Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features. These include:
Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
User-generated content, such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions are the lifeblood of social media.
Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organisation.
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user’s profile with those of other individuals or groups.
Social media use web-based technologies,desktop computers and mobile technologies (e.g. smartphones and tablet computers) to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals, communities and organisations can share, co-create, discuss and modify user-generated content or pre-made content posted online.
They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between businesses, organisations, communities and individuals. Social media changes the way individuals and large organisations communicate. These changes are the focus of the emerging field of technoself studies.
In America, a survey reports that 84 per cent of adolescents in the country have a Facebook account. Over 60 per cent of 13 to 17-year-olds have at least one profile on social media, with many spending more than two hours a day on social networking sites.
According to Nielsen, Internet users continue to spend more time on social media sites than on any other type of site. At the same time, the total time spent on social media sites in the United States across Personal Computers as well as on mobile devices increased by 99 per cent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 compared to 66 billion minutes in July 2011.
For content contributors, the benefits of participating in social media have gone beyond simply social sharing to building a reputation and bring in career opportunities and monetary income.
Social media differ from paper-based or traditional electronic media such as TV broadcasting in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy and permanence. Social media operate in a Dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers). This is in contrast to the traditional media, which operate under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers), such as a newspaper, which is delivered to many subscribers.
Some of the most popular social media websites are Baidu Tieba, Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger), Gab, Google+,Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit,Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, Viber, WeChat,Weibo, WhatsApp, and YouTube. These social media websites have more than 100,000,000 registered users.
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