Social media

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.

Chris Shipley (Co-founder and Global Research Director for Guidewire Group) is considered the first person to have coined the term "social media." The BlogOn 2004 conference, July 22-23, 2004, focused on the "business of social media." Shipley and Guidewire Group used the term "social media" in the months leading up to that event to discuss the coming together of blogging, wikis, social networks, and related technologies into a new form of participatory media.

The first ever Social Media Press Release was created and freely shared by Todd Defren, a principal of SHIFT Communications.

1 Examples of social media
2 Campaigns
3 Examples of social media services
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Examples of social media

[edit] Campaigns

Oxfam, a global non-profit relief organization, was given the opportunity to auction off Keira Knightley's 2006 Oscar gown. The goal of the social media campaign was to generate awareness for Oxfam while working with a very limited budget. The non-profit engaged Gold Group, a social media agency, to reach out to Keira Knightley fan websites as well blogs and message boards for celebrity gossip. The auction raised $7,855 and about 79 bidders competed, with 2,500 watching the auction on eBay in the final seconds. [1] Bloggers helped generate offline publicity for Oxfam, including over 150 traditional media mentions across the U.S. [2]

Volvo, in promotion of the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, started a campaign in which people worldwide could hunt for "Pirates Treasure" which was a pirate-themed Volvo SUV. To promote the contest they allowed people to share tips, clues and even poems through "The Hunt" blog hosted by MSN Spaces. [3] Volvo was able to get over 30,000 people involved in "The Hunt" leading up to and during the release of the film. [4] Social Media and Transparency - The question of who funds social media, or for that matter, social media campaigns, is tricky and interesting. There is a horde of profit seekers in the field of social media, who however hide behind the facade of social media. In fact the business models of social media are still in a flux and there are many players with divergent stand points on the issue of funding social media. Most of the online properties that are on the band wagon of social media are rabid profit seekers, for whom social media, is merely yet another capitalistic business model. This, in fact, is a subversion of the term "social media". The other interesting tantalizing corollary to this argument however, is the tension between the two proverbs 1. - "the best things in life are free" and 2. - "only the filthy rich can do charity."