By Lester Voit

Today, the phrase social media is being heard a lot. Social networking sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, forums, content communities are all forms of social media. You can build your personal web pages, share ideas, hold debates and discussions, invite your friends to share content and communication. It is not the technology that is attracting more and more people towards social media, but being able to collaborate, think and commerce is the driving force. You can make new friends by adding like-minded people even do business through social media. So what exactly is it?

What is Social Media?

Social media is a collection of new kinds of online media that allows communication. Any website that doesnt only provide information, but also allows you to interact will come under the kinds of social media. The interaction can be sharing your opinion, participating in a poll, giving recommendations or ratings etc. What makes social media different from other media is the interaction. At other regular media you are not asked to comment or share your thoughts on the matter.

Social media is a two-way street that allows users to share what they have on mind and promotes communication between like-minded people. It is open for feedback; anyone can participate and leave an opinion.

Types of Social Media

Whether you love photography, have a passion for writing or you are a busy business person, social media works for everyone. There are six kinds of social media in general. These kinds are:

1. Social Networks: Websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and Bebo allow you to create personal profile pages, add your friends, comment on one anothers activities, join groups of interest and have discussions.

2. Blogs: Blogs are one of the best known forms of social media. They are online journals which let you write about things that you love. One popular website for blogging is BlogSpot.

3. Wikis: For example, Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia allows you to add content or edit information that is available on the database. At present, it has over two million articles in English language.

4. Podcasts: are a series of digital media files which are released episodically and can be easily subscribed. Podcasts can be both audio and video.

5. Forums: You will find multiple online forums that have diverse topics of interest available for discussions. They are a powerful and popular element of online communities.

6. Content Communities: Content communities are the websites that allow you to share photos, videos etc. Some examples of content communities are websites such as YouTube, Flickr and del.icio.us.

7. Microblogging: Twitter is the best example of microblogging. It allows you to share bite-sized content.

Social media websites have changed the way the Internet used to work. Today, it is not only an important tool to gather information or make purchases, but it allows you to connect to people around the world. People you might not have met otherwise in life. This new form of social media has shorten the distances and made communication easy. The success of the social media can be seen from more and more people and businesses using this form of media every day

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