What Is Social Media?

Date First Published: 15th June 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Network Services

Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 2/10

Learn more about what social media is in this article.

Social media is an internet-based technology that allows users to post and share content with their friends or the public and create a social network through dedicated websites and applications. Social media is used by individuals all around the world to stay in touch with their family and friends, share information, and create web content. Businesses use social media to promote their products, get customer feedback, and increase revenue by advertising and building customer networks. It is believed that over 4.62 billion people use social media around the world.

Whilst social media is often used to describe social networking sites, it can refer to any online community that allows users to communicate with each other, such as wikis, web forums, chatrooms, and other sites that have user-generated content. The popularity of social media significantly increased after the introduction of Web 2.0, which are technologies that enable websites to be dynamic with user-generated content rather than static (Web 1.0).

Use Of Social Media For Business

For a business, social media can be used to promote products and communicate with customers to discuss any concerns or questions. Social media can increase the visibility of and grow a business. As people start liking, commenting on, and sharing posts, the content will then be visible to even more people, including their friends and followers. This will cause the content to spread across the internet.

Businesses can use social media to directly sell their products. This is known as social selling. On Facebook, businesses can display products for sale on their Facebook Shop for free. People that visit their online shop can browse their products and make purchases.

Social media can optimise businesses for improvements since customers can give positive or negative feedback. Businesses can respond quickly to customers and address their issues and build a social network with customers.

Businesses can also use social media for advertising. This helps them reach a wider audience as their ads are displayed on the social media app and homepage. Businesses are charged for advertising based on clicks and impressions.

Use Of Social Media For Individuals

For individuals, social media is often used to keep in touch with family, friends and relatives, share information, and create web content. Individuals can send friend requests to people they know and once the friend request has been accepted, both friends can see each other's likes, comments, and recent posts. Individuals can communicate with each other regardless of their distance and set their profile to private or public.

Each user has a social media profile and their profile page usually contains information about themselves, such as who they are, their recent posts, their date of birth, their friend list, etc. Once an individual has signed up on a social media site, they can customise their profile, including the background and profile picture.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Social Media

• It allows users to connect with each other all around the world. This is the biggest advantage of social media. For example, social media could be used to keep in touch with a relative who is on the other side of the world.
• It provides an easy method of communication. Unlike emails and phone calls which take longer for two people to communicate, users can start communicating with each other straight away and the sent messages will instantly appear with an internet connection.
• It is useful for businesses. As stated above, the use of social media for businesses can help them to keep in touch with their customers, increase their sales, and promote their brand. There are a lot of businesses that completely rely on social media and would not be able to keep running without it.
• It allows people to keep up to date with the latest news. Instead of waiting for the news to come on the TV, users can see what is going on around the world at any time. In addition, the news and information discovery can be customised by users choosing to follow what they are interested in.
• Ecommerce. Individuals and companies can sell their products on social media sites for free.

• People can easily become addicted to it. Social media is one of the most common addictions, especially when at work. As a result, this can have a negative impact on performance, increase procrastination, and cause people to avoid tasks and responsibilities.
• Risk of age-inappropriate content. Since most social media posts are publicly visible with no restrictions, this could cause younger people to view unsuitable content.
• Risk of misleading information. The use of social media has increased the chances of people being misled and believing information that is not true.
• Risk of cyberbullying. Social media is one of the most common places where people get cyberbullied. There are some people who will continuously make fun of other people or pressurise them into acting in a certain way, which can cause stress and anxiety.
• Privacy issues - A lot of information is shared online and privacy is becoming a concern. When sharing information using social media, it is easy to accidentally share confidential information, which could cause data theft.

Social Media Platforms

• Facebook - The most popular social media platform. Supports posts of up to 63,206 characters.
• Twitter - Users create ‘tweets’, which are short posts that support up to 280 characters.
• Snapchat - A social media platform where users can send each other ‘snaps’. Snaps are automatically deleted after a certain period of time unless they are saved permanently within Snapchat.
• Wikipedia - The most popular free online encyclopaedia, containing millions of articles. Any user can edit and create an article. Users do not have to register to edit articles.
• WhatsApp - A multi-platform messaging app that allows users to make video and voice calls and send messages.
• YouTube - The most popular video-sharing site owned by Google. Users can share, watch videos, and leave likes and comments.
• LinkedIn - A social network for users to connect and share.
• TikTok - A video-sharing app that allows users to share and create short videos.
• Pinterest - A social media service that allows users to share and find new interests.
• Reddit - A discussion website where communities can share news and content or comment on other posts.

History

The development of social media started with simple platforms, such as GeoCities. That was the earliest social media service that was launched in November 1994. Afterwards, classmates.com was released in December 1995 and sixdegrees.com was released in May 1997. In accordance with CBS News, SixDegrees was ‘widely considered to be the very first social networking site’, as it included ‘profiles, friends lists, and school affiliations’ that could be used by registered users.

The name ‘sixdegrees’ refers to the ‘six degrees of separation’ concept, which states that ‘everyone on the planet is only six degrees apart from everyone else’.

Social media platforms became popular with the launch of Friendster and Myspace and later with the launch and growth of Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, along with others.