use "Social media refers to the electronic and Internet tools used in sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings." Then add "Unlike traditional media, which generally presents information from the source to the reader, social media is meant to engage both the information presenter and the reader in a conversation centered around the information."

Or something like that. --Mystalic (talk) 21:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm almost doubtful that we can define something that is still drastically evolving, but it's definitely worth a shot. I'll throw in a couple thoughts:

• Should social media be defined by opposite to traditional media? Isn't that a limited way of looking at it?
• Should it be defined by specific infrastructure, tool, platform or transmission medium?
• Should we restrict the thought to human beings? What is the line between a corporation and a human being? What about a bot?
• Let's think about some of the key traits of all media: creation, distribution, cost, scale and time (I'm sure there are more...)

With those thoughts, and in the effort to frame the thought around a more generic way to look at it, I'll throw out a different direction.

Social media: many-way communication that can originate from anybody, delivered to many, simultaneously at zero marginal cost.

I'm sure the phrasing is off, but wanted to get thoughts around that frame.

--Unstructured (talk) 03:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

We need to give it a definition, even if it must change from time to time. So my points.

• I didn't define it by traditional media, I used it as a starting point. It is a form of media, so I defined it against the definition of media and how that's used in society currently. From the starting point, we can come to whatever conclusion fits best
• If you read the mission statements of most social networking and social media services, it talks about people. Here is a very good list of definitions for tech websites. Look at Digg's statement - "It is a place for people to discover...
• And then look at Facebook: "...is a social utility that helps people communicate. Twitter, StumbleUpon, and delicious all mention either you as a person or people in general. That's where I get people.
• Should it be defined by the tool or platform? Unfortuately, yes, because media, just media, is about the tool or platform. Social media, you must not forget, is a FORM of media, and if you read the definition of media on wikipedia, you'll see why I chose to define it based on the tools.
• As to your definition, it brings good points, but my critiques are as follows: "many-way communication" is awkward, though it is true. I don't think it covers enough about how the transmission is done - by your definition, a loudspeaker is social media, though we don't think of a loudspeaker as such. And at zero marginal cost - you're forgetting the cost of the phones for twittering, the electricity to run them, and the cost of building the computers to transmit the information. But most of all it doesn't define it in terms of media and in terms of social, which is important in my view for this definition. (sorry, that was a long criticism)
• But I think your definition does hit on some key points and we need to dissect this argument further and with more people. Mystalic (talk) 13:48, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

--Dpeck0404 (talk) 21:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC) I think that we are moving in the right direction, but feel that we are limiting our definition by using terms like technology, electronic, and internet. At some point, a stapler was/and or is a piece of technology, a telephone is electronic, and the internet was accessible via the computer. Today, a stapler is not technology, a telephone is not tied to being electronic, and I can access the internet via many different connection points. I think that social media focuses on the engagement of technology and people, over a medium that today is based on the internet, but tomorrow may not be.

I think this is a problematic definition to be honest. Any definition of social media has to, I think, be understood in relation to other things that are out there, including the earlier social software. There's another equally bizarre and clumsy definition over in that article, which has gone through a similarly tortuous and special interested path. The definition that I work from in that circumstances is that social software is about structured software-based mediation between people that helps them communicate and collaborate more effectively. That seems to be almost identical to the proposal you give here for social media. I think when we talk about social media, we have to be talking at least in part about media being used communicatively, or the massive democratization of media. To be honest though, the problem here is that the term is and never has been particularly well defined. Much like Web 2.0, it was a label created to mobilise or bring together various threads, but was taken over—mostly by consultants—as a badge for a loosely defined group of activities, which include explaining to people how to market on Facebook and do influencer marketing. Attempting to derive a definition from the things people are calling social media, is—I think—a doomed enterprise. Instead, I think, we have to look for the definitions out there that make the most sense and seem most logically consistent. Tom Coates (talk) 10:41, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the definition of social media will continue to change as we change with the medium. Today, I'd present the following definition, which is perhaps different than what i would have said six months ago. As such, here's the proposed definition:

Social media is the combination of activities that come together in a medium using one or more senses of sight, sound, or motion to create visual displays, picture-sharing opportunities, and the creation of shared-meaning through words and pictures by people.

And so the discussion moves forward. :) This cites some of the work by Zuckerberg and Team (Facebook) as a social utility, discusses some of the developmental psychological principles by persons like Dan McAdams (The Stories we Live by), Steven Johnson (Everything Bad is Good for You), and (The Wisdom of Crowds) identified by James Surowiecki. Finally, much discussion has occured regarding the economics of social media in Tapscott and Williams' book, Wikinomics. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams talk about the future of social media as an interconnected collaborative tool that allows for people to come together and create shared-meaning with expertise and precision.

I have added to the Wiki, but will remove (as I think I screwed up the protocol thing) - my hope is to provide more structure to thinking about Social Media - a classification/taxonomy. This enables people to understand the purpose of various social media:

---

Proposed Taxonomy for Social Media:

Mass Communication Networks - These networks enable members to simultaneously send messages to multiple other members. This is what makes them the most powerful from a social marketing perspective. The idea here is that you can use a Mass Communication network to get your message out to a large number of people.

Community Networks - These networks develop a sense of community, but the key difference is they do not enable members to simultaneously send messages to multiple other members. The exception may be a forum, but that requires effort on the part of the intended recipient to find the message.

Directory Networks - These networks provide an opportunity to add your content to a searchable directory.

Specialty Networks - The Specialty Networks are the long tail of Social Media. As more people add networks, this group will be the most exciting (for reaching specific market segments).

Here is a Directory of Networks organized according to the above taxonomy.

---

What are your thoughts?

````John-Scott Dixon (talk) 09:24 MST or GMT-7, October 10, 2008

After failing to find any evidence of notability and authority of the websites/blogs cited in this article's references, I removed all the citations and added an Unreferenced tag to the article. News hits quoting the blogs' authors don't translate to their websites meeting WP:RS. Flowanda | Talk 01:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

This list appears to be useful, since it makes this definition more concrete. However, it may be good to format it in a different way, avoiding the use of sub-headings (or use a category instead?. --Nabeth (talk) 10:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Not sure it matters but there are some tools in this list that don't exist anymore (Plurk, Jaiku). I know it's tough to stay on top of this stuff with new tools introduced every day. But does anyone think they should be taken down?--Garyedgar (talk) 20:01, 9 September 2009 (UTC) My bad - I was confusing those two with something else...Pownce.

Kaplan and Haenlein define Social Media as ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content’. They do so in an article in the business horizons which actually tries to define social media and classify the different types of it.

What do you think ? Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein M. (2010 in print ; 2009 online) Users of the world, unite! The challenges and�opportunities of Social Media, Business Horizons, 53(1) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sabrina111 (talk • contribs) 09:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't particularly agree with the definition either. I will hunt for a better resource.Anneaholaward (talk) 21:08, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem with this definition is that it depends on the definition of web 2.0, which is no clearer than this. If anyone can find a better definition, good. However - if the categorisation from Kaplan and Haenlein stands, then the sub-headings under Examples should reflect that categorisation. Does anyone else think the categorisation could be improved? Psigrist (talk) 10:57, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I have been searching through books on the topic of social media for a good definition. I have to laugh because at least two of the books specifically say "even Wikipedia doesn't quite know how to define this". So I found Boyd & Ellison's definition <sup>[1]</sup> to make a little more sense to me. I don't agree with the web 2.0 part being latched on to this concept, because social media started long before web 2.0 did. So this alternate definition agrees that there are users whom share a connection and allow for exchange of content (with connections). And I really agree with Boyd & Ellison for saying that the nature of connections varies by site, which I think is what Kaplan and Haenlein were driving by including 2.0 in the first place. A. Ward (talk) 21:56, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

So do we agree on this one? :) A. Ward (talk) 01:17, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I removed a paragraph about business use of social media as the info was really only about only one industry and was poorly sourced. Flowanda | Talk 05:27, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree that this might not fit under examples, but perhaps there should be a separate section for something like "Examples of Social Media Use in Business." There doesn't appear to be another page where this would fit and seems to be a highly relevant area. There are already lists available that keep track of various examples. Two of these are sources previously deleted by Flowanda : Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki and A wiki of social media marketing examples. For complete disclosure, I originally submitted these two links, as I thought that having examples of business uses would be valuable. Further, I maintain the list on "Dose of Digital." To avoid a COI, I won't update the page directly, but likely will do a request for edit. Jonmrich (talk) 17:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I had previously added two "wikis" containing examples of social media use in business (esp. marketing). They can be seen in this revision. This includes these two references: Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki and A wiki of social media marketing examples.

Recently Flowanda deleted this entire section with the logic that it doesn't fit under examples. In hindsight, I agree since the examples listed on the page (e.g., Facebook, Posterous, etc.) are more platforms versus executions. The two wikis referenced above contain examples of marketing efforts using these platforms. I'm proposing a new section to make the page more robust. The use of social media in marketing is certainly major trend and likely to continue and increase. My guess would be that visitors to the social media page would find it useful to have examples of how companies are using social media.

Peter Kim's list is exhaustive and covers numerous industries. The Dose of Digital list covers healthcare and pharma specifically.

I am submitting this as a request for edit versus making the changes myself because I maintain the list on Dose of Digital and am the primary writer and would like to avoid any COI issues affecting this debate.

Thanks for the consideration. Jonmrich (talk) 17:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you be specific as to the compromise edit you propose? In general, your wikis would be considered primary sources and thus would violate the no original research policy (they also suffer from a reliable source problem, but if you have references to reliable sources discussing those wikis as social media examples, we could cite to those reliable sources. THF (talk) 22:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not proposing that the wikis are themselves social media examples. Rather that the wikis contain examples of social media use in business. The wikis themselves are just a reference. I see from the letter of the law definition of primary sources that the wikis would be described as such, but to me, they are simply a list of sites and not commentary, so they are more of a reference tool (while the blog posts that are also part of the sites would definitely be primary sources). Each of the wikis have a number of links to them that point them out as good reference sources on this topic, but I'm not sure that qualifies. Again, not saying that the wikis are examples, but that they are each a list of examples. I think a section like this might be a fit Social_network_service#Application_domains (see how reference 63 is used). Essentially, the wikis become a secondary source to back up the notion that social media is used for these various applications. Jonmrich (talk) 15:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Although Social TV is at its infancy, 2010 Consumer Electonic predicts two emerging markets defining 3D TV and Social TV as the most sought after market combininng social networking phonemona and broadcasting into one. Today' companies like NetStairs.com have pioneered and have reaily demonstrated its availability on laptops while TV and STB manufacturers are in quest of its integration though value added services. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amordi (talk • contribs) 13:26, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Flowanda (talk · contribs) removed my complete section on Social Authority claiming it was poorly sourced. The two sources were http://mprcenter.org and the European Journal of Social Psychology. Furthermore, there were no "spectacular" claims. As a side note, he or she recently disagreed with me on an AFD on my article. If someone else involved could please review the material she removed and give opinion, I would appreciate it. Sara-rockworth (talk) 06:35, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

While one might like better sources, they are better than the sources for much of the other content of the article. For example, most of the section "Distinction from industrial media" is completely unsourced, as is the whole of the section "Examples". It seems to me that removing this section and leaving other, less well sourced, sections is somewhat arbitrary. I also do not see any "extraordinary claims" in the removed content (as suggested in the edit summary). I therefore propose to restore the removed material. (However, Flowanda's edit history does not suggest to me that the AFD is relevant at all.) JamesBWatson (talk) 07:55, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Just because "social media" is not yet satisfactorily sourced should not be cause for deletion. This is a work in progress, but a worthwhile one nonetheless. Social media is here to stay, and we should strive to define and deepen the discussion.

Social media is a buzzword, I agree. However, as one person touched on this above (but did not discuss in depth), the single largest hurdle HERE in defining "Social Media" lies in the fact that a social media platform is the vehicle to define social media itself. We are at a point where we are practicing one of the biggest thesis paper writing sins. Namely, we are attempting to define a term while using that same term within the definition.

I noticed Marshall McLuhan was quoted several times above. I can not help but use another one of his infamous analogies — the fish in the bowl. Here, we are the fish in the bowl attempting to define our fish bowl by using a fish bowl as an analogy!

I realize we need more sources (primary, secondary and tertiary) for this article, but we are limiting the depth of definition by staying inside our box. To define (and provide an in depth profile) this vast cultural container, we need to get creative, follow wiki policies at the same time and think outside of our fish bowl.

--Austenten (talk) 06:57, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree with you, the logic is sort of circular. This is a generalized term, yes, but one that is real and can be defined. The article should not be deleted! I have been researching credible sources the past few days and plan to help out.Anneaholaward (talk) 00:27, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
— — —

Another consideration, social media seems to be taking over traditional "Industrial Media", or rather social media users are consuming their content via social networks more and more, leaving old newspaper style sites to be relics. That first main sub-section on industrial media cites a stat at the end, "Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US." The latest number I saw was half of all internet users maintain at least one social network account. Sure old newspaper style websites can adapt and curate their own network, but they can only do so much when they have an established brand that reads "daily", or "herald", or "times" in their name. Austenten (talk) 07:07, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm a new editor so forgive me while I learn, however when visiting this page I do believe that the examples of social media section is not being kept up to date. Therefore I have begun to add more services and tools that I am aware of.

My other concern is that these 'examples' would be better served under a heading of 'Tools'. Furthermore, it seems the list of examples and categories in this section direct readers to different online services by their functionality. Rather than being 'examples of social media' this section is really a list of 'tools', and an example would be a case study of how social media tools were used to an end. Therefore I think that this section should be renamed 'Tools' and another section be added with adequate references to case studies and examples of individuals or organizations using social media.

In the mean time, I have been adding to this list, but feel that I could use a more experienced editors assistance in building a better taxonomy or labelling structure. People visiting this site looking for information what tools are out their would greatly benefit it a more robust list is available and services are listed under all of the possible functionalities that they have. Robert D. Fraser RN 05:15, 6 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdjfraser (talk • contribs)

Totally agreed. Do you need help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian.Rainbow (talk • contribs) 05:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure that this page falls under "media", just because media is in the name. Wouldn't this page more accurately fall under Wiki Project websites / computing OR WikiProject Internet culture?

If nobody objects I will add it myself. A. Ward (talk) 18:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

'Australia ranks highest...' In what terms, exactly? Among what?

The second paragraph needs to go in a different part of the article and not as an introduction to a giant topic. I would also suggest the Social media ROI pyramid be removed. It's one, partial perspective of ROI and doesn't represent a comprehensive or factual view. Presenting it in this manner suggest fact which is is not. Uberveritas (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Additional: Sentence beginning with "Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein" needs an introduction". There's no intro to put in context why these individuals are referenced in the process of providing a basic into/definition for the topic so early in the article. Also the social media measurement section needs considerable work. Major tools being used today aren't even mentioned at all. Uberveritas (talk) 20:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

File:SocialMediaVennDiagram.jpg

Currently, this article uses this drawing. In case it makes any sense, please explain what the properties of the two different sets are. Thanks, --Abdull (talk) 00:40, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

You might say that it's a nominal meta-Venn diagram of social media, savvy? It illustrates that some social media perforce overlap, thus it's self-referential. kencf0618 (talk) 00:28, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

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I am no expert on social media but the recently added section titled "Notable influencers" may be biased. It is certainly unrepresentative. How does Mark Zuckerberg fit in to it?? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:37, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

While the people who are currently on the list have Wikipedia articles and are therefore presumably notable, there is no source or indication why those people in particular were selected for the list, or whether they are more notable than other notable people who work with social media. I agree that the notability is very quesitonable indeed. For one thing, there are only five names in the list, three Americans and two British people, so it's obviously heavily slanted to the US and Britain. This being said, I do not know the field, at all, and won't try to fill the list with more names because I don't have any source indicating which names might be suitable. --bonadea contributions talk 21:40, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I have now removed the complete section. No information is better than biased information. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:11, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

In addition to being poorly written, the third paragraph in the Mobile Social Media section is inaccurate. The following sentence is hyperbolic and lacks a reliable source (and is quite frankly untrue; mobile devices are increasingly an important aspect of internet usage but they haven't made other forms obsolete):

"With all the new devices that are arriving at our finger tips, gadgets such as tablets, iPods, phones, and many other new products, there is no use for sitting at home using one's PC; mobile social media has made other sources of internet browsing obsolete, and allows users to write, respond, and browse in real-time.

I am new to Wikipedia editing (I created an account because this article bugged me so much!) so I am not entirely sure what to do. I did a quick copy edit and added some "citation needed" and "clarification needed" tags but I think this section could use a complete re-write from someone with more expertise. Linds e m (talk) 06:33, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree with errors in factual accuracy in the mobile section of social media. The fact that it lacks external references and lack of formal tone usage makes this section stand out as an opinion which calls into questions the objectivity of this section. ErickS-NJITWILL (talk) 00:26, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Social Media History _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Social Media history, in terms of same sex marriage, is an opinion. Opinions should be kept out of scholarly articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davefilms (talk • contribs) 22:09, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi all, I edited a small portion that could have reference Media Activism in order for the article I am working on in my sandbox to not be an orphan--as this is discouraged by Wikipedia standards. Thanks! Jduden (talk) 05:58, 14 May 2013 (UTC)jduden

Hi all, I think this sentence should be deleted Social media may expose children to images of alcohol, tobacco, and sexual behaviors. Even though this might be true in some level, this applies to the internet in general rather than being an exclusive trait of social media platforms. The topic should be either further explored, or removed in my opinion. What do you think? Cheers, Zalunardo8 (talk) 10:24, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

The following link pops a phishing warning, so I suggest taking down the spam / phishing link in the footer of the social media article. It appears as *The Museum of Social Media* and links to h**p://w*w.wileyonlinelibrary.com/subject/code/000037/homepage/museum_of_social_media__home.ht** - Museum of scholarly articles on the rise and impact of social media (broke link for your safety) --Austenten (talk) 06:45, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

• I deleted the link, because the linked page seems to be gone anyway. Trivialist (talk) 11:43, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't see web forums and groups (e.g. Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, StackExchange groups, various 'boards', 'mailing lists', and the many thousands of independently-moderated registered-user discussion sites) mentioned anywhere in this article. Is that because they've been overlooked, are called something else, or are not part of what is thought of as social media? I don't know, I'm just here to find out. I need to know for something I'm writing up.

If you know they belong and you can provide a citation, then write them in. If they are not considered to be, or it is debatable if they are, part of social media, then an explicit sentence would be useful, along the lines of "Moderated discussion groups and forums are not considered to be [or, it is debatable if they are] part of social media for reason x and y [citation link]. Stringybark (talk) 00:42, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I propose creating a special sub-topic for the classification of social media rather than fitting it under social media which also includes "Mobile Social Media" and "Patents". Mobile social media should be under "Classification of Social Media", and "Patents" should be under its own category.ErickS-NJITWILL (talk) 00:31, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I am currently working on my thesis and noticed that the Kaplan's and Haenlein's classification for social media only has six types rather than seven. It doesn't list "social news networking". Instead of editing it I wanted to confirm this was correct as I only am able to access the full but older version and the abstract of the actual journal article through my school. I was hoping someone else had access to the full, up-to-date version so they could assess its accuracy. Pregxi (talk) 12:46, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

[1](Lihaas (talk) 11:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)).

I’m tired of seeing cartoons being circulated about old people. I have recently joined the ranks of old people and am astounded at their bravery. I feel I am brave. I can entertain and bowl while in excruciating pain knowing I will have pain all the time now. My friends are battling the knowledge that certain death is just around the corner and they never mention it.

They laugh with (not at) their friends. I hate to face what little life there is left without the benefit of a stiff drink or glass of wine (doc’s orders) And I hate the pills they prescribe which have the awful side effects. We are brave just to take them and suffer the consequences. Our minds do not have the vapidness of youth and we have so much wisdom which is completely and utterly ignored by young people in this country. We are the butt of jokes, which actually is better than being totally ignored by the sales clerk with the raised eyebrows and supercilious look. If I looked as I did 50 years ago, she would be fawning over me. I can makeor break her financially and just about every other way. I give her the practiced beatific smile and move on.

Yes, there are certain advantages to being older; being grumpy every now and again and getting away with it, living alone and doing your own thing is a big advantage But being brave is the great accomplishment of old age Brave in the face of impending death and in the face of demanding children who treat us like idiots with their presumption that we owe them our estates and complete obsequiousness

So, please don’t send me any more ghastly cartoons showing seniors in a ridiculous light. We are not incapable or silly. My memory is no worse than my 60 year old son‘s. I am brave. I am invincible-- until death do us part which we all hope to be gentle, but seldom is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.195.192.68 (talk) 22:52, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

• This is a rant by an unsigned user some time ago, that has nothing at all to do with this article. Can it be deleted? Stringybark (talk) 00:56, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
• I agree with Stringybark request Morganglick (talk) 14:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

>> Azerbaijan accuses OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs of dependence on social networksLihaas (talk) 15:37, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Currently, the article is in a dreadful state. It is pretty much unreadable at the moment. The presence of a warning label on the Criticism and Controversy section is quite amusing, given that it is now the most readable part of the article.

I've removed the "Economic impacts of social marketing" section because it was unreadable, a lot of original research and didn't fit into the article at all. Of course, useful bits can still be salvaged from that if we want to. I also pruned a few other bits back that were either too promotional or unreadable dross.

What I'm going to suggest is that we can fix a lot of the issues of this article if we have a think on the talk page about what exactly are good sources for this. I think part of the problem we have with this article is that nobody really is very sure about what social media is. Instead, it might be better if we reflect that uncertainty by writing something like this in the lead:

Social media is a term used in marketing, public relations and a variety of other fields to describe changes in the media environment stemming from increasing use of social networking sites, user generated content, and a range of new interactive services. Social media is of particular interest in marketing as it allows businesses to interact and engage directly with individual customers and is increasingly seen as an important part of a marketing strategy.

Does this seem a reasonable starting point for a description? Obviously, it'd be necessary to sort out sourcing. One potential way of finding good sources for this article is government sources. Governments often have a statutory or policy-based reason to have to explain things clearly (otherwise groups like the Plain English Campaign will come down on them like a ton of bricks). Here are a few government sources I've found which might be useful: US Geological Survey, CDC (the Health Communicator's Social Media Toolkit might be a useful source), HowTo.gov, Business Link (Business Link is a UK government body that gives advice to businesses of all kinds), idea.gov.uk (who advice local government on best practice).

On the private side, there's also IAB UK's social media guide, which doesn't look like it is particularly bullshitty or unclear.

Anyway, I wanted to start a conversation here about how best to improve this article, because it currently gets between 2,000 and 6,000 views a day... and, frankly, it's pretty crappy. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:57, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree that the article is a mess and needs massive changes. But disagree that your definition is the right starting point. You've have come from it a POV that says social media is what those marketing types do. Looking at the article, i see information from the technology, academic and human behavioural viewpoints. So from one perspective, social media IS SNS, UGC etc, it's the tech, rather than how marketers use it. I think the articel does need to reflect the term is used differently depending on who is using it. Yes, marketing is a major area of use - and the IAB book is a very good source for that, but there are others Rachelcgen (talk) 13:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Upon first reading through this article, the greatest problem I saw with it is that it looks at social media very disproportionately through a business-centric lens. The only example of use under the Purpose section is a paragraph entirely about social media use by PR professionals. Following this, the entire Managing Social Media and "Building "social authority" and vanity" sections are completely focused on `firms' and `marketing', respectively. I think this article is not a fair and balanced representation of social media and is very slanted toward a business and marketing-type viewpoint. Allethrin (talk) 03:21, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Both last two editors have said basically the same thing. We might need some expert attention for this article, to show other aspects of this fenomenon that aren't exclusively business-related. Debresser (talk) 18:49, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

After reading through the article, social media appears to be have a business focus stance. However, i believe is more important to polish up the definition of social media since for the most part this is what is being read by the visitors. While is important to provide examples of social media, examples should not be used as the primary means to define social media. >ErickS-NJITWILL (talk) 22:56, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Hey guys, just read all the talk on this page, and I'm happy to help if I can. I've written three books on social media, have been a regular source for Bloomberg TV and other media, and have access to dozens of the top experts. I'm sure they would be willing to help too. I agree, this page is horrible- not only because of all the lingo and ideas, but also because it doesn't even accurately reflect the business/marketing/PR side of social media that I hear in regular discussions with other experts. What's more, social media is a rather contentious discipline, since it's so new, and there are several major different viewpoints on it. From my perspective, there are very different views from marketing people and PR people. And there are folks who mainly think of social media in terms of Twitter, and others who think of it mainly in terms of Facebook. I don't want to jump in and changeBriancarter73 (talk) 02:59, 15 December 2012 (UTC) anything- but happy to be a resource or to try to help organize a task force of published authors to help you guys if you want. bbcarter@gmail.com Briancarter73 (talk) 02:59, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Hey guys, just read the above Talk remark from 2012 and see that no one has questioned its' bragging tone. So what if someone claims to have written 300 books on social media, has been a regular on BBC, ITV, CBS, RT or has access to untold number of the "top experts"? Should not any comments keep to the question being debated? For the comment about the business/marketing/PR side of social media is clearly at odds with general Talk concerns - that the article needs to show aspects social media that are not exclusively business-related. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.44.106.42 (talk) 20:37, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

'On October 2, 2013, the most common hashtag throughout the country was “#governmentshutdown”' – Which country? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Geekpie (talk • contribs) 14:31, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Googled it... United States federal government shutdown of 2013. I've linked this in the article now. – Fayenatic London 12:45, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

@Fayenatic london: I'd agree -- there should be other such incidents to balance it out (and maybe less emphasis on this one), and I wasn't sure if this were the right spot in the article or it needed (yet) another section. I think in general the article needs reorganization. Any suggestions? valereee (talk) 11:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

@Valereee: Having helped you to retrieve this material,([2]) I thought I'd tag it but leave it to other editors to decide. – Fayenatic London 13:01, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

That's fine! I'm planning to work on it -- would like to see it better organized, and one of the things I'd been thinking about for it since that missing person incident was that it was completely missing any mention of how social media has been widely reported as being used/useful in such situations. valereee (talk) 13:11, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

The following proposed editions are for my college course Training Systems. My group consists of myself, Justin Galloway, and my partner, Jonathan Marshall. Please review.

What we want to do is combine the introduction section and the section following it entitled “Social Media Classifications”. The classifications section appears to have been a part of the introduction section at one time and flows well. We feel as though this will add to the clarity of the introduction section. We also propose adding a sentence describing how social media has joined the barbershop and backyard fence as places where information is traded and acted on.

We propose to add the following two sentences to the beginning of the Positive Effects section. a. Social media is becoming an essential aspect in communication and marketing within organizations. <sup>[2]</sup> b. Social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, can be used as successful marketing tools because of their mass appeal. <sup>[3]</sup>

Lastly we would like to remove one of the last sections of the article entitled “Loneliness”. We feel as though it does not require a section of the current article. It can be added to another section but we don’t feel that it adds enough value to the article to have its own section. JET theUFO (talk) 15:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC) Marsha49 (talk) 01:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)Jonathan Marshall

Hi,

I agree with Justin and Jonathan about the need for changes to this site. Specifically, I think that we need to add how social media is becoming an essential aspect in communication and marketing for organizations. For example, Jet Blue and Sephora use twitter strategically to gain attention and serve their customers better.

Jenks27 (talk) 17:07, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Dear Jenks27, I think it is important to talk about social media as an important tool for marketers and communications in general, but I would not cite specific brands or cases. Best, Zalunardo8 (talk) 15:36, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right discussion to post this at, but i think this has to be said: The photo at the top of the article, showing various social medias, is very out of date. It's from 2008! Youtube, Hulu, Groupon, and others are not given enough prominence, and obscure websites are featured too often, seemingly to just fill up the diagram. Because of the abundant amounts of these irrelevant websites, all of the logos are difficult to see. Perhaps a higher resolution could be made? Not to mention that massive websites like Instagram and Vine are not even mentioned, because they did not exist at the time the diagram was made. (9/19/15) by SBB

@71.104.87.104: Very much agree that a higher resolution of that image would be very helpful...it's way too small! Please see the section #Higher resolution of the top image? further down. --Fixuture (talk) 17:42, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

The top image is truly helpful in bringing closer the varieties and diversity of social media but the resolution of the top image is way too small: one can barely discern the logos and some of the labels are unreadable.

(Also in section #Proposed Changes further up a user noted that many of those logos are outdated and that many significant social media sites are missing on it.)

So could you please upload a new version with a higher resolution?

User:Freshbeats is the original uploader (it seems he's also the creator of the image, Brian Solis).

His website has a newer image which has a resolution of 2880x1800.jpg: new image. Sadly there's no info on its copyright status on the website so it would be cool if someone could ask him about it (if freshbeats can't do that).

--Fixuture (talk) 17:57, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Please swing by and help improve this new article! :D--Coin945 (talk) 03:30, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, what works on this article is that it includes sources from many credential people. And it specifically explains the problem of trustworthy in social media. However, I think what does not work is it needs more solution on how can social media be trusted by people. Therefore, I suggest that to be able to trust the social media, there has to be added the quality of content and the responsiveness of the content creator. (reference from Emarketer, ‘What Makes Social Media Trustworthy?’) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.172.111.184 (talk) 20:51, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

I just wanted to bring light to one reason why people seem to be addicted to social media.

One thing that has lead to Internet addiction is the instant gratification online interfaces can give. For example, a Tweet that is favorited or retweeted seems to validate what someone is going through, and it connects people. It is human nature to want to feel connected to one another and through internet interfaces, it has given us the opportunity to stay connected through a keyboard. The instant gratification is linked to dopamine loops in the brain. Dopamine contributes to several brain functions, such as thinking, moving, sleeping, mood, attention, motivation, seeking and reward. New research, is showing though that dopamine also causes a seeking behavior meaning that it causes people to want, desire, seek out, and search -- and that can be accomplished on the Internet. The article also shows that dopamine loops can be activated through unpredictability and social media is just that -- people never know when they are going to get a text, or have a tweet favorited, or have a picture liked. The unpredictability causes anticipation which just adds to the dopamine loop and keeps people checking social media, which keeps them online instead of talking to the people around them. [96]

<sup>[1]</sup>

Tinaalimaa (talk) 02:31, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

It would be useful for the article to tell us when the term was first used, and who first coined it. 109.145.180.55 (talk) 03:22, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I think the survey need to be updated more often. And it also lack of information about what are some of benefits of using social media. I would love to see more details on how survey in 2015 shows that the internet users who uses social networking site has increased. It only shows how many percentage went up. on the other hand, showing surveys was a really good idea to understand easily. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.62.206.151 (talk) 23:38, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Social Media is a way for people to interact with others, but it is also another reality that people tend to live and think is real. In our society today people tend to live through their social media and not through the life around them. We see so many people at dinner or walking in the street looking at their social media and seeing what other people are doing that are miles away from them, then focusing on the people that they are presently with.

This is a topic that i think is important because we use social media as an escape from what is in front of us, but it just makes us miss the life we have in front of us. Eevans11 (talk) 15:47, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Note that talk pages aren't places for general discussion (WP:FORUM). Also social media keeps being part of this reality - it's just some peculiar aspect / part of it. As of right now what you're speaking about can be found in the section #Effects on interpersonal relationships of the article. If you have anything to add expand that section or create a new one. --Fixuture (talk) 19:09, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Greetings, I have made some revisions to the definition sections of the summary and the article. A number of edits in early September conflicted with the scholarly literature, and thus I worked to correct these inaccuracies. For instance: social media is not a post-2010 phenomenon and thus this shouldn't be suggested, also, real names and psuedonyms are not required for creating a social media profile, see YikYak for example. I have maintained the bullet/number list in the summary that was added; however, if folks would prefer the more traditional paragraph form in the summary I would be fine with this. --Jaobar (talk) 04:38, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Here are some sources I found that could help when editing the article:

• Tortajada; Araüna; Martínez. "Advertising Stereotypes and Gender Representation in Social Networking Sites". Grupo Comunicar. 21.
• Meier, Evelyn; Gray, James. "Facebook Photo Activity Associated with Body Image Disturbance in Adolescent Girls". CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING. 17.
• Oberst, Ursala; Chamarro, Andres; Renau, Vanessa. "Gender Stereotypes 2.0: Self-Representations of Adolescents on Facebook". Media Education Research Journal. 24 (48): 81–89.
• De Vies, D; Peter, J. "Women on Display: The Effect of Portraying the Self Online on Women's Self-objectification". Computers in Human Behavior. 29 (4): p1,483-1489.
• "Facebook Involvement, Objectified Body Consciousness, Body Shame, and Sexual Assertiveness in College Women and Men". Sex Roles. 72.
• Holland; McKay; Moretti. "Self–other representations and relational and overt aggression in adolescent girls and boys". Behavioral Sciences and Law. 19. ISSN 0735-3936.
• Tiggerman; Slater. "NetGirls: The Internet, Facebook, and body image concern in adolescent girls". Internet Journal of Eating Disorders. 46. doi:10.1002/eat.22141.
• Barber; Blomfield Neira. "Social networking site use: Linked to adolescents' social self-concept, self-esteem, and depressed mood". Australian Journal of Psychology. 66. doi:10.1111/ajpy.12034.

Sdcox004 (talk) 16:19, 27 October 2016 (UTC) Hello Everyone, Attached below is the link to my overall review and minor suggestions I have for Danielle's draft for the privacy section of the Social Media article. Sincerely, Elizabeth Paredes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Danielleee_g/sandbox Eparedes97 (talk) 21:50, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

In the article you should mention how social media can be used in the classroom also the effects it has on students both inside and outside of the classroom. Social media is becoming more prevalent in education for the use of communicating between students, and group projects/discussions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hoffma51 (talk • contribs) 20:08, 1 November 2016 (UTC)