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THE SOCIAL WEB
You’ll know by now that I like to make sure we’re all using words and phrases in the same way, which I hope you’ll agree is useful, and with that intention in mind let me break down how I use ‘social Web’ differently to ‘social media’.
Social media is a term that describes all the media that aren’t traditional media, and by traditional media I refer to what some call ‘industrial’ and others call ‘mass’ media; stuff that’s designed, procured and waved under your nose by a company aiming to meet a consumer need (and, usually, sell some space to advertisers along the way).
Social media enable consumers to be producers. Or, more precisely, it’s media where the organization that facilitates the media allows the public to interact with each other, pivoting around relationships, points of view and/or content (except, of course, where the organization hosting the conversation sells some space to advertisers along the way). The media organization may stimulate the conversation, via the original publication of news and editorial for example, but the peer-to-peer debate can then proceed, and often with zest.
I see social media as a component of the social Web, where the social Web consists of:
1. Social media – For example: Facebook, Ping, blogs, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Amazon customer reviews, debate at The Guardian and USA Today, and social news at Slashdot and Digg
2. Applications – For example: Outlook, Wordpress, Tweetdeck, social news apps such as Flipboard ...
