SOCIAL MEDIA CHARACTERISTICS AND BUILDING BLOCKS
BY Imeru Wambui
What is Social Media
Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue which takes on many different forms such as, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking
Social Media Definitions
- Social media is a wide range of internet-based and mobile-based services
- Social Media are web-based online tools that enable people to discover and learn new information, share ideas, interact with new people and organizations.
- Social media are computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities
Characteristics of Social Media
By design, social media gives users quick electronic communication of content. It operates in a dialogic transmission system between many sources to many receivers.
Two common characteristics that help to define social media include the following.
1. First, social media allow some form of participation. Social media is never completely passive usually, at least a profile must be created that allows beginnings for potential interaction. That quality itself sets social media apart from traditional media where personal profiles are not the norm.
2. Second in line with its participatory nature, social media involves interaction. This interaction can be with established friends or family or with new people who share common interests with you.
How Social Media Works
Social media is any digital tool that allows users to quickly create and share content, User-generated content facilitated through online interaction is the lifeblood of social media. Below are simple steps on how social media works.
- Most social media sites start with a user creating a profile, usually by providing a name and an email address. Once a profile has been created, users can create and share content.
- Users engage with social media via computer, tablet, or smartphone via web-based software or web application, often utilizing it for messaging.
- Users can find other users whose content they want to follow or comment on. Depending on the type of social media, a user may “follow” another user, add them as a “friend,” or they may “subscribe” to another user’s page.
- Social media often uses “feeds” that allow users to scroll through content. The feed will include content from “followed” users, as well as from entities that pay to promote their content such as businesses or brands.
- Social media companies use algorithms, based on a user’s profile data, to determine the content that appears and the order it appears. The more social a network becomes the bigger the group of friends, followers, and contacts.
Social Media Building Blocks
The power of social media is the ability to connect and share information with anyone on Earth, or with many people simultaneously.
The following are the building blocks that make up the social media experience.
1.Identity: It represents the extent to which users reveal their identities in a social media setting which includes information like name, age, gender, profession, location, and information that portrays users in certain ways.
2. Conversations: Refers to how users communicate with other users in a social media setting. Many social networks facilitate conversations among individuals and groups.
3. Sharing: Social implies an exchange between people, which means sharing. thanks to social media we now distribute and receive more content easier and faster like never before.
4. Presence: It refers to the accessibility of users knowing where others are, virtually or physically, through status updates or check-ins.
5. Relationships: It represents a connection between more than one user through conversation, sharing information, meeting up, or just listing each other as a follower or friend.
6. Reputation: Reputation can have different meanings on social media platforms, but at its core, it’s a sense of identifying the status of others and yourself in a social network.
7. Groups: It refers to what communities and sub-communities exist on a social media platform, and how easy are they to construct. As a network becomes bigger with friends, followers, and contacts, it becomes necessary to sort the cronies into different groups.
Social media is everywhere. It’s unavoidable, it’s powerful, and it’s here to stay, this is truly the age of social media. It has changed the way we live our lives brought the world together and made communication much easier. Now we can easily connect with anyone from around the globe, share ideas, learn and discover new information, it has become part of our daily routine.
Social media is growing in terms of its reach and impact and its statistics is here to show just that boasting with 3.7billion users currently equating to about 48percent of the entire world population and with an average of 2.5 hours per day spent on social networks and this number is expected to increase over the next few decades’ social media has become a phenomenon we cannot ignore
