What is social media?

Think of regular media like newspapers, television and radio as a one-way street where you can receive information from these sources, but your ability to give feedback or interact with them is very limited.

Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street where you can comment on and rate what you read or watch, start conversations and publish your own content.

What are social media sites?

Using the same metaphor, social media sites are web sites that don’t just give you information (one-way street), but also allow you to interact (two-way street) with the content provided on the web site.

Some of the most popular types of social media websites are:

• Social Bookmarking. (Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon) Interact by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people.
• Social News. (Digg, Reddit) Interact by voting for articles and commenting on them.
• Social Networking. (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) Interact by adding friends or following people or organisations, commenting on posts, joining groups and having discussions.
• Social Photo and Video Sharing. (YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest) Interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions.
• Wikis. (Wikipedia, Wikia) Interact by adding articles and editing existing articles.

These websites are not the only social media websites. Any website that invites you to interact with the site and with other visitors falls into the definition of social media.