What is social media?
Dare Obasanjo is asking “what is social media?” Frank Shaw (he’s a VP with Waggener Edstrom and is one of the key people helping Microsoft out with its PR) admits he isn’t comfortable with the “social media” term too.
The best way to understand a new media is to compare it to what’s come before? So, what kind of media do you have lying around your house? Probably these:
- Newspapers.
- Magazines.
- Television.
- Radio.
- Books.
- CDs.
- DVDs.
- A box of photos.
- Physical, paper mail and catalogs.
- Yellow Pages.
Now, what about the media (my blog) you’re reading right now? What are some attributes of it that are different than any of the “old media” above?
- The media above can’t be changed. A newspaper can’t magically change its stories, even if society decides something in them is incorrect. My blog can be updated for all readers nearly instantly if someone demonstrates that I was wrong on a post.
- You can interact with my blog. You can leave a comment. Call me an arsehole. Etc. Etc. With the above you can’t interact at all.
- You can get some sense of the popularity of my stuff in real time. How many comments does each post get? How many links does each post get? I can see in WordPress how much traffic each item gets. You can visit Digg to see voting on my blog’s items. Or, TechMeme to see which blog items got most links in the past few hours. None of the media above do you have a clue about the granular popularity of any of the items until much later after best seller lists are published.
- With the “new media” you can look at my archives and see all posts. Try doing that with a newspaper. Yeah, you can, if you pay the San Jose Mercury News a fee. But it’s not as easy as it is here.
- Here on my blog I can mix media. A post could contain text, audio, video, or photos. Not so on newspaper or magazines.
- Here on my blog I don’t need to convince a committee to publish. Not true with other media forms. Imagine you walked into CNN and said “hey, I have some cool video, can you publish it?”
- The new media is infinite. The media above all has limitations in terms of either length (a TV station only has 24 hours in a day — over on YouTube, I guarantee they publish a lot more than 24 hours of video in a day) or in quantity (try to convince USA Today to publish a 40,000 word article, or, 500 articles on the same topic).
- The new media is syndicatable and linkable and easily reused. I can link to your media here, for instance, a few seconds after you publish it. Try doing THAT with any of the above media. Not to mention, my words here kick into an RSS feed which you can then republish using something like Google Reader, if you’d like, or you can copy a sentence out of my post, paste it into your own blog, and say something about what I just said.
- The new media can be mashed up with data from other services. Check out that Amazon advertisement over to the right. Did you realize that isn’t on my, or WordPress.com’s, servers? It actually gets served up from some organization I don’t control. Amazon could, if it wanted to, replace the image there with a different book. Or, something else. Many people are putting widgets on their blogs that display various things from places they don’t control. That’s impossible in the older media above.
When I say “social media” or “new media” I’m talking about Internet media that has the ability to interact with it in some way. IE, not a press release like over on PR Newswire, but something like what we did over on Channel 9 where you could say “Microsoft sucks” right underneath one of my videos.
I don’t really care what you call this “new media” but you’ve got to admit that something different is happening here than happens on other media above.
Any other ways that “social media” is different from the older media above?
Maybe we should call it “Media 2.0?” After all, I’m a new member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup (the feed there rocks, by the way).
Powered By 
February 16th, 2007 at 9:08 am
10) you (or someone) else can add tags to stories, and make it easier to search and find related topics based on those tags.
February 16th, 2007 at 9:26 am
¿Qué son los "medios sociales"? (o nuevos medios)
Creo que algunos también le llaman "periodismo ciudadano" en castellano. De todas formas Scobler da nueve diferencias de este nuevo tipo de medios con respecto a los considerados "tradicionales": periódicos, revistas, radio, libro…
February 16th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Robin - I’d strongly encourage the opposite. Technorati should change it’s default search to words, not tags, it’s less spammy IMO. David Sifry, what do you think?
February 16th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Thanks Robert, there’s some great examples here, good clarification.
February 16th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Part 2:
Oh yeah, I challenge folks that don’t like the term “SOCIAL MEDIA” to provide me with a better term:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/01/31/hate-the-term-social-media-help-come-up-with-a-better-term/
We got into this ‘debate’ in the Media 2.0 workgroup a few weeks ago.
I do agree that the wikipedia entry sucks, but then again, most wiki content is questionable.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Great post Robert. The wikipedia entry definitely needs CPR. New media, is a perpetually evolving mechanism that advances the sharing of information online, with the current stage simply labeled as social media.
Now that “opportunistic” marketers have hijacked social media, the term is quickly losing its soul. Don’t get me wrong, social media, however, still remains important - in principle as it relates to the democratization of news/information.
Now marketers have monetized social media through community marketing, comment marketing, and conversational marketing.
The key point here is that reference to, and the marketing of, social media has spun out of control. Those in the know, I find, refer to the socialization of information by referring to social tools, and the associated technology and applications, rather than fuse marketing and social media…
February 16th, 2007 at 11:27 am
The media above can’t be changed. A newspaper can’t magically change its stories, even if society decides something in them is incorrect. My blog can be updated for all readers nearly instantly if someone demonstrates that I was wrong on a post.
However, that doesn’t mean the correction gets the same amount of hits. Is the correction in a post by itself, merely corrected in the original post or mixed in somewhere else. Do the same number of people who posted the link to the error post separate links to the correction?
The net effect of just redacting the error and fixing it in the original post is probably a worse net effect than with traditional media.
You can interact with my blog. You can leave a comment. Call me an arsehole. Etc. Etc. With the above you can’t interact at all.
That’s silly. With newspapers, you can’t interact as quickly, but read the “letters to the editor page”. Not as widespread as a blog, but then, how many blogs moderate comments, or have comments in a completely separate blog?
With TV and Radio, you’re even farther off base, because THOSE allow you to interact in *real time*, something you simply cannot do on a blog. If a radio/tv show allows callins, you can have input WHILE the story is being created, something that you can’t do either here or on PodTech. If the show is running a live chat room, it’s even more immediate. Blogs, in comparison, allow for no interaction until after the post is made, so in that sense, they’re BEHIND Television and Radio.
With the “new media” you can look at my archives and see all posts. Try doing that with a newspaper. Yeah, you can, if you pay the San Jose Mercury News a fee. But it’s not as easy as it is here.
Okay, show me all the archives of your blog before Winer killed the site it was on.
dum-de-dum…Hm? Right, you can’t. Meanwhile I can get access to the NYT for what, the last hundred years? “Hard” is a relative term. In your case, since you didn’t properly back up your stuff, that part of your blog is gone forever. It seems to me that “impossible” would apply, and you’re not the only person to get hit with that. It’s harder to GET to data on paper and tape, but it’s also harder to as thoroughly destroy it than it is on a web site.
Here on my blog I don’t need to convince a committee to publish. Not true with other media forms. Imagine you walked into CNN and said “hey, I have some cool video, can you publish it?”
Your record WRT to accuracy and fact checking shows you aren’t much better than CNN either, and probably a bit worse. Who vets your stories for accuracy other than you? Who even ATTEMPTS to make sure you have all the facts first other than you?
Based on this blog, the answer of course is no one. In fact, if no one calls you on it, you don’t even retroactively check your facts. You’ll happily leave bad info there unless you get busted.
“Cop didn’t see it, I didn’t do it” is NOT a commitment to accuracy.
The new media is infinite. The media above all has limitations in terms of either length (a TV station only has 24 hours in a day — over on YouTube, I guarantee they publish a lot more than 24 hours of video in a day) or in quantity (try to convince USA Today to publish a 40,000 word article, or, 500 articles on the same topic).
By the same token, neither TV nor Radio can get killed by their own success. They don’t ever have to worry about bandwidth costs exceeding income. In fact, everyone tuning in means MORE success. I’ve seen a lot of sites die because their bandwidth bills were more than they could pay.
New media is more flexible in certain ways, but it sucks rocks in just as many others. Not a magic spell Robert. Really.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:42 am
The only thing the term Social Media has going for it is that the abbreviation is S&M.
But very good post.
February 16th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
LOL Engtech.
February 16th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I dug into a semantical deconstruction of “Social Media” at Unica’s Marketing Consortium blog a couple of weeks ago. Personally, I don’t think the functional definition on Wikipedia is so abhorrent; I think the challenge comes more in understanding the broader implications of the meaning. Technically speaking, we could call it all “media” and it would be accurate, but not meaningful. The trend toward attaching “social” to media is important because it signifies an important shift in how public content is controlled, shaped and consumed, and that in turn shapes what we collectively experience as shared knowledge.
I think it’s a little too early to make pronouncements about how important the term “Social Media” is, or whether or not it’s lost its soul. It may seem like overripe fruit within the echo chamber of networked pundits, but to the vast majority of business people, marketers, and consumers at large, it’s still an emerging concept.
February 16th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Shouldn’t the workgroup be called something like Media 4.0? I mean, wasn’t 1.0 print, 2.0 radio, 3.0, Television?
February 16th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I think an important point is that what makes something social media is in how the it is distributed and shared, not in how it is created. Anything can be social media if it is put in the right environment. Case in point: a video of The Daily Show posted to YouTube. It wasn’t created as social media, but putting it into the social media environemnt (the web) makes it social.
I wrote a post about this on my blog a while back
February 16th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
“With the “new media” you can look at my archives and see all posts. Try doing that with a newspaper. Yeah, you can, if you pay the San Jose Mercury News a fee. But it’s not as easy as it is here.”
Since when did they do away with microfiche? I’m could head to my local city or university library and look up copies of newpapers from almost the beginning of their publicaton. For FREE!!! How am I going to look up come bloggers account of the assassination of JFK? The resignation of Nixon? Oh, that’s right! I can’t. Because this history doesn’t go back that far.
February 16th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
“The new media is infinite. The media above all has limitations in terms of either length (a TV station only has 24 hours in a day — over on YouTube, I guarantee they publish a lot more than 24 hours of video in a day) or in quantity (try to convince USA Today to publish a 40,000 word article, or, 500 articles on the same topic).”
Seems to me the cable news outlets don’t really think in terms of 24 hours-they broadcast 24/7. How long has the Anna Nicole Smith story been going on on MSNBC? How long did these outlets stick with the 9/11 story? Longer than 24 hours if memory serves. That was a rather weak argument.
February 16th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
[...] is happening? I found this article on social media or new media on scobleizer.com which made me think. What is the internet becoming and do we really want it to go in that [...]
February 16th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
New media does have apparent flaws. At the same time, however, I think there is more real accountability with old media than new media.
I like the fact they tend to balance one another out, not that one is better than the other.
Is new media threatened by the fact that old media is starting to use new media? Many major old media orgs are starting to use new media quite effectively.
February 16th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Let’s PLEASE not 2.0 anything. It’s ridiculous.
We are advancing in terms of media, but the 2.0 nomenclature is a poor attempt to pigeon hole progress. Progress either happens or it doesn’t.
I don’t know about anyone else, but when I see a service labeled “blah 2.0″ I run the other way. Numerical nomenclatures are iterative only, such as Linux kernel 2.0, not Internet something or other. The Internet is not iterative in any way.
Right now, for example, the vast majority of the Internet is still IPV4. IPV6 networks abound in Europe and Asia, but they are not in any way Internet 2.0 or 3.0, it’s progress.
Let’s quit trying to name progress. It either happens or it doesn’t. Only marketers seeking disgusting profits ever try to “2.0″ web apps.
February 16th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
oh, but you forgot the most important feature …
new media doesn’t make money
February 16th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
@18
LOL… too true. That is too funny.
February 16th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
This reminds me of an old discussion about social software.
Friedrich Hayek famously said that the word ’social’ empties the noun it is applied to of their meaning. Hayek goes on:
“it has in fact become the most harmful instance of what, after Shakespeare’s ‘I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs’ ( As You Like It , II, 5), some Americans call a ‘weasel word’. As a weasel is alleged to be able to empty an egg without leaving a visible sign, so can these words deprive of content any term to which they are prefixed while seemingly leaving them untouched. A weasel word is used to draw the teeth from a concept one is obliged to employ, but from which one wishes to eliminate all implications that challenge one’s ideological premises. “
February 16th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
new media thinks it is superior because…er..it’s not old media
February 16th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Excellent, excellent post Robert! Away from MS, your fredom to think very broadly is coming to the surface… let’s see if Mike Gartenberg suffers the converse!
Anyway, I’m preparing a presentation (Keynote of course!) for high school career and guidance psychologists wanting to know about all this “new media stuff” which their young clients keep bringing into the consulting room at school. The mainly over 45 women (and some men) can barely get their heads around using Outlook, so this will be an interesting hour’s presentation. Your post has added greatly to my own clarity of thinking, and is so suggestive of new images and movies to include (absolutely minimal text - Keynote, remember!). I’ll let you know how I get on in a month, and of course credit where credit is due when I get to the section on the many faces of blogging.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
But does the perceived value of the information go down as more of it is available? I often wonder that because of how much information is available on the internet today for free. The only cost is the time it takes to find it now.
February 17th, 2007 at 4:09 am
1. TV and radio can change their stories in the next bulletein. With newspapers I have to wait a day at most, sometimes less (papers have multiple editions). That’s quick enough for me.
2. I can write letters to newspapers and call in to radio shows.
3. I don’t care what’s popular. I’m only interested in, er, what I’m interested in!
4. Most British papers have complete archives. BBC News does too.
5. Mixing media is good, I’ll give you that one.
6. The committee is there to maintain the desired type and quality of output - no bad thing.
7. If I want a 40,000 word article I’ll buy a book. Youtube will never compete with broadcast TV.
8. I don’t have a huge desire to reuse media, but I can link to pretty much any newspaper article, radio show or piece of video via their websites.
9. Not of interest.
At the end of the day I’ll always prefer professional quality “old media”. And I’d suggest that Podtech is “old media” too. It could easily be a TV show, you’re just delivering the content via the net instead of the airwaves.
February 17th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Over at Social Media Club, we think the term has value. What I have noticed, though, is that when talking with “old media” folks, the term “social media” clearly makes them uncomfortable. They are more comfortable with “new media” because they seem to feel somehow less threatened. They believe they understand “new media” and are moving towards it - by putting articles online, allowing video clips to be published. However, I get a distinct “deer-in-headlights” look when I discuss the fact that those same articles and clips are now open for discussion (anywhere), pass along, remix, etc.
I realize that I’m not getting to the core of why “Social Media” is a good term, (however, Jeremiah captures this well in his article) but I haven’t had any coffee yet, and I believe my partner in Social Media Club, Chris Heuer, is cooking up a good post on this.
Howard Greenstein
CEO/Executive Director, Social Media Club
http://www.socialmediaclub.com/
February 17th, 2007 at 8:28 am
I realize I should add to this comment above, regarding the old media folks who get scared or confused about Social Media - that is the time it becomes my job, OUR job, to help them “get it.” We can’t be arrogant about this - we should be in a position to be generous and helpful, if we can.
The flip side, of course, is that old media needs to be open to dialog about using content in new ways.
February 17th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
[...] under scrutiny by some of the loudest voices in the blogosphere. Robert Scoble’s post “what is social media” seems to have reignited a thread that Jeremiah Owyang started a couple of weeks ago that I [...]
February 17th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
The above trackback references a comment I started to write here, but ended up posting to my own blog as it expanded in scope - the interesting bit begins with the following paragraph:
“Many early adopters are worried that the very idea of authentic human engagement, based on trust and conversations between individual’s via the Internet will be corrupted in the way that the original spirit of netiquette was corrupted by spammers – that real world social problems like greed and predatory behaviour will infect our idealistic utopia, ruining it for everyone. They surely have reason to be concerned, even though they are not being completely practical - nor are many focusing their anger at the right people. As Brian Solis pointed out to me this morning “most of the people that need to hear these things, are not even participants in this conversation, and therein lies the problem.” Worse, those other people will see many of the angriest voices as indicative of a more serious problem with how things are today and won’t ever respond in a way that will let them really understand why it is important.
This is why we need to come together… [cont]
February 17th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
[...] listing a few of the differences between new (social) media and old media, Scoble writes The media above [...]
February 17th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
20: I don’t see the connection. I understand how “social” distorts the meaning of justice in “social justice”, or how it distorts the meaning of welfare in “social welfare”, but other than sounding erudite by association, I don’t see in any way how “social” distorts or sucks the meaning out of “media”. Can you expand?
February 18th, 2007 at 2:48 am
[...] Robert Scoble asks ‘What is social media?’ Stowe Boyd answers: [...]
February 18th, 2007 at 8:20 am
I think Chris Kenton in #10 brings out key points:
“The trend toward attaching ’social’ to media is important because it signifies an important shift in how public content is controlled, shaped and consumed….” and
“I think it’s a little too early to make pronouncements about how important the term ‘Social Media’ is … to the vast majority of business people, marketers, and consumers at large, it’s still an emerging concept.”
So true. It’s going to take mainstream business quite a while to catch up. So many companies now need help, and will need help ongoing, in understanding how to deal with this massive shift.
And I also like the points Paul Medoza raises in #23:
“But does the perceived value of the information go down as more of it is available? I often wonder that because of how much information is available on the internet today for free. The only cost is the time it takes to find it now.”
That is a major point: time is the unit of value in play here. How does one decide how to spend one’s increasingly precious time? That’s why technologies to help individuals and companies measure influence in new media will become so critical.
February 18th, 2007 at 11:08 am
[...] Stowe Boyd in “Scoble Asks what is Social Media” builds on what Robert Scoble writes in “What is Social Media” . These two guys are at the center of this “movement” (dare I call it that?) and so are [...]
February 18th, 2007 at 11:25 am
[...] Stowe Boyd in “Scoble Asks what is Social Media” builds on what Robert Scoble writes in “What is Social Media” . These two guys are at the center of this “movement” (dare I call it that?) and so are worth [...]
February 19th, 2007 at 5:23 am
[...] What is Social Media de Robert Scoble [...]
February 19th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
What’s Wrong with Social Media?
What needs to be changed is the Wikipedia entry so that those new to the conversation, will understand what’s really going on. Otherwise, we’re doomed to continually run through these cycles of explanation and defense instead of focusing on foward-th…
February 19th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I had to throw my hat into the ring. Aside from the conversation on Social Media, what needs to be changed is the Wikipedia entry so that those new to the conversation, will understand what’s really going on. Otherwise, we’re doomed to continually run through these cycles of explanation and defense instead of focusing on foward-thinking and development.
February 19th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
[...] about Web2.0 and social media. And isn’t the blogosphere hot about it at the moment? We have Scoble trying to define it off the back of Dare Obasanjo asking about it. There’s Stowe Boyd jumping in and trying to [...]
February 20th, 2007 at 11:48 am
[...] Heheh, Doc Searls takes 349 words to say that I’m full of it when I talk about what the term Social Media means. Well, actually, he didn’t even name me or link to me, but [...]
February 20th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Isn’t it funny Guy Kawasaki announces today he’s zigging to everyone else’s zagging? His “best of” blog postings are going to be appearing in Entreprenuer magazine each month. Sounds kinda bass ackwards to me… But, it’s “Guy” and I’d put my money on his zigging any day…
February 21st, 2007 at 4:19 am
[...] What is social media? [...]
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
[...] Scobleizer: What is social media? Robert Scoble försöker definiera sociala medier (Media 2.0). Interaktiv, oändlig, kombineringsbar, syndikeringsbar, multimedial, öppen statistik. (tags: robert_scoble den_sociala_webben journalistik community web20) [...]
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:01 pm
[...] soon after, Robert Scoble jumped on board with a rather extensive look at the social media landscape. “When I say “social [...]
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:38 am
[...] There has been much shoe-gazing in the blogosphere about what social media is and if we should even call it that. I’m not [...]
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[...] Robert Scoble: What is Social Media? [...]
February 24th, 2007 at 7:33 am
[...] post by directmarketing » Blog Archive » Trinet Internet Solutions buys Va. commun… and software by Elliott [...]
February 24th, 2007 at 11:44 am
[...] post by Cheat Code » Comment on What is social media? by directmarketing » Blog Ar… and powered by Img [...]
February 24th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I wrote a piece about the social media term early/middle last year - http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2006/03/what_do_we_do_with_social_media/ - trying to get my head around what people were meaning by the term. I’m not sure it still holds as much water as maybe I’d hoped at the time, and I’m in the process of re-examining it, but it might be of some use.
I think the idea of ‘traditional’ media versus ’social’ media is sort of missing it though - a box of photos is only clumsily considerable as media in the way that we tend to use it. I suspect we might have to reintroduce media (as a variety of ways in which information can be captured and distributed) and disaggregate it somehow into (at least) mass media (in which the channel concentrates on a one-to-many model) and social media (in which there’s a more many-to-many relationship).
February 27th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
[...] Scoble the pre-eminent blogger also has a useful description of social media. You can get an idea of the importance of this SMM when you remember that Google acquired YouTube [...]
March 1st, 2007 at 5:26 am
[...] blown up a couple of times lately inside the mediasphere, with these posts from Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble, Brian Solis, Doc Searls and many, many others. Today, I am beginning a new journey, to co-create [...]
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:21 am
Late to the party…
The question is: What ARE social media?
Phrasing it in the plural helps to conceptualize what we are talking about. Don’t try to define it is a singular term, cuz it isn’t just one thing.
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Robert–I really enjoyed your presentation yesterday at the “Exploring the Impact of Social Media” session. You sold me on the value of social media….and how it’s transformed the way in which information is disseminated/exchanged.
Are group blogs as well received as indivual blogs? Any advice for those setting up a group blog? Thanks.–John
March 4th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
I clipped this from a quick article I wrote a few weeks back on my own blog-
“But the real matter of what a Social Media Platform is all about is relationships. It is about human nature and the personal connections we make with information. As the Web is thrust into “2.0″ or perhaps even “2.5″, online wanderers continue to look for one thing- meaningful information.
Search engines like Yahoo and Google have been harvesting data for over a decade, thrusting our personal decisions through an automated process of A + B = C. Along the way, they have dehumanized the very essence of the information. They have disregarded the human equation.
Social Media is all about being human. It is about conversing with your neighbor, sharing ideas with a world famous author, or even sharing a joke with someone around the world. The “big boys” of the search engine world are finding themselves at the mercy of popular opinion as community sites like Myspace and YouTube encourage users to filter information in the most personal way they can.”
March 6th, 2007 at 8:11 am
[...] post de Robert Scoble sobre que son los medios “sociales” y un buen análisis de Genuine VC sobre como rentabilizarlos; pero la realidad es que, si me quedo [...]
March 9th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Very cool design! Useful information. Go on!
March 10th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
[...] More reading on this: http://www.socialmediaclub.org/2007/02/28/what-is-social-media-no-really-wtf http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/what-is-social-media [...]
March 12th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
[...] all media is ’social’), I do still think that there is some merit to the term. Scobleizer attempts to define it with a little more [...]
March 13th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
[...] SOCIAL MEDIA — Web 2.0/New Media creations that allow users to interact - comme myspace, flickr, etc. a neat blog entry about this phenomenon is here. [...]
March 16th, 2007 at 5:38 am
[...] used press clipping services to understand what the market thought about them. The rise of social media means that it has become increasingly important for companies to understand what is being said about [...]
April 2nd, 2007 at 9:12 am
Social Media: Welcome to the New Social Internet
Social Media, Web 2.0 and All That Jazz©2007 Patsi Krakoff, Psy.D. and Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad(TM) If you’ve been around the Internet for more than a couple of years, you’ve learned that blogging isn’t just some geeky fad that’s going a…
April 20th, 2007 at 8:22 am
[...] Social media exposes all the resources and practices people are using to share information on the Internet. The idea is that when people find information they think are most valuable, they vote for it; which means that the resource people are finding to be more useful is the one that builds most popularity. [...]
April 24th, 2007 at 7:00 am
[...] Comment on What is social media? by How to Build Links in the … By How to Build Links in the Social Media Era Social media exposes all the resources and practices people are using to share information on the Internet. The idea is that when people find information they think are most valuable, they vote for it; which means that the resource … [...]
April 25th, 2007 at 4:22 am
Great post, thanks! I took a shot at summarizing the “9 things” here - let me know what you think. http://poductivity.blogspot.com/2007/04/scobles-9-things-about-social-media.html
May 1st, 2007 at 7:58 am
[...] Voices is one of the best podcasts about Social Media available. And the most recent post indicates a shift towards video blogging or vlogging. Jennifer [...]
May 4th, 2007 at 10:50 am
You Are Here: Map of the Blogosphere
If you’ve ever tried to understand all the fuss about blogs, blogging, bloggers and the blogosphere, you might like this little illustration.
Discover magazine has an article featuring the work of Matthew Hurst, an expert on the new so-called So…
May 9th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I graduated from Communication in 1995, just when Gopher started turning into The Internet…and now I am obsolete. Nevertheless, I would like to point out that maybe you shouldn´t worry so much about those “marketing” gurus and fans who are now calling everything “marketing”…it seems to me they are transforming what is simply a new and very interesting worlwide communication phenomena (along with its corresponding social processes and consequences, as any social psychologist will explain) into what they want to be or become, a marketing tool. My message to them would be “go back to your dusty textbooks and get your concepts straight”. NOT EVERYTHING in this world is marketing.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
[...] and how they are used? Robert Scoble wryly noted “what media isn’t social?” in a blogpost that explicitly tried to define social media. I have been thinking rather seriously about this over [...]
June 21st, 2007 at 12:52 am
Want more and detaile infromation about Social Media.
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:16 am
[...] di utenti del web e li ha catalogati a seconda del tipo di attività svolte in internet nei diversi social media. per rappresentare graficamente questa situazione ha usato la cosiddetta “scala della [...]
June 26th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
[...] Scoble, R, 2007, What is social media? retrieved 7/3/07, http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media/ [...]
June 27th, 2007 at 10:24 am
[...] the eyeballs are - probably needs to qualify eyeballs?) - wikipedia entry for Social Media links to Scoble (16 Feb 2007)! One of the limitations of live presenting with Digg is you have to go with what the [...]
July 14th, 2007 at 12:39 am
will you discuss properly
July 26th, 2007 at 11:43 am
[...] Diskussion geht von Steve Rubels ‘Social Media is No Mo‘, über ‘Was ist Social Media‘ von Robert Scoble, über ‘Stowe Boyds Antwort an Scoble‘. Marianne Richmond [...]
August 6th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
The ideal defination of social media is the place where people can interact without any commercial or political interruptions. Sadly, the so called social media websites are losing their character and are getting more profit conscious. Can they be called social media anymore?
September 6th, 2007 at 7:01 am
[...] this post titled ‘What is social media?’, popular blogger and tech evangelist Robert Scoble says that he prefers calling social media as [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
[...] version of reality. (And we probably don’t need the power of the social mediaverse to help us discover this!) Actually I think it was brought to our attention by a certain D. [...]
September 12th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
[...] has framed our mugshots inside a computer using the Time Magazine cover to illustrate howthis social media has diminished the barriers to collaboration, skill-building and discovery and as a consequence [...]
September 20th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
[...] soon after, Robert Scoble jumped on board with a rather extensive look at the social media landscape. “When I say “social [...]
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:56 pm
[...] If you are new to social media, you might be wondering what exactly Social Media? Robert Scoble does a very good job of explaining social media here. [...]
October 5th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
[...] thing I’d like to mention is a problem with the terminology already being used with this type of social media. In my opinion, Justin.TV is a platform for essentially two types of broadcasting: Life casting and [...]
October 11th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
[...] What this means is that music industry professionals are increasingly turning to public relations practitioners as an economical and viable soloution to the problem of reaching the ever elusive target audience groups. PR practitioners are able to slip under the radar of message wary audience members through use of social media. [...]
October 15th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
[...] you combine learning objects, MUDs, RSS, podcasting, tagging, social networking, social media, network effects, AJAX, REST, web APIs, interoperable ID systems and open courseware? Answer: [...]
October 20th, 2007 at 7:10 am
[...] 2.0 Conversational Marketing Social Media Social Media Marketing/Optimization Guerilla Marketing Blogs Video blogs (sometimes vlogs) [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I took a shot at updating the Wiki entry: “Social media: A form of communications, very often associated with marketing, advertising, or persuassive communication, where the users publish the content with the specific intention of sharing it with others.”
Recognizing that “marketing” is simply one aspect of SM, it also seems to be a very fundamental one, for a couple of reasons. First, given that we are each subjected to (if you believe it…) something like 3,000 messages per day, then a commnications medium that potentially *that* (by replacing interruptive push with permission-based pull) is very definitely and properly associated with marketing. Second, when I share a photo album, it’s to show (you) what I did. When I share a product experience, it’s to show you what happened (good or bad). These are the same thing: content that I want to share on the belief that (you) may enjoy it or benefit from it.
So, yah, marketing is a component of SM. It may be “personal marketing” (as in “Look how cool my last birthday party was…don’t you wish you’d been here?) or it may be directed at encouraging or dissuading a potential purchase. Either way, the key elements–being able to alter of adapt it, subjecting it to the collective, the act of publishing user-generated content that is displacing centrally-produced, un-changeable content–are applicable to both personal and business (aka “marketing” ) uses of SM.
I’m hopeful for a world without interruption, where the information I need to make an informed choice–business, commerce, political, personal–is immediately available. Social Media seems to deliver exactly that.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
[...] @ 12:06 am Okay – so you tell two friends, they each tell two friends and so on… in social media. Not sure who out there is old enough to remember the Faberge shampoo commercial where the [...]
November 18th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
[...] PR’s nightmare Jump to Comments Brian and I had an interesting discussion over IM last Friday about whether or not all PR campaigns/ products launches should incorporate some form of social / new media. [...]
November 26th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
[...] (For more ideas on this, visit Scoble’s What is Social Media?) [...]
November 27th, 2007 at 1:03 am
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
December 1st, 2007 at 3:58 am
What is Social Media? Come to SocialMedia.com and find out, if I can so shamelessly plug our company. We’ve got the largest network of application developers on Facebook and some of our guys are making over $10K a day in earnings. There are lots of techniques to become viral, but the next step is monetizing that traffic, which we specialize in.
Dennis Yu
Analytics
dennis@SocialMedia.com
December 19th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
[...] What is Social Media? - By Robert Scoble accurately describes social media by comparing it to traditional media. [...]
December 30th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
[...] Scoble, blogger on the Scoblizer has a great response that goes into more detail than I have room for here, but here is my short [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Contemporary discussions around social media tend to define social media, in contradistinction to traditional media. Does that mean that traditional media i.e. pre-Internet media are unsocial? I think that every communications medium is social in so far it achieves its essential role, that is, to successfully mediate communication between two people. Then it is by definition social. Unsocial media are broken media.
The most oft quoted distinction between social and traditional media has been the direction of communication. Social media are two-way while traditional media are one-way. But communication does not have to be two-way to be communication. That is why we speak of one-way communication; because it involves the successful communication of one person’s message to another. But then pre-Internet media are also social. Then why is everybody talking about ‘Social Media’? What is new about them?
Though i read Scoble’s post after writing my own on the subject, and think he pretty much captures it, visit my post at http://agoraplace.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/the-social-role-of-the-internet-part-i-the-origins-of-web-20-and-social-media/ for another take on the subject.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
[...] Scobleizer [...]
January 27th, 2008 at 3:26 am
[...] we’ll be experimenting still with how it works (and here and here) and what it is (and here and check this map). So any project team is going to be asking itself… Is it relevant to use [...]
February 7th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I understand that in the digital world…its a new media platform where u can post, edit, interact on published content…its like putting up adjective clause… content may be blog content, article, video and or audio castng.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:35 am
[...] the advent of social media and the social web has brought about a revolution. For the first time ever, is the individual who [...]
February 13th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Social media is a must if you own a business. It forms true sound relationships and reputation that are valid and reliable sources. If you have become a target for any resaon of unfaor negative publicity then these relatiopnships will prove essential because they will know you and your ethics in business not just something that mindless or malicious people have chosen to write without validity. Bullie Pups R Us owner.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:58 am
[...] http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media/ [...]
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
[...] exciting to have the opportunity through ReadyTalk to become a participant in the big wide world of social media and I’m looking forward to figuring out what the heck that actually means, one of these [...]
March 13th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Bullie Pups R Us says where would samll businesses be without the social media? We thrive on it!
March 14th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Mr. Hurd,
Unfortunately while we value human relationships our society has been lacerated from them. We instead fill our intersubjective void with consumption.
(duh) welcome to 1955…
“social” media will thus fall into the same simulacral logic as other forms of media have.
Media is coloured by the specific character of the mode of production in which is has been produced.
Basically, don’t put all your eggs in the social media basket because until we create a much more meaningfully intersubjective society that is less alienated and more self-actualized we’re fucked no matter what the potential of a technology or a method of communication can potentially offer.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:49 am
[...] to search around the web and found a couple of answers (Wikipedia, Stowe Boyd, Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble and many others.) but this one from Chris Heuer is the one I think explains it better: Social Media [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am
[...] Robert Scoble compares it with traditional media. [When I say “social media” or “new media” I’m talking about Internet media that has the ability to interact with it in some way. IE, not a press release like over on PR Newswire, but something like what we did over on Channel 9 where you could say “Microsoft sucks” right underneath one of my videos.] [...]
March 26th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
[...] Scoble weighs in [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 2:31 am
[...] even get a whiff of what’s goin’ on. (um, Neopets, anyone?) Many parents are still at the ‘What is social media?’ stage, much less having any hint of awareness of data-mining kids’ behavioral patterns and online [...]
April 19th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
[...] What is social media? « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger (tags: web2.0 socialmedia pr2.0 media smp whatissocialmedia socialcomputing SocialSoftware) [...]
April 21st, 2008 at 10:01 pm
[...] Robert Scoble hat vor etwa einem Jahr eine Neun-Punkte-Liste für die Definition des Begriffs zur Diskussion gestellt. Seiner Meinung lassen sich soziale Medien wie folgt [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
[...] the meeting was organized, hosted, and attended by “the man” Perhaps a good example of social media working too [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 7:11 am
[...] a definition of social media that really hits the mark out there yet. Robert Scoble started a big discussion about the term over a year ago. That post has over 100 comments with all kinds of opinions on the [...]
May 19th, 2008 at 9:43 am
[...] Zu recht treffenden Definitionsversuchen gelangt Robert Scoble, welcher vor einiger Zeit eine Neun-Punkte-Liste für die Definition des Begriffs ”Social Media” entworfen hat. Die entsprechende [...]
May 19th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Hey there,
can anybody define the difference between the two abstract terms “Social Media” and “Social Software”? It seems to be quite controversial, since both the terms describe simply one thing, don’t they? Software = Media ? What is exactly meant?
May 20th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Those definitions are not always so important.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:20 am
[...] in part to Scoble we know that Social Media is [...]
June 19th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] sites (but for Delicious, which is more about bookmarking only). They all fall under the social media [...]
June 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
[...] What is Social Media? [...]
July 9th, 2008 at 8:52 am
[...] social media [...]
July 13th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
[...] of all, I know we’ve all heard the term thrown around, but what exactly is Social Media? Scobleizer defines the main difference between new media and old media (television, newspaper, etc.) as the [...]
July 17th, 2008 at 8:58 am
[...] in part to Scoble we know that Social Media is [...]