Blog.

This week we shall release couple of updates to help strengthen our vision to shape your understanding of the web and it's benefit to your business and personal life.

Today we will be looking at social media; someone may want to ask “what is social media?” What is the noise about? Well before we go further let's understand the brief definition of the term Social media “…it's media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).” Simple enough? That is to say, it helps you to transform your monologue to dialogue, it makes the communication two-ways, and it changes communication from talk-to to talking-with. You are not only able to read what others have published but you can join the conversation, you can create you own!

The underlying technology behind social media is web 2.0 which is driven by democratization of content, sharing and community. Some of the most popular social media tools include: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Blogger and Wordpress.

Social Media enables viral communication and spreading of ideas. It is not limited to business; it takes different shape and forms based on the idea. One of the biggest achievements of social media is helping Barack Obama win the US presidential election. When information hit the media, and spread by someone within his network and others spread within their own networks, then the growth continue like wild fire.

There are some sharp contrasts between Social media and the Industry media as analyzed on Wikipedia, they include;

1. Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.
2. Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are generally available to anyone at little or no cost.
3. Usability - industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. Most social media do not, or in some cases reinvent skills, so anyone can operate the means of production.
4. Recency - the time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media are currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in some time.
5. Permanence - industrial media, once created, cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing.

Social media has various branches;

• Social Networking (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5)
• Microblogging (Twitter, Jaiku, naijapulse, kukurooku, gistcaster)
• Bookmaking (delicious, StumbleUpon)
• Blogs (Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad)
• Video (YouTube, Vimeo)
• Wiki (Wikipedia, PBworks)
• Etc.

Social media has transformed the media industry and shaking it right now! The power has shifted to the consumer; they can voice their opinions, engage each other and become publisher cheaply. In the business side, it has helped brands to keep their customers engaged and increase brand loyalty. For social causes, it helped in recent Haiti Earthquakes to raise millions of dollars for the victims, helped the protest in Iranian election. The LightupNigeria protest started on Twitter and the recent youth protest in Nigeria tagged Where is Yaradua also started on social media platform.

Social media is here to stay is we shall see it enhance in the coming years, because we humans are social being, and the thing we have been expecting from the internet is the social part, now we have and we are enjoying it!