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Social Media

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”[1]. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). Social media utilization is believed to be a driving factor in the idea that the current period in time will be defined as the Attention Age.

Social media can be said to have three components;

  1. Concept (art, information, or meme).
  2. Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).
  3. Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

Common forms of social media;

  • Concepts, slogans, and statements with a high memory retention quotient, that excite others to repeat.
  • Grass-Roots direct action information dissemination such as public speaking, installations, performance, and demonstrations.
  • Electronic media with ‘sharing’, syndication, or search algorithm technologies (includes internet and mobile devices).
  • Print media, designed to be re-distributed.

History

The term “Social media” was used first after LinkedIn created their social network application around 2004. The term has risen steadily since July 2006. At that time, this Wikipedia article on “social media” defined it as a term “used to describe media which are formed mainly by the public as a group, in a social way, rather than media produced by journalists, editors and media conglomerates.”

Ever since the term was used by people how build applications that support the concept, spoke at conferences to help embrace the idea of social networking and communicating with others through the newly available technology rather than through print and other industrial media.

Examples

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and bookmarking. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Examples of social media software applications include:

Communication
Collaboration
Multimedia
Reviews and Opinions
Entertainment
Other

In recent years, numerous companies and brands have begun using the platforms and channels above to help market their products. Healthcare and pharma companies have been slower than many other industries to adopt these technologies due to regulatory concerns. Recently, this has changed with many healthcare and pharma companies using social media to communicate with physicians and patients.