A Quick Glance at Forms of Social Media

by venus on June 23rd, 2010 7

Social Media is defined differently for its various forms. There is a difference between Social news sites, Social Networking sites, Social Bookmarking sites, Social Photo sharing sites even though all of them form a part of this huge Social Media. They all have different approach and are targeted to different audience. They need to be treated differently in terms of user expectations and preferences.

Below mentioned are the various forms of Social Media:

Credits: wpromote

Social News Sites

These sites are primarily meant as a source of news and information. Users visit these sites for news and to exchange useful information. Most of these sites provide users the facility to vote for the information which according to them was most useful. The links appear on the site based on the users rating so that most popular news is seen by maximum people.

Some of the popular Social News sites are:

Digg: The largest and most popular social news site. It covers everything from politics, entertainment, and technology to general news.

Reddit: Another popular social news site which also covers specific topics like programming and science.

Propeller: A site that operates similarly to Digg. It covers a wide range of topics including technology, politics and entertainment.

Slashdot: Though this site covers topics such as books, games, politics and entertainment, it is still primarily a tech news site.

Social Networking Sites

These sites help you stay connected with your friends and family. They are also a great channel for meeting new people and building online communities of users sharing common interests. The major aspect of Social Networking site is communication. This communication is mostly in form of posts on a user’s profile, instant messaging or direct mails.

Some of the popular Social Networking sites are:

Facebook: This is hands down the most popular social networking site. It lets you form online communities, find new friends, connect with old friends and much more.

Myspace: It became the most popular social networking site in as early as June 2006. It operates in similar fashion as Facebook.

Twitter: This micro-blogging site is an equally popular Social Networking site. It not only helps you know what your friends are upto but also lets you connect with new people and follow their posts.

Social Sharing Sites

These sites are basically used as a medium to share all kinds of information be it reviews, photos or videos. The popularity of these sites is largely contributed by the huge user generated content.
Some of the popular Social Sharing sites are:

YouTube: This is one of the most popular Social Media Sites with one of the highest number of users. This Video sharing site allows the user to upload and share videos.

Flickr: This is the largest Photo sharing site which claims to host more than 3.6 billion images. This site is very popular for upload and sharing personal pictures.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social Bookmarking is a way of managing the bookmarks of the webpages user saves on the internet. Social Bookmarking Sites offer a channel for the users to save the links of the web pages that they want to use in the future. These bookmarks can be private, public or shared with a limited number of people.

Some of the popular Social Bookmarking Sites are:

Delicious: This Social Bookmarking site is used for storing, sharing and finding new bookmarks. Users can view the most recent as well as most popular bookmarks here.

Blinklist: This is one of the oldest social bookmarking site and is used for personal and social bookmarking services.

Wikis

This is a tool for creating and sharing knowledge. A wiki is a collaborate website that lets the user create and edit the web pages and the contents. These are absolutely simple since anybosy can edit the information using the simple web browser.

Wikipedia is not only the most famous Wiki but also the largest and most preferred source of information on the web. Wikipedia boasts of 13 million articles written by users around the world.

You might also like: