Social Networking vs Social Bookmarking vs The Rest
(by a guest writer)
Often they overlap. Many sites fall into multiple categories. We
won't obsess about the demarcation lines here.
Social
Networks are groups of people who share interests and who interact
in a variety of ways via software on websites. These include
file-sharing, chatting, messaging, exchanging photos/video etc. Social
network sites are usually free to join. Examples include
Myspace,
Facebook,
Bebo,
Orkut, LinkedIn
Social book
marking sites like Digg,
Propeller,
Technorati,
Reddit,
del.icio.us and Stumbleupon
are largely collections of users' bookmarks sometimes organised under
words/terms relevant to that page. Given sufficient bookmarking of a
particular page, peer users trust its usefulness as a destination worth
exploring. Some argue sites like Propeller are more Social News
sites but that's an argument for another page.
Social Media
is more of an umbrella term including those and various others.
Wikipedia is not
only one of the world's best known Social Media sites, it is also a good
place to search for more information and links on social networking and
social bookmarking.
Which brings us neatly to the social media sites that fall into
neither of the previous two distinct categories: sites where the
content is all provided and regulated by the users themselves. User
Generated Content sites include Youtube,
Photobucket,
Squidoo,
Gather,
Hubpages,
Flickr,
Metacafe etc. As those examples
show, the UGC can be anything from articles to photos to video and audio
content. More information on
all of them can be had from the respective sites or, again, from Wikipedia.
But social media is everywhere
User generated content, user involvement, user reviews, user feedback
and comments and other visitor oriented functionality isn't limited to
the so called Web 2.0 companies. Mainstream, "old-fashioned" internet
behemoths have jumped on the bandwagon. The BBC invites users' photo and
comments, Amazon asks for their reviews and everyone from
Topix to the
Internet Movie Database
are neck-deep in social media. So, if you do anything on the web and
even if you are not interested purely in the money making potential of
social media, you'll do well to pay it attention.
There will be listed here the top Social Networks worth taking a look at
however, if you are interested in a specific niche, a properly crafted
Google search should point you in the right direction. Note: There are
several social networks out there today that are by invitation only, so
you may need to know some people to get in on those, but they account
for a very small shred of the social media action.
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