Social Media – Elucidated

In simplest terms, social media is a set of online media that helps us get connected with peers, gain information about the unknown or just play around with all that is available. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction through the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

Research has identified six kinds of social media which are Social Networks, Blogs/Micro Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts/RSS, Forums, and Content Communities. I guess none of these needs to be explained any further as most of us have experienced at least one of them.

So what is with the buzz around this “social media”? Why has it gained so much of importance lately? In all honesty, one of the great things about Social Media is that no one really knows what the next big thing is. It truly is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. New innovations are being added on a regular basis which makes it a constantly evolving entity. As most of us are an active part of Social media, we understand its importance and explaining the importance of the social media would just make this post redundant.
In an effort to determine the effect of the hype around "social media", I decided to flesh out its advantages and disadvantages based on my experience:

Advantages:

• Common platform for people with different interest to share and connect
• Content is mostly user generated
• A means embrace your passion and identity
• A platform for organizations to connect directly with consumers
• Establish relationships and connections

Disadvantages:

• Content overload and problems in filtering out the right content
• Authenticity of the content (Like this one, how do you believe me?)
• Information and networking overload (Too much of networking is also not good at times)
• Consistent content delivery is a problem
• Addiction to social media

I am not sure if we will still be using Facebook or Second Life five years from now, your guess is as good as mine. Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, still in its beta stage, are driving innovations to unprecedented scales. There will no doubt be exciting new variants on current formats and perhaps innovations that come to be thought of as new forms of social media. One thing is clear though - social media– is a genie that will not be disappearing back into its bottle.