Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate too.

The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media is an instrument on communication, like a news or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication.

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Here are some examples of social media websites:

Is it social networking?

Is it social bookmarking?

Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a news or listen to a report on television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter.

Social media is a phrase being tossed around a lot these days, but it can sometimes be difficult to answer the question of what is social media. If MySpace is a social media site, and Mag.nolia is a social media site, and Wikipedia is a social media site, then just what is social media?

But social news is not the same thing as social media anymore than a banana is the same thing as fruit. A banana is a type of fruit, but fruit can also be grapes, strawberries, or lemons. And while social news is social media,new york asian escorts social networking and wikis are also social media.

Is it wiki?

In Web 2.0 terms, this would be a website that doesnt just give you information, but interacts with you while giving you that information. This interaction can be as as asking for your comments or letting you vote on an article, or it can be as complex as Flixster recommending movies to you based on the ratings of other people with similar interests.

Social Networking. (Facebook, Hi5, LWhat is Social Mediaast.FM) Interact by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions.

Social Bookmarking. (Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Social Media, Simpy) Interact by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people.

It is easy to confuse social media with social news because we often refer to members of the news as the media. Adding to the confusion is the ct that a social news site is also a social media site because it lls into that broader category.

Now that we have answered the question of what is social media, we can move on to social media websites. Because social media is such a broad term, it covers a large range of websites. But the one common link between these websites is that you are able to interact with the website and interact with other visitors.

A Guide to the Social Web

Social Photo and Video Sharing. (YouTube, Flickr) Interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions.

And these websites are not the only social media websites. Any website that invites you to interact with the site and with other visitors lls into the definition of social media.