Definition of Terms

Okay, this is for the new kids. If you know social networking, skip this one.

But if you’re new, you might want to understand some basic terminology.

Social networking – This is a verb, an activity that describes the use of websites and social media to find and connect with individuals who may share your interests. These interests could include professions, hobbies, health, entertainment, likes, dislikes, politics, charities, sports—just about anything that you’d talk about with others at a networking event or the water cooler. The range of interests goes from the super-serious to the downright frivolous.

Social media – This is a plural noun, and it is the over-arching term for online mechanisms that facilitate social networking. The core of these mechanisms—blogging, video posting, audio posting, virtual world gaming, etc.—are important, but not the key definition of social media. For it to truly be social, the medium in question must provide a way for people to connect. For instance, if you can write a blog, but there is no mechanism to leave comments or interact with the author—or other readers, for that matter—you can challenge whether it is a social medium at all. The “medium” is there, but the “social” is not.

Web 2.0 – This is the so-called “state of the art” of social media. It refers to the advanced capabilities of the media, and we’ll discuss some of those later. Sure, you can think of things like video—now a rather simple capability—but it refers more to things like mashups (combining data sources to provide something new altogether), Short Messaging Service (SMS), texting and virtual worlds.

Adapting to the New Social Change

The telephone became widely available in the US in the early 20th century. I suspect you were too young to remember, but have you ever read about it? At first, only a few segments of the population adopted it, and then only in limited ways. The wealthy had telephones, perhaps one per household. Businesses only had one or two lines, because having a phone on everyone’s desk would tempt them to waste their time on phone calls! Watch any old Cary Grant movies—like His Girl Friday from 1940—and you’ll see the telephone positioned as a glamorous accessory. Eventually, the device showed up everywhere, on everyone’s desk, in the kitchen, the bedroom, even some bathrooms. This luxurious, potentially time-wasting item is now considered absolutely essential. A similar arc of acceptance happened with the personal computer, the cell phone, the Internet and email. If you shun them these days, you’re probably considered a dinosaur.

We’re well into the new century, and you might be feeling a little lumbering and cold-blooded, yourself, by now. With all the new gadgets, applications and Internet fads it’s hard to know what’s an important tool and what’s trivial pursuit. Gee whiz features abound, and it’s very easy to categorize them as “fun but worthless.” In some cases you’d be right.

In fact, online social networking is not a new phenomenon, nor a fad. In a technological sense, it has been around since 1969. The Internet, in its earliest form as the ARPAnet, utilized significant social aspects. It originally provided scientists an easy way to share ideas, data, and writings. In short, it facilitated collaboration—a social networking activity by its very definition. Now, thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of social networking websites, applications, and tactics litter the landscape. Your kids probably know how to “work” them better than you do. Still, few people really know how to truly “employ” them.

Stay tuned, because that’s what I’ll be talking about here.