What is social media?

Social media refers to digital ways that people connect. What that means is that people are speaking to one another, showing each other images and video content, sharing their viewpoints and feelings with other people – and all “online” (meaning over the internet).  Social media often involves people signing up to certain online communities e.g., digital platforms like Facebook and Instagram, or audience members looking up a certain author’s own blog. Social media often involves interactive content, i.e. not only might a creator put their content up (like a piece of music on YouTube or on good old MySpace – quite an old social media music exposure site), they might also be expecting or looking for feedback and responses. These come in the form of people leaving comments or” emoji’s” (which by the way is a concept which I think came directly out of social media & is now found in official English language dictionaries!).  Comments and emojis are left in a special section of the social media site. That is what makes social media social, it is interactive connecting, all online, sometimes public with large audiences, sometimes with the community watching! 

Here’s a couple of websites defining social media.

Lifewire happens to describe social media and social networking as two different things, whereas I have tended to bundle them all under the term “social media”. https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-social-media-explaining-the-big-trend-3486616

The balance small business people talk about applications of social media in advertising. You can check it out here if you’re interested: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301

What are your thoughts about what I’ve just said? Why not leave me a comment here?!   ;)   😉😉