Social Media according to Wikipedia.org is: primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Source: Wikipedia

Social Media can further be dissected into four primary channels which encompass all of the internet-based tools with relative examples.

1. Communication

The initial grandfather of Social Media is Communication. The internet at its core was developed to communicate among other users. Beginning with usenet, emails, forums, etc. The progression led to our current tools used for communication among Social Media.

• Blogs – Blogger (service), Livejournal, TypePad, WordPress, Vox,
• Microblogs – Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr
• Social Networking – Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, hi5, Bebo
• Social Netowrking Aggregators – Friendfeed, Plaxo, Profilactic, Youmeo
• Events – upcoming.org, eventful

2. Collaboration

As the internet evolved and the adoption of broadband as common use among the majority of internet users, collaboration was fueled by a multitude of companies and services that were introduced. Collaboration is at the heart of Social Media. Such services can be broken up into:

• Wikis – Wikipedia, Wetpaint
• Online Office Suites – Google Docs, Zoho Office Suite, Acrobat.com
• Social Bookmarking – delicious.com, StumbleUpon, reddit
• Social News Sites – Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Newsvine
• Opinion Sites – eOpinions, Yelp, Amazon reviews

3. Multimedia

With the continued emergence of broadband, internet users adopted the sharing of multimedia. File sharing became the norm before copyright laws brought those services down in order to be regulated. This gave birth to multimedia social media sites that were used as tools to facilitate multimedia on demand. These can be broken up into:

• Photo sharing – Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, Zoomr
• Video sharing – YouTube, Veo, Revver, Vimeo
• Livecasting – Ustream, Justin.tv
• Audio and Music Sharing – imeem, Last.fm, Pandora

4. Entertainment

The final channel is that of entertainment. Entertainment online through games has been a fixture on the internet as far as the early years of the internet with the early 80’s film “War Games” with Matthew Broderick. Since then gaming and entertainment has evolved into a complete social medium allowing people to interact, communicate, and collaborate in real time with players on a global scale. The current breakup of the entertainment channel for social media can be defined as:

• Virtual Worlds – Second Life, Webkinz, Toppstown
• Online Gaming – World of Warcraft
• Game Sharing – Kongregrate, Miniclip.com

Now that the four main channels are outlined and broken up into understandable mediums it is important to know that these are only tools and technologies that if not understood in how they fit within an overall strategy for a Social Media initiative it will be a case of the unknown for those that try to dive into Social Media. The consensus is to try Social Media for the sake of not remaining behind with a trend. This should not be the case.

There are clear strategies for External (Client Strategy), Internal (Strategy Execution) which include Certain Deliverables along with the most important factor, Measurement of results both from a Return on Investment to what needs to be redefined as Return on Engagement. I will followup with another post on these next topics.