Everything to Know about Social Media

 A lot of people use the phrase "Social Media" without actually understanding what it is all about. In this article, we are going to explain to you what social media are about and various forms of it.

 

So, grab your popcorn, sit tight and enjoy the cruise.

The term is so vague that it can basically be used to describe almost any website on the internet today.

Some people have more of a restricted view of social media, often equating it to mean the same social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Other people don't think blogs fall under the social media category.

It seems as if everyone has their own personal opinion of what social media is and isn't. But let's dive deeper into the general concept to gain a clearer and more precise understanding.

What is social media?

Instead of using terms that are boring or perhaps difficult to understand to define social media, let's get a clearer understanding of it by breaking it down into simpler terms and probably avoiding more complications. To start, let's look at each word individually.

Social refers to interacting with other people by sharing with and receiving information from them. 

Media refers to an instrument or means of communication, e.g. the internet, while TV, radio, and newspapers are examples of more traditional forms of media).

From these two separate terms, we can pull a basic definition together:

Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by sharing and consuming information.

It is indeed a broad definition but keep in mind that social media is a very broad term. This is likely as specific as we can get without deviating from the contest.

The concept of social media is so broad that you may use it to describe nearly any site on the internet nowadays. 

Understanding social media

Social media originated as a way to interact with friends and family but was later adopted by businesses that wanted to take advantage of a popular new communication method to reach out to customers. 

The power of social media is the ability to connect and share information with anyone on Earth, or with many people simultaneously.

The term social media refers to a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through virtual networks and communities. 

Social media is internet-based and gives users quick electronic communication of content, such as personal information, documents, videos, and photos. 

Users engage with social media via a computer, tablet, or smartphone via web-based software or applications. 

While social media is ubiquitous in America and Europe, Asian countries like Indonesia lead the list of social media usage.

Social media relates to networking sites and apps designed for people to swiftly and effectively post information in real-time. 

While many users use mobile apps to reach social media, this communication channel originated on computers. 

Types of social media

The various types of social media include

• Facebook 

• YouTube

• WhatsApp 

• Facebook Messenger 

• Instagram 

• WeChat 

• TikTok

• QQ 

• Douyin

• Sino Weibo 

Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, with a clear advantage over other social media, though it has a similar audience to others like Twitter and Instagram.

Social media may take the form of a variety of tech-enabled activities. 

While the variety of evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services makes it challenging to define them, marketing and social media experts broadly agree that social media includes the following.

• Blogs (ex. Huffington Post, Boing Boing)

• Business networks (ex. LinkedIn, XING)

• Enterprise social networks (ex. Yammer, Social Cast)

• Forums (ex. Gaia Online, IGN Boards)

• Microblogs (ex. Twitter, Tumblr)

• Photo sharing (ex. Flickr, Photobucket)

• Products/services review (ex. Amazon, Elance)

• Social bookmarking (ex. Delicious, Pinterest)

• Social gaming (ex. Mafia Wars)

• Social network sites (ex. Facebook, Instagram)

• Video sharing (ex. YouTube, Vimeo)

• Virtual worlds (ex. Second Life, Twinity)

• Even governments and politicians utilize social media to engage with constituents and voters.

Benefits of social media

Individual Benefits. 

• Social media is used to keep in touch with friends and extended family. 

• Some people use various social media applications to network for career opportunities, find people across the globe with like-minded interests, and share their thoughts, feelings, insights, and emotions.

• Social media has changed the way we all interact with each other online.

•  It gives us the ability to discover what's happening in the world in real-time, to connect with each other, and stay in touch with long-distance friends to have access to endless amounts of information at our fingertips.

• In many senses, social media has helped many individuals find common ground with others online, making the world seem more approachable.

• According to a survey by Pew Research Center, the use of social media is correlated with having more friends and more diverse personal networks, especially within emerging economies.

•  For many teenagers, friendships can start virtually, with 57% of teens meeting a friend online.

Those who engage in these activities are part of a virtual social network.

In businesses, social media is an indispensable tool. Companies use the platform to find and engage with customers, drive sales through advertising and promotion, gauge consumer trends, and offer customer service or support.

Social media's role in businesses includes. 

• It facilitates communication with customers, enabling the melding of social interactions on e-commerce sites. 

• Its ability to collect information helps focus on marketing efforts and market research. 

• It helps in promoting products and services, as it enables the distribution of targeted, timely, and exclusive sales and coupons to would-be customers. 

• Further, social media can help in building customer relationships through loyalty programs linked to social media. 

• Businesses are also using social media marketing to target their consumers right on their phones and computers, building a following to build a loyal fan base, and creating a culture behind their own brand.  

Assumed Negative Effects of social media.

• While social media has its positive side, many points to the platform and call out its negative features, likening its overuse to an addiction. 

• Some contest it contributes to inattentiveness, stress, and jealousy. 

• The National Center for Biotechnology Information links heavy social media use to depression. 

• Social media may also be a conduit for misleading information and falsehoods.

The 2016 American presidential election has well-documented accounts of the impact of the ability to spread false information through the platform. 

Such a phenomenon leverages the power of social media, allowing anyone to reach an audience of millions with content that lacks oversight or fact-checking.

Common Social Media Features

The following list of common features of a social media site. If you're questioning whether a particular site could be classified as social or not, try looking for at least one of these features.

• Personal user accounts: If a site allows visitors to create their own accounts that they can log into, then that's a good first sign it might be used for some kind of user-based interaction, perhaps social interaction.                                                                                                                  Although it's possible to share information or interact with others online anonymously, having to create some kind of user account first is a more common standard thing.

• Profile pages: Since social media is all about communication, a profile page is often necessary to help represent an individual and give them a space to create their own personal brand.                                                                                                                                                                               It often includes information about the individual user, like a profile photo, bio, website, feed of recent posts, recommendations, recent activity, and more.

• Friends, followers, groups, hashtags, and so on: Individuals use their accounts to connect with other users. They can also use them to subscribe to certain forms of information.

• Newsfeeds: When users connect with other users on social media, they're basically saying, "I want to get information from these people." That information is updated for them in real time via their news feed.

• Personalization: Social media sites usually give users the flexibility to configure their user settings, customize their profiles to look a specific way, organize their friends or followers, manage the information they see in their news feeds, and even give feedback on what they do or don't want to see.

• Notifications: Any site or app that notifies users about specific information is definitely playing the social media game. Users have total control over these notifications and can choose to receive the types of notifications that they want.

• Information updating, saving, or posting: If a site or an app allows you to post absolutely anything, with or without a user account, then it is social.                                                               It could be a simple text-based message, a photo upload, a YouTube video, a link to an article, or anything else.

• Like buttons and comment sections: Two of the most common ways we interact on social media are via buttons that represent a 'like' plus comment sections where we can share our thoughts.

• Review, rating, or voting systems: Besides liking and commenting, lots of social media sites and apps rely on the collective effort of the community to review, rate, and vote on information that they know about or have used.                                                                                            Think of your favorite shopping sites or movie review sites that use this social media feature.

Some of the Known Issues with social media

Social media isn't all just fun and games with your friends, celebrities you admire, and brands you follow. 

There are lots of common problems that most major social media platforms face from time to time, despite their effort to solve them.

Spam: social media makes it easy for spammers both real people and bots to bombard other people with content. If you have a Twitter account, you've probably experienced a few spambots follows or interactions. 

Likewise, if you run a WordPress blog, you may have gotten a spam comment or two caught by your spam filter.

Cyberbullying/Cyberstalking: Children and teenagers are especially susceptible to cyberbullying because they take more risks when it comes to posting on social media. 

And now that we all interact on social media via our mobile devices, most major platforms make it possible to share our locations, opening up the doors for cyberstalkers to target us.

Self-image manipulation: What a user posts about themselves on social media only represents a small portion of their life. 

While followers may see someone who's happy and living it up via their posts on social media in such a way that makes them feel bored or inadequate by comparison, the truth is that users have the power to completely control what parts they do and don't want to broadcast on social media to manipulate their own self-image.

Information overload: It's not unusual to have over 200 Facebook friends or follow over 1,000 Twitter accounts. With so many accounts to follow and so many people posting new content, it's almost impossible to keep up.

Fake news: Fake news websites promote links to their own totally false news stories on social media to drive traffic to them. Many users have no idea that they're fake in the first place.

Privacy/Security: Many social media platforms still get hacked from time to time despite having good security measures in place. Some also don't offer all the privacy options that users need to keep their information as private as they want them to be.

Important Points to Note

• Social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities. 

• There are more than 4.5 billion social media users around the world.

• The largest social media networks include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.

• Social media typically features user-generated content and personalized profiles.

• In 2023, the number of social media users in the United States is forecast to increase to approximately 257 million.

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