What is social media?
© John Atkinson (c) 2011-2014 (CC BY-NC-ND)
Social Media
"Social media" is a way for people to communicate and interact online. While it has been around since the dawn of the World Wide Web, in the last 10 years or so we've seen a surge in both the number and popularity of social media sites. It's called social media because users engage with (and around) it in a social context, which can include conversations, commentary, and other user-generated annotations and engagement interactions.
Publishing content has become exponentially simpler over the last several years, which has helped skyrocket the use of social media. Non-technical web users are now able to easily create content on a rapidly growing number of platforms, including those that are owned (hosted communities, blogs, etc.), rented (social networks or third-party communities), and occupied (commenting, contributing, etc.). Today's web has shifted from a "one-to-many" to a "many-to-many" method of engagement, and we're loving it." Taken from: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media.
How Social Networks Have Changed the World
An 11 minute documentary looking at the way social networking has changed the world and developed social communication. The documentary takes a look at several aspects of social networking including the way it has changed celebrating birthdays. I will also be looking into how social networks have altered the way children spend their days compared to how they would have done before Facebook was around.