Last week I attended a networking event that had a guest speaker talking about Social Media and Web 2.0. The night was good but from some of the questions it became evident that there are still a lot of people who don’t know much about this, so I thought I should take the time to explain it.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with these buzz words, “Social Media” and “Web 2.0″ they relate to a perceived second generation of web-based communities which allows a user to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and anything else about themselves via the Internet. The term “Web 2.0″ doesn’t mean that the Internet has now been upgraded, it simply relates to changes in the way software developers and end-users use the web as a platform.
Social Media comes in many different shapes and sizes and there are a lot of terms used which may start to sound a little daunting, so keep this Social Media Glossary handy as you read.
I have attempted to break-down the Social Media sites into what I consider to be appropriate categories - Social News, Social Bookmarking / Tagging, Professional Networking, Social Networks, Question / Answer Networks, Photo Sharing, and Video Sharing. There are many other Social Media sites out there, but this should at least give you a fairly solid introduction to the Web 2.0 world.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia doesn’t fall directly into any of the categories above, but it is the largest Social Media site on the Internet so it should be mentioned in a category all of its own. It is the biggest user-generated reference site around and you almost cannot do a web search without finding a Wikipedia result in the top 10.
Surprisingly enough, there are still a lot of people who don’t fully understand what a Wiki is - basically a Wiki is a server-side piece of software that allows users to freely create and edit web page content using a web browser. So everything you see on Wikipedia has been written by someone like you.
Social News Sites
Social news site are online communities where users can submit news articles, topical blog posts or other sites of interest and then the community members vote and comment on the articles. Generally the articles with the most votes are promoted to the front page of the site.
| Site: | Digg |
| Overview: | Digg is one of the largest Social News Sites. You can submit your own articles/posts and if these are voted by Digg’s members, you’ll see significant increases in your website traffic. This can help create greater exposure for your site, making it a good marketing/branding tactic and since people are inclined to link to sites they like, it makes for a good link-building option as well. The users of Digg tend to favour technical related submissions. |
| Other resources: | Beginners Guide to Digg |
| Site: | Slashdot |
| Overview: | Slashdot has been around for a very long time, has a very large and loyal readership, huge amounts of authority and is the only site that Digg has yet to beat. Like Digg, it focuses mainly on technical news although Slashdot readers tend to be a little older than Digg’s. If you have an article that gets picked-up by Slashdot you better have a host that can support the flood of traffic you’ll receive. |
| Other resources: | Digg vs. Slashdot |
| Site: | reddit |
| Overview: | reddit has been around longer than Digg but not as long as Slashdot and has a readership that tends to like more intellectual articles. Subsequently reddit has less content/articles than Digg, but also has a lot less spam. Even though reddit is smaller, a well written article or blog post can still generate substantial traffic. |
| Other resources: | Reddit - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About It |
| Site: | Netscape |
| Overview: | Netscape started as a web browser but changed its focus to become another Social News Site. Netscape readers favour political, financial and current event related items and reports suggest that they view more pages per visit than both reddit and Digg and they tend to spend more time on the site as well. From an advertising perspective, this is pure gold. |
| Other resources: | Beginner’s Guide to Netscape |
| Site: | Newsvine |
| Overview: | At Newsvine, you can read stories from established media organizations such as the Associated Press, ESPN, and New Scientist as well as accepting contributors from users. Unlike the other sites mentioned above, Newsvine is more like a traditional news site, things that are news-worthy will hold the front page instead of just the articles with the most votes. If you can write news articles that look like mainstream media Newsvine will not only increase your exposure but it can also give you notoriety as an authoritive figure within your industry. |
| Other resources: | How to Get Noticed on Newsvine |
| Site: | Sphinn |
| Overview: | Sphinn is a very new Social News Site that was designed purely for the SEO industry. All the articles submitted relate back to search optimisation, search marketing or search related technology in some way and the people involved in Sphinn community are predominantly SEO’s. Due to the site being so new, it allows SEO’s that may not have a lot of industry exposure to submit their articles and interact with the well known experts. The amount of traffic generated by the site isn’t huge at this stage, but due to its niche all traffic you receive is very highly targeted to the SEO industry. |
| Other resources: | Sphinn - The Social News Site Every Search Marketer Should Be Using |
Other Social News sites to consider are: ShoutWire, I Am Bored, SearchMob, Bringr, NowPublic and Gabbr.
Social Bookmarking / Tagging
This type of Social Media allows you to share the sites you like through a bookmarking system (not unlike how to would save your favourites in Internet Explorer or Firefox). Most Social Bookmarking services allow you to add ‘tags’ which help to categorise the sites and some of the site also allow for comments to be associated with your bookmarks. You’ll also find that some of the sites will display “recently bookmarked” or “most popular bookmarks” on their front page.
| Site: | del.icio.us |
| Overview: | del.icio.us is one of the most popular Social Bookmarking sites around and is owned by Yahoo!. Like most Social Bookmarking sites, del.icio.us not only allows you to access your bookmarks from anywhere, but also allows tagging and sharing of your bookmarks with other people who have similar interests. |
| Other resources: | Us.ef.ul |
| Site: | Ma.gnolia |
| Overview: | In my opinion Ma.gnolia looks a little nicer than del.icio.us and it utilizes Ajax so you can keep track of your favourite online content and quickly see what others have said about a site while you’re still browsing it. |
| Other resources: | Blogging with Ma.gnolia |
| Site: | Furl |
| Overview: | Furl is like del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia with the one main difference that it tends to attract more technical people. There are also a few extra features on Furl that the other bookmarking sites don’t have, but to be honest they don’t really serve a lot of purpose. Due to the technical nature of Furl’s user base, if you have a technical site, being listed on Furl can create a little more exposure and authority. |
| Other resources: | Furl, Furled, Furling |
| Site: | StumbleUpon |
| Overview: | StumbleUpon is a Social Bookmarking site with some slight differences. The best way of describing it would be to say it’s like channel surfing on the Internet. When you setup your profile you are required to enter a number of areas of interest and then you are served pages that fit this criteria. You can also tag pages that you come across in your general web browsing which are then added to the list of pages that other people can StumbleUpon. The more Stuble’s received, the more traffic StumbleUpon will send your way. |
| Other resources: | Beginners Guide to StumbleUpon |
Other Social Bookmarking / Tagging sites to consider are: BlinkList, Clipmarks, Blummy, Listal, diigo, Blue Dot, 43 Places and Stylehive.
Professional Business Networking
These sites are designed to link like-minded professionals with other business people and potential employers/employees. If you join one of these networks as an individual it can help you find work (or help other organisations find you) and if you are the owner of a business, it can create valuable networking opportunities as well as increase your exposure.
| Site: | LinkedIn |
| Overview: | LinkedIn is one of the best Professional Business Networking sites and allows people to recommend you, find you via your location and expertise, and prompts users to advertise their experience and education for potential clients and employers. The LinkedIn network currently comprises of 12 million professionals and 50,000 companies. Whether you’re looking for a job, a reference, a sales lead, an expert, or an inside connection, LinkedIn would be the first place I would start. |
| Other resources: | What to use LinkedIn for |
| Site: | Spoke |
| Overview: | Spoke boasts a larger network - over 35 million people across more than 900,000 companies, but it’s main focus is more about finding potential clients and employees instead of the overall social networking aspect that LinkedIn provides. It is also a US site which isn’t a problem if you’re an American but doesn’t help much for the rest of the world. |
| Other resources: | Marketwatch article on Spoke |
Social Networks
These are sites that are made-up of user-submitted pages consisting of personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos which can be shared across the network with other users. These sites tend to attract a younger audience with the largest and best known Social Networking site being MySpace.
| Site: | MySpace |
| Overview: | MySpace is the oldest and largest of the Social Networking sites where you can publicly share personal information, blogs, photos, music, video clips and build a network of ‘friends’ worldwide. MySpace is not the cleanest looking Social Media site and some don’t beleive it’s particularly user-friendly, plus it contains a fair bit of advertising. It’s main user base consists of teenagers, musicians, entertainers… and spammers. If you’re marketing a product to this demographic, MySpace may be a good method, but otherwise it may not be the best tool for you. |
| Other resources: | Making MySpace Effective |
| Site: | Facebook |
| Overview: | The key difference between MySpace and Facebook is that MySpace is public - meaning anyone can view your profile even if they aren’t a MySpace member, whereas Facebook is a lot more private. You can only view member’s profiles if you are a member yourself even that only lets you view basic details. If you wish to interact and share photos, music or any information with another member you need to become friends first. The other key difference is that the interface and profiles all look a lot cleaner and aren’t littered with advertising. Facebook has been around for a while and initially growth was slow, but it is very quickly gaining momentum and could become “the next big thing” in Social Networking sites. |
| Other resources: | Social Networking: A Beginner’s Guide To Facebook |
| Site: | Bebo |
| Overview: | Bebo is almost like a cross between MySpace and Facebook. It is targeted towards college students and claims to be more user friendly than MySpace (plus it looks a nicer too). |
| Other resources: | Bebo - MySpace Alternative |
Other Social Networking sites to consider are: Yahoo! 360, LiveJournal, MSN Groups and Consumating.
Question / Answer Networks
These are, as the name suggests, networks where someone asks a question and users then provide answers or solutions to the question asked.
| Site: | Yahoo! Answers |
| Overview: | Yahoo! Answers allows you to ask questions and have other Yahoo! users answer them for you. All links on Yahoo! Answers are “no follow” which means they don’t pass any rank, but if you can find a relevant question that relates back to your business, you can still gain some exposure as the results often rank well in the SERPs. |
| Other resources: | Yahoo Answers Adds Social Networking |
| Site: | Answers.com |
| Overview: | Answers.com supplies Google with its dictionary definitions, it has recently has acquired Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com and it is including Yahoo! Answers with its results. Like Yahoo! Answers, the links provide no juice, but if you answer a few questions that relate back to your industry it can increase your authority within your industry. |
| Other resources: | Answers.com on Wikipedia |
| Site: | LinkedIn Answers |
| Overview: | LinkedIn (mentioned above) have incorporated an answering system into their network. As the network consists of professionals, the questions asked and answers received are generally of a business nature. Answering questions on this network may not do much to improve your search rankings, but it can further enhance your business reputation within the LinkedIn network (which can create greater networking potential with other LinkedIn members). |
| Other resources: | LinkedIn Answers : Love Child of LinkedIn & Yahoo Answers |
Other Question / Answer Networks to consider are: QuestionVille.com, Askville, Say-So and Quomon.
Photo Sharing
Photo sharing is a great way to share not just photos, but also information about your pictures. Most social photo sharing websites will also let you to add a description of the photos, along with other tags that you feel relate to the pictures you are sharing. Some of the sites also allow group members and friends to add comments on your pictures as well.
| Site: | Flickr |
| Overview: | Flickr is owned by Yahoo! and is probably one of the best known social photo sharing sites. It tends to attract higher quality images than some of the other photo sharing sites so if you are a photographer or someone wanting to showcase your work, it can be a great marketing tool. |
| Other resources: | Newbie’s Guide to Flickr |
| Site: | Photobucket |
| Overview: | Photobucket is more geared towards a younger audience and the quality of the images isn’t as good as Flickr, but what it lacks in quality it certainly makes-up in quantity - the site has over 3 million images tagged. |
| Other resources: | Photobucket on Wikipedia |
Other Photo Sharing sites to consider are: Picnik, XMG Image and Webshots
Video Sharing
Video sharing is probably the fastest growing area of Social Media and is the perfect medium for buzz marketing.
| Site: | YouTube |
| Overview: | Owned by Google, YouTube is the most popular video sharing application on the Internet - it lets users upload their own videos, embed videos on their own sites and search and comment on other people’s clips. Plus it’s incredibly addictive. |
| Other resources: | YouTube on Wikipedia |
| Site: | Dailymotion |
| Overview: | A French video sharing site that was initially setup at the same time as YouTube but didn’t quite make it into the same league. That being said, it still gains roughly 9000 new video submissions and receives more than 16 millions visits each day. |
| Other resources: | Dailymotion on Wikipedia |
Other Video Sharing sites to consider: Metacafe, blip.tv, ClipRoller, Videoegg and SearchVideo.
So that is my very quick overview of some good Social Media sites - I know that there are many others and if there are some particularly good ones that you think should be added to the list, please let me know.
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Great guide - thank you.
Another list of social bookmarking and social networks can be found at http://www.squidoo.com/onnetworking
Lots of other social media sites listed at
http://www.shambles.net/web2
This lists are specifically with Education k-12 in mind.
Great Articles for beginners. Stumble upon and digg are my personal favorites.
This is a great post - I will be sending this on to others to have a read. Thanks very much.
Hey,
your forgot the social search …
Yes it exists, only it is just getting started.
people can find their findings so that next people to
search for the same search term doesn’t have to go
to the first 10 google results, but just pick the page
with more votes
see it live at searchons. com
great entry by the way, thanks
Great post!!
Good depth but at the same time nice and short.
We have just launched a website (crowdfound dot com) that combines Social News & Social Bookmarking / Tagging - combo of Digg & Delicious. It is in Beta and has a very long way to go. We are Australian based and looking for heaps of early adopters to get it going, so sign up and have a go!!!
http://www.crowdfound.com/
Thanks again for the great post!!!
Thanks for sharing a post on social media which is very important in every aspect for making awareness about the site around the world.
Great Post!!
Me too having an account on few of them. The description mentioned by you is very too the point and well defined.
Thank you for this clear explanation of WEB 2.00. I run a home-based multimedia studio and I have been trying to link with networks in Australia without much success. I’m not a marketing person but I would like to know how to attract people to my site in Australia.
hm…fairly good post. But are you sure the things all u wrote are correct? pls do not take it other wise…its just a query! Thanks
Very nice. I think people are overwhelmed with the number of Social Networks popping up all over. The thing to remember is you only need 2 or 3 to do the job. Find the best ones for you, or for your niche, and just use them as another part of your internet marketing.
It is only a small part of the overall scheme. Keep that in mind.
Nice Blog!!
Mike
In one day Stumbleupon can generate mass traffic to my blog, perhaps someone who famous and have massif reader stumble my article.