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What is Social Media anyway?

A question I get asked a lot is “What is Social Media?” Well there are literally hundreds of answers out there. Google it and have a look or stick it in YouTube there plenty of videos on the subject all with their own version of the Answer. Of course in getting the answer this way you will be using social media itself.
Well for what it’s worth this is my answer to the question everyone is asking.
Before I try to define what social media is let’s look at traditional media and the methods they used. “Media” or Information has for years been written or produced by the media providers themselves. You have Television, News Papers, Radio and so on producing information and spewing it at us in a transmit only fashion. You then have the advertisers that hijack slots in between these bursts of information again spewing in a transmit only way. For years “The Media” had to literally grab our attention to be heard or seen. They had to be more interesting, more shocking, funnier, louder than the last person in order to get our attention.
Social Media in it’s simplest form is “media” or information (called content in social media circles) that is written produced and published by ANYONE with a keyboard, camera or microphone. This means that news storeys are now written and reported by real people that are living in the heart of it. Entertainment is provided not by Hollywood directors with $million budgets but by teenagers and £50 camera-phones. Advertisements are now done by the people that are using the products the consumers.
Of course the transport and home for Social Media is the Internet. There are many tools and websites on the internet to help people find and to broadcast information that interests them.
We see examples of how social media is taking the place of traditional media all the time. When the Airliner landed on the Hudson River in New York the first pictures to go round the world were not from a savvy reporter that was on the ground but from and member of public and his camera phone. When people buy consumer products from amazon.com they read the reviews that people who already own the product are writing. And if I want to book a holiday I can chat to people that have literally just come home from that very hotel.
Well there it is. My short answer. What this means and the implications on how businesses must market themselves is one for another blog. A blog of course is social media at its best.