Defining Social Media
Brian Solis (fellow Media 2.0 Workgroup member) writes about working together to define Social Media once and for all. I agree that it is well overdue!
He writes:
He goes on to say:
He makes a call for us to join in the conversation on Wikipedia to craft a detailed page. Let's make it happen!
He writes:
Social Media is, at its most basic sense, a shift in how people discover, read, and share news and information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many.)
It is an evolving phenomenon that has captivated some, intrigued others, and is feared and underestimated by many. But if you're new to this discussion, where do you go to learn about the basis for Social Media or simply its definition? The current "go to" reference is Wikipedia, and as I mentioned in previous posts, it is misleading, incomplete, and uninformative.
He goes on to say:
There are many of us who have spent the last year defining and defending Social Media as a legitimate classification for new media as well as documenting the tools that facilitate the socialization of content, including Stowe Boyd, Robert Scoble, Jay Rosen, Chris Heuer, Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Israel, Todd Defren, Brian Oberkirch, Chris Saad, Jerry Bowles, Marianne Richmond, JD Lasica, Rohit Bhargava, Jeremy Pepper, Greg Narain, et al. However, we always seem to run around in circles defining it and re-defining it, over and over again.
He makes a call for us to join in the conversation on Wikipedia to craft a detailed page. Let's make it happen!
Labels: briansolis, Media 2.0, social media, web 2.0
3 Comments:
Not sure you will want to entrust the legacy of your description to Wikipedia. The site has come increasing fire as untrustworthy at it's core.
Further, I find it presumptuous that a hand full of people would define an activity engaged in by so many. If Web 2.0 can survive without a blessed definition, so can Social Media.
mojo, so true, so very true. Honestly, the Web 2.0 definition is an interesting comparison. The only difference is that there aren't so many posts challenging its reality or its definition. There are conferences, newsletters, and blogs dedicated to reinforcing the definition which O'Reilly introduced.
Everyone I pinged in the original post had written at least one article recently defending Social Media as a legitimate category, which goes back to someone originally challenging why it matters based on the wikipedia entry alone.
A more timely comparison will be how the industry chooses to define Web 3.0. I'm in the semantic web camp, wile other's are treating it as simply the evolution of the social web.
There was one post I read recently that said, "Web 3.0 is all about companies building their own social networks." If I had the time, I would love to tear that one apart....
I hear a lot of discussion around defining Web 2.0; I think a simpler definition is better, such as “user-based collaboration and content generation.” There are a number of people who want a clear-cut definition on exactly what Web 2.0 is and everything that encompasses Web 2.0. This is analogous to asking for a list of every animal that exists now or has ever existed before they are willing to talk about dogs or buffalo. Even today new species are being discovered. If I may borrow the famous words of the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward, “I may not be able to find it, but I’ll know it when I see it.” Web 2.0 is still growing and evolving and this is why it is still so hard to define.
The biggest issue facing Web 2.0 is not technology. Most of the technology used in Web 2.0 has been around for quite some time. It is the application of this technology that is unique and challenging. Web 2.0 is analogous to the concept of democracy, elements of which have been around since before the ancient Greeks. The elements of democracy have evolved over time and been integrated into something far different than what the ancient Athenians would recognize. Similarly, the elements of Web 2.0 continue to evolve and are being integrated into something different.
Craig Tobias
Solutions Architect
Cisco
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