Basic forms of social media

At this time, there are basically six kinds of social media. Note, though, that innovation and change are rife.

Social networks
these sites allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with friends to share content and communication. The biggest social networks are MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

Blogs
perhaps the best known form of social media, blogs are online journals, with entries appearing with the most recent first.



Wikis
these websites allow people to add content to or edit the information on them, acting as a communal document or database. The best-known wiki is Wikipedia4, the online encyclopaedia which has over 2 million English language articles.

Podcasts
audio and video files that are available by subscription, through services like Apple iTunes.

Forums
areas for online discussion, often around specific topics and interests. Forums came about before the term “social media” and are a powerful and popular element of online communities.

Content communities
communities which organise and share particular kinds of content. The most popular content communities tend to form around photos (Flickr), bookmarked links (del.icio.us) and videos (YouTube).

Microblogging
social networking combined with bite-sized blogging, where small amounts of content (‘updates’) are distributed online and through the mobile phone network. Twitter is the clear leader in this field.