What Is Social Media?

The term media are the communication outlets or tools used to store and deliver information or data. This can be in different forms such as printed papers, digital data, arts, and other numerous forms of information.

Social Media, on the other hand, is a computer-based and internet-based communication that uses different advanced technologies. This way of communication lets you interact with people, share ideas and information, and even connect with your friends and family through virtual networks and communities. Social Media has grown significantly as it is already widely being used in different fields even in education, government, businesses, religious organizations, etc.

What qualifies as social media?

Identifying whether an app or website is considered social media is a little bit tricky because it only covers a subset of media that can be social. However, we can consider an app or website as social media by its potential for mass collaboration (mass communication, team collaboration, people engagements, etc.) which is the key value of social media. When we say the potential for mass collaboration, it is the capability of the service to attract people to engage and collaborate with other people. 

Types of Social Media?

Type	Definition	Example
Traditional Social Networking Sites	Social networking sites help us connect with friends, family, and brands. They encourage knowledge-sharing and are all about personal, human-to-human interaction.	Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
Social Review Sites	Sites that display reviews from its community members for all sorts of locations and experiences.	TripAdvisor, Zomato
Image and Video Sharing Sites	Sites that allow users to share image content, infographics, and illustrations	Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok
Video Hosting Sites	Platforms where creators put together content and share it to an optimized streaming platform.	YouTube, Vimeo, Kumu
Community Blogs	Shared blogging platforms give people a space to express their thoughts and connect them with the readers.	Medium, Tumblr
Discussion Sites	Sites that allow people to ask questions or make a statement on which can other people can share their thoughts and opinions.	Quora, Reddit
Sharing Economy Networks	Sites wherein people want to share something that they have together with people who might need it.	Airbnb, Rover