Understanding Social Media

Todd Hampton

Gateway Community College

Who uses the internet?

• According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project 85% of adults use the internet regularly.*

• 91% use a search engine to find information*• 88% regularly use *• 78% use it to search for employment.*• 67% use a social networking sites like Facebook, twitter,

linked in or Google +**Source Pew Internet & American Life Project

What is social media?

• Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.

• Social media can include text, audio, video, images, podcasts, and other multimedia communications.

• News and information is shared amongst users. (Many Media)

Forms of Social Media

• Text messaging; sms and mms• Email; including webmail(gmail etc)

and fixed (outlook)• Instant Messaging: eg Windows

Messenger; skype • Forums; of the traditional message

board variety.• Social networks: such as Facebook,

MySpace, Bebo• Blogging: Platforms such as Blogger,

Wordpress,• Microblogging: eg Twitter, Plurk,

Tumblr• Video sharing sites: eg Youtube, Vimeo

• Image sharing sites: such as photobucket, flickr

• Audio sharing: Lastfm, blip.fm, podcasts

• Conversation aggregators: such as Friendfeed, Disqus

• Human-powered search sites such as mahalo, and increasingly twitter etc

• Human filtering sites such as digg, delicious, stumbleupon

• Comments on more traditional ‘broadcast-style’ sites – such as the BBC, Guardian.co.uk

• Wikis: wikipedia• Googlewave?

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Advantage and Risks of Social Media

• Social Skills• Self Expression• Digital competence• Educational

development• Research

• Oversharing• Bullying• Permanency• Disclosure• Isolation