Technology

Social media is a derivative of social networking, a term that came about to describe the extremely specific niche that Facebook and MySpace filled, along with numerous copycats. Facebook evolved from social networking into social media. The words in the name have essentially nothing to do with what the words originally described, mostly due to the fact that words for computer systems very often mean something completely different when discussed outside of computer systems.

Essentially you need these things:

1. Real world identity (majority of interactions between users is non-anonymous posting)
2. You majority follow others that you know personally. You’re not following big all star names that everyone knows, like you would on YouTube. Have you ever followed all your friends on YouTube?
3. You are all posting, commenting on, or messaging people or posts. Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, etc. were the prime examples of this. You created a network, you posted media (photos pictures etc), there were no lurkers who had accounts, if you had an account you were participating. Even if that participating was just private messages. Those were the precursors to social media, and where the term came from. It didn’t apply to YouTube (which existed at the time!), Wikipedia, etc, because those were all just a normal part of the internet.
4. The things being posted are not primarily text. Media as it relates to computers has always referred to video, image, and sound files. I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never said “let me open this media” and it’s a word document. Media outside computers means a lot of things, including paint and air, which means you’re once again just enveloping the world with a pointless definition.

An example of modern day social networking is LinkedIn. The majority of users aren’t posting things, when they are posting it’s always text, everyone has a real identity, and if you aren’t posting things, when you’re using the platform you are likely searching for a job by messaging others or commenting on posts.

An example of modern day social media is Snapchat. You have a group of friends you follow, you post photos and videos (media), only your friends see it, you are all going by your real name.

Social media never meant shouting to the world. That’s just how the internet works. You’re already shouting to the world. That’s why we didn’t bother describing it until people started forming these incredibly close private networks. We didn’t need names for BBS or Usenet because that’s just how the Internet works.

You would never say that watching the president talk on TV was social, even if they’re talking to 1 billion people. Even if you go and comment on the video on the government’s website, it’s not social. It’s all commentary aimed at one thing. In that same vein you can’t call YouTube social media, nor Wikipedia, nor blogs, etc. They’re all individuals shouting into a void, not humans corresponding at the same level.

These were the original definitions, until news companies started using the terms to define any website they didn’t understand. Now news companies and governments use it as a boogeyman to attack anything they don’t like to try to regulate it all under the guise of (whatever meets the current power meta).

Let’s stick to the original definitions, because expanding it any further just muddies communication and makes words meaningless. Social means real names, you know the people, and you’re not shouting into the void. Media means non-text (we’re in computer land, not physics land or news land). If it meant more than that then we would have been calling everything social media back then, and we definitely weren’t. It wasn’t until websites started making the news that the news co-opted the term and we’re in the hell hole we’re in today.