What is What? Social Networking, Social Media, Social Sharing

by Samir Balwani on August 4, 2008 · View Comments

Recently, I’ve been writing a lot about sites like digg and plurk. They’ve been titled Social Media, except that’s a little misleading.

Truth is that Plurk and Twitter’s main purpose isn’t sharing media, but more building connections and sharing ideas, along with media. To be more true to what they’re meant to do, I consider them Social Sharing sites.

To clear up all the confusion, I’ll outline, define, and give examples of the three Social site type.

Social Networking

The first genre that ushered in the Web 2.0 phenomena, Social Networking sites bring people together. They make it easy to find people, learn about them, and share personal photos and stories.

Friendster began the trend, followed by Myspace and Facebook. Since then niche sites have grown, and the genre continues to expand. Facebook boasts an awe inspiring, 3% growth rate, weekly.

Characteristics of Social Networking Sites:

Users can create their own detailed profiles
Users can search for other profiles, and people they should connect with
People can make meaningful relationships
People can share their photographs, videos, and other media
Site places an emphasis on the profiles, and the relationship

Examples of Social Networking

Social Media

The second child of Web 2.0, Social Media emphasizes the sharing of media. When most people think Social Media, they think digg. But in no way is digg alone. Stumbluepon and SocialBrowse are also Social Media sites.

The main parts of a Social Media site, is the ability to add photographs, videos, or articles, make a profile, find friends, and a system to recommend new media. Digg does this with voting, Stumbleupon uses their thumbs up symbol, and SocialBrowse counts how many times media is shared.

Characteristics of Social Media Sites:

Users can submit and vote on articles, photographs, videos, and other media
Users can create their own profiles
People can recommend new media to their friends and others
Site creates a centralized place for highly recommended media
Site places a greater emphasis on the submissions, and less on personal relationships

Examples of Social Media

Social Sharing

This is where we begin exploring uncharted territory. Social Sharing (a phrase I’m introducing as a genre) refers to the new Web 2.0 phenomena.

Social Sharing is comprised of sites like Twitter, Plurk, and Brightkite, where the point of the site is to share not only your thoughts but also media, favorite sites, and even friends.

These sites have gone beyond micro-blogging platforms to become Social Sharing sites, because no longer are they simply a place to share a short idea or thought. They’ve grown and evolved into sites that can hold full conversations, and push media through the Internet.

Characteristics of Social Sharing Sites:

Users can share ideas and thoughts
Users can create their own profiles
People can easily add friends and find others
People can talk to and respond to friends
Site creates a centralized place for conversation
Site places a great emphasis on the relationship and conversation

Examples of Social Sharing

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The Plagiarist October 26, 2008 at 2:54 pm: I disagree. I actually went more in depth under the comments on this post: http://mixxingbowl.com/2008/10/15/sum-social-slash-blend-xli/ but the bottomline is (for those who didn’t listen to the podcast) that as someone pointed out, if this is the definition of Social Media (add photographs, videos, or articles, make a profile, find friends, and a system to recommend new media) then where do you put Reddit (especially old school Reddit and Slashdot)?

Even though this is subjective, I think putting micro-blogging under social sharing is wrong. I think just judging by the popular opinion, Stumbleupon was and truly is social sharing. It’s not officially called that but most people understand that’s where they “share” their links where Digg used to be the place where they “report” their links thus it became associated with the democratizing of reporting way back when it was perceived as transparent hence the term “social media”.

I also disagree with many things.

Social Networking:
* Users can create their own detailed profiles
=Uuhhh…not nowadays it isn’t. Twitter and Plurk are better for that. I think you called it Personality Branding in another article.

* Users can search for other profiles, and people they should connect with
=same thing with every well done web service including social media and social sharing services.

* People can make meaningful relationships
=This article disagrees with you: http://futurismic.com/2008/10/23/the-dark-side-of-social-networks/

* People can share their photographs, videos, and other media
=Nowadays sites like Mixx jump started that trend in social media too.

* Site places an emphasis on the profiles, and the relationship
=Uhh… people are infatuated with their friends and followers in Twitter and Plurk just as well.

Social Media Sites:

* Users can submit and vote on articles, photographs, videos, and other media
=This reads just like a play of words on your social network characteristics

* Users can create their own profiles
=You just wrote that there’s more emphasis of this in social networking sites.

* People can recommend new media to their friends and others
=Same goes for social networking and social sharing.

* Site creates a centralized place for highly recommended media
=This then omits Reddit and Mixx because they separate they have features to separate this from the frontpage. (SubReddit and Mixx Community)

* Site places a greater emphasis on the submissions, and less on personal relationships
=Again, flies in the phenomenon of Digg getting dumber and banning their top Diggers. I’d say social networks and micro-blogging are more reliant on submissions since if the person doesn’t update long or submits boring things that are inane, people have a reason to unfollow you.

Social Sharing:

* Users can share ideas and thoughts
=Umm… social networking being hailed as the next generation of message boards anyone? As long as you have a commenting system, wouldn’t you be able to share your ideas and thoughts?

* Users can create their own profiles
=You just said this for both social media and social networking!

* People can easily add friends and find others
=How is this any less difficult than the other two services? You want to add friends in Social media? Add comments on their submissions. Find friends in social networks? Submit the most 4chan thing and keep your status updated and gain lots of users.

* People can talk to and respond to friends
=The other services also have private messaging.

* Site creates a centralized place for conversation
=umm… where exactly is the centralization? You still have to go somewhere unlike a chatroom. No more different from the message boards in social networks and social media.

* Site places a great emphasis on the relationship and conversation
=umm… based on your examples, people will follow anyone decent on Twitter as if it’s a RSS feed on crack. I find very little reason to think this doesn’t apply to the other examples. Sure you can post stupid stuff or lose your networks but that’s true for social networks and slowly growing through social media too.
Samir Balwani October 26, 2008 at 11:16 pm: @The Plagiarist – You make excellent point and I have to admit this is probably the most insightful comment I’ve received to date. I’m going to read this over and the post you reference. It will definitely make me rethink my ideas on how to separate out social media. Thanks again!