Glossary of

Social Media Terms

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Contents

1. Introduction 1. Social Media Terms Glossary 9. Further Information

Glossary of Social Media Terms

Note: This publication has not been updated and the results of those searches are since it was last published. Some of the returned to you, usually by e-mail. You hyperlinks may have changed and may need may also be able to read the searches updating. In addition, some of the information by RSS feed. This form of search allows in this publication may be out of date. you to check whether you, your organisation, your or blog item has been mentioned elsewhere, and so to Introduction respond if you wish. In this publication, we provide an • Anonoblog explanation of terms used in connection with A blog authored by a person or persons who wish to remain anonymous. social media. • App The glossary is intended to help you to Popularised in the general lexicon by the iPhone, an app is simply an understand the “jargon” which is used in application that performs a specific connection with social networking websites function on your computer or handheld and related media. device. Apps run the gamut from Web browsers and games to specialized programs like digital recorders, online chat or music players. Social Media Terms • Application Programming Interface (API) Glossary A functional interface that enables data to be requested and exchanged. • Address, web page The specific location of one single Web • Archive page on the Internet. A Web page Content from a blog or online address is a unique combination of discussion that has been closed but letters, numbers, and symbols that saved for later reference. On , identifies one single HTML file within a they are typically archived by week or larger Web site. month. You may still be able to comment on archived items. • Address, web site The specific location of a Web site on • AstroTurfing the Internet. A Web site address is a The disguising of an orchestrated unique combination of letters, numbers, campaign as spontaneous interest in a and symbols that identifies a collection product, service, or idea. The writer of of HTML files that are collectively a positive post or comment is often referred to as a Web site. For example, motivated by a fee or gift. if you wanted to see the Web site for • Asynchronous Concentric Network, you would type the Asynchronous communications are following into your browser: communications that can be sent at any http//www.concentric.net. time without synchronous • Adsense communication with a receiving device. Google's pay-per-click, context-relevant Examples of asynchronous program available to blog and web communication are e-mail lists, bulletin publishers as a way to create revenue. boards and forums. • Adwords • The advertiser program that populates A popular feed format used for the Adsense program. The advertiser syndicating content, similar to RSS. pays Google on a per click basis. • Audioboo • Aggregation AudioBoo is a website and iPhone OS Aggregation is the process of gathering application designed to allow users to and re-mixing content from blogs and post and share sound files on the other websites, typically via RSS feeds, AudioBoo website. for example by republishing all the • Authentication news related to a particular keyword. A function to check the authenticity of a The results may be displayed in an user, for example using tools such as aggregator website like Bloglines or OpenID and passwords to log in. Google Reader, or directly on your • Authenticity desktop. See Newsreader. Authenticity is the sense that a user is • Akismet “real”. Blogs enable people to publish A comment spam filter popular with content, and engage in conversations, WordPress blogs. that show their interests and values, • Alert and so help them develop an authentic Search engines allow you to specify online presence. words, phrases or tags that you want • Avatar checked periodically. Where a search A graphical representation of an produces a result, an ‘alert’ is created individual that replaces a photo of an

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

author of the content on a blog or other connection over a phone line, using a social media. It may or may not be an single computer. authentic representation. • Burying • Back channel Voting a story down on a social news A private communication sent by the website. facilitator or between individuals during • Canvas public conferencing. The screen area that an application can • Badge use to serve content and features An image, often squared and displayed within a social network. on a blog or other social media which • Categories indicates participation in an event, Categories specify how to organise contest, or social movement. content - for example, they can be a • Bebo set of keywords that you can use but A popular social networking website. not add to when posting on a site. They form part of a taxonomy. • Blog (or Bloggs) - Originally short for "weblog", a blog is basically a journal • Champions that is available on the web. The Enthusiasts who are willing and activity of updating a blog is "blogging" confident to initiate conversations by and someone who keeps a blog is a posting messages, responding, and "". Blogs are typically updated helping others. daily using software that allows people • Chat with little or no technical background to A method of communication over the update and maintain the blog. Internet in which information is being • relayed in real time like a conversation, Blogosphere is a collective term only words are being typed, not encompassing all blogs and their spoken. interconnections. • Click through rate • Blogroll Percentage of users who click on a A list of recommended sites that viewed advertisement. This is a good appears in the sidebar of a blog. These indication of the effectiveness of a web sites are typically sites that are either ad. on similar topics, sites that the blogger • Cluster reads regularly, or sites that belong to Groupings of content with similar tags. the blogger's friends or colleagues. • Collaboration • Boo Collaboration occurs where social A digital recording posted on AudioBoo. networkers communicate with each • Bookmark other across boundaries of A saved link to a web page kept with a organisation, time and space, often list of other saved links. Also called sharing and building information. The Favourites in Internet Explorer as tools to achieve this include e-mail, they're usually your favourite web blogs, web-based workspaces with pages. messaging, file storage, calendars and other tools. • Bookmarking The saving of a website address or • Collective Intelligence content, either in your browser, or on a Collective intelligence is a shared site. If you add or group intelligence that emerges from tags, other users can share your the collaboration and competition of research too so the social bookmarking many individuals and appears site becomes a public library. in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and • Browser The local application you use to connect computer networks. to an Internet server, typically to view • Comments websites. It interprets and displays Most blogs facilitate readers adding HTML encoded documents in graphic comments to posts and may also format. Browsers have become the provide a feed for comments so users central tool for using social media as can keep current with conversations more and more tools previously used without having to revisit the site to on desktops are becoming free online. check whether anything has been BT Tradespace added. A Profile/market building network. • Communities • Bulletin Board System (BBS) Online communities are groups of A computerised meeting system. BBS people communicating mainly through users can have discussions, make the Internet often using e-mail lists or announcements, and upload or forums, where content is centralised. download files. There are thousands of Communities may also emerge from BBSs around the world; many of them conversations around or between rely on a direct modem-to-modem bloggers. List or forum-based

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

communities can be difficult to join up • Cyberspace with blog-based communities because Cyberspace has been widely used as a of the different ways they operate general term for the Internet or World technically. Wide Web. More recently blogosphere has emerged as a term for • Community building Community building is the process of interconnected blogs. recruiting participants, helping them to • Dashboard find shared interests and goals, use the The administration area on blog technology, and develop useful software that allows a user to post, conversations. check traffic, upload files, manage comments, etc. • Conference An online ‘meeting’ for consultation or • Delicious (del.icio.us) exchange of information or discussion. A social bookmarking site and a An online conference takes place in a property of Yahoo! which allows users forum. to quickly store, organize (by tags) and share favourite web pages. Users can • Content Management System (CMS) also subscribe to RSS feeds of other A system used to manage the content users and share a page specifically with of a website or intranet. Typically, a another user. CMS facilitates amendment and • Democracy addition of information and content to a Social networking and media are website using a set of templates potentially attractive to those who want without the need for specialist to revive representative democracy, knowledge of HTML or other web- and those who promote participative authoring software. They are used to approaches, or both. Social media create static web pages, document offers politicians and their constituents stores, blog, wikis, and other tools. another communication channel. It also offers a wide range of methods for • Content Content includes text, graphics, video people to discuss, deliberate and take and any other meaningful material on action. the Internet. • Digg A social news website where users can • Context ads Adverts placed directly inside or next to discover, share and recommend relevant content or features. content from anywhere on the web. Digging • Conversation • Conversation is the exchange of Voting a story up on a social news information through blogging, website. commenting, contributing to forums or • Digital storytelling some other use of social media. A digital story is a non-fiction narrative, composed on a computer, often for • Cookie A collection of information, usually publishing online or publishing to a DVD. This can be done with any including a username and the current date and time, stored on the local combination of images, video, music computer of a person using the World and text. Wide Web, used chiefly by web sites to • Domain Name - The specific address identify users who have previously of a computer on the Internet - (see registered or visited the site. Web Page Address). A domain name is a combination of the top- and second- • Copyright Sharing through social media is level domains. This combination enhanced by attaching a Creative uniquely identifies one computer on the Commons license specifying, for Internet. example, that content may be re-used • Dooced with attribution, provided that a similar Getting fired for contributing content license is then attached by the new (usually defamatory) in a blog post or author. The Creative Commons site at web site. From the popular site, Dooced www.creativecommons.org offers (by an author who apparently once different licenses. One frequently used vented about her company - and got is Attribution-ShareAlike, whereby you fired because of what was written). can alter and re-use the content • Download provided you then add the same To copy a file from a computer (server) license. on the Internet to your personal • Crowdsourcing computer. Harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of • Dynamic Content those outside an organisation who are This is content that is constantly prepared to volunteer their time changing. Videos and animations are contributing content and solving examples of dynamic content. problems.

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

• Ecademy web browsers. A saved link to a A business oriented networking site. favourite web page. • Ecto • Feed reader A stand-alone publishing application, A content aggregator subscribed to by allowing users to compose posts offline. the user, so that specific content or search results arrives in their "reader". • An educational blog site. Among the popular (and free) tools are GreatNews, Feed Demon and Google • Electronic Frontier Foundation Reader. (EFF) The leading civil liberties group • Feed defending internet users’ rights in the Feeds are the means by which you can digital world. read, view or listen to items from blogs and other RSS-enabled sites without • E-mail (or Email) Address - The visiting the site, by subscribing and specific location of a person's electronic using an aggregator or newsreader. mailbox on the Internet. An e-mail Feeds contain the content of an item address typically consists of a variation and any associated tags without the of the person’s name followed by the @ design or structure of a web page. symbol followed by the domain name of the service on which the electronic • FeedBurner A Google tool that allows web sites, mailbox is stored (example [email protected]). E-mail addresses blogs and to convert feed are usually all lowercase letters. content into other formats for readers to subscribe to (including e-mail). • E-mail lists E-mail lists, or groups, are important • Findability social networking tools that allow a Being locatable and navigable presence message from an individual or a central on and across the web and social networking. postbox to be sent to any number of subscribers to the group and for those • subscribers to respond. A free image and video hosting website. In addition to being a popular Web site • Engagement Ad A display advert that includes for users to share personal interactivity specific to a particular photographs, the service is widely used social network. For example: “Your by bloggers as a photo repository. friend Jane became a fan of British • Gymnastics. Become a fan.” Collective indexing by use of tags, labels or keywords by the consumers of • Entry An individual post or article published the content. The tagging system of on a blog. It may include pictures or Flickr of Delicious are examples of this embedded videos and links URLs for social indexing. online sources used. • Forums Discussion areas on websites, where • Eye rest Using images, bold text, bullet points, people can post messages or comment lists, hyperlinks etc to give a reader a on existing messages. Forum rest from reading text. discussions often differ from blogs in that they happen in one place, and so • Facebook can be managed and facilitated in ways A popular social networking website. that blog conversations can't because • Facebook Places these are happening in many different A location-specific application service. places controlled by their authors. It is aimed at smartphone users, and is • Foursquare designed with several goals in mind, Another location-specific application. It the primary one being to allow people is a web and mobile application that to share their current location to their allows registered users to connect with social network, as well as see which of friends and update their location. Points their friends are in their vicinity. See are awarded for "checking in" at also Foursquare, Yelp and Gowalla. venues. See also Gowalla, Facebook • Face-to-face (f2f) Places and Yelp. People meeting offline. • Friends • Facilitator Contacts on social networking sites Someone who helps people in an online whose profile you link to in your profile. group or forum manage their • Ghost Twitterer conversations. They may help agree a Very similar to ghost writing, ghost set of rules, draw out topics for twitterer is someone sending out discussion, gently keep people on topic, tweets in the name of someone else. It and summarise. is often alleged that celebs use ghost • Favorites twittering to continuously send out Another term for bookmarks used by tweets to their followers.

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

• Gowalla world 24 hours a day. Another location-specific application. • Internet Service Provider (ISP) Checking in with Gowalla on your A company that provides its customers smartphone enables you to “stamp” a with access to the Internet. Some ISPs Gowalla Passport at each place you also offer a number of e-mail addresses visit. See also Foursquare, Facebook and web space on which customers can Places and Yelp. house their own websites. Groundswell • • iStockphoto A social trend in which people use An online, royalty free, international technologies to get the things they provider of photos, illustrations, video, need from each other, rather than from audio and Flash files traditional institutions like corporations. • KickApps • Groups An online platform for building social Groups are collections of individuals networks. with some sense of unity through their activities, interests or values. They Kwigg differ from networks, which are An online platform for building social dispersed, and defined by nodes and networks. connections. A group may use a blog, • LinkedIn and an e-mail list may serve a network. A business oriented networking site. • Hat tip (H/T) • Links A hat tip is a public acknowledgment to See Hyperlinks. someone (or a website) for bringing something to the blogger’s attention. • Listening Listening in the blogosphere includes • Hit skimming feeds to see what topics are Every request made to a server for being discussed and setting up data. In one web page, there could be searches that monitor when defined several graphics embedded in it, each keywords are mentioned. of which could give rise to a hit. • Logging in • Hyper Text Markup Language Gaining access to a website that (HTML) restricts access to content and requires The language used to create most web registration. This usually involves pages, with commands that create typing in a username and password. effects like bold, underline, paragraph spacing, etc. • Lurkers People who read but don’t contribute or • Hyperlink add comments to forums. A navigational reference to another document or page on the World Wide • Mashups Web. These links are usually A web service or software tool that represented by highlighted words or combines two or more tools to create a images. new service; often a web application that combines data from more than one • Hypertext source into a single tool. Computer documents that contain links embedded in text or graphics. • Membership Hypertext links display related Membership involves belonging to a information when you click on them. group. Networking can offer some of the benefits of group membership, • without the need for as much central A way of chatting in real time one-to- co-ordination. A rise in networking may one by typing short messages. Popular present challenges for organisations Instant Messaging programs are ICQ, that depend on membership for funds MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. or to demonstrate their credibility. The tools allow you to indicate whether or not you are available for a chat, and • Meme if so can be a good alternative to e- A media gene: a piece of passed-on mails for a rapid exchange. cultural information. • Internet • Micro-blogging A public interconnection of various A form of blogging allowing users to computer networks around the world. compose limited text updates and Millions of computers around the world publish them, as on Twitter. These are connected to thousands of different messages can be submitted and computer networks. These different received by a variety of means and computer networks are all connected devices, including text messaging, together at network access points instant messaging, e-mail, mobile around the world. The Internet is the device, MP3 or the web. sum of all these networks connected • Moblog - A Blog published directly to together. Anyone can join this network the web from a phone or other mobile and from their computer send and device. The word is short for mobile receive information anywhere in the blogging. Moblogging refers to posting

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

Blog updates from a mobile device (e.g. opening the opportunity for further mobile phone or pda). sharing and learning. • MySpace • - The address (URL) of an A popular social networking website. item of content, for example a Blog post, rather than the address of a web • Network 2012 A Profile/market building network. page with lots of different items. Photoblog • Networks • Networks are structures defined by A type of blog that allows users to share photos. nodes and the connections between them. In social networks the nodes are • Photosharing people, and the connections are the Sharing images on a website like Flickr. relationships that they have. You can add tags and offer people the opportunity to comment or even re-use • Networking Networking is the process of initiating your photos if you add an appropriate and developing relationships. copyright license. Platform • Newsreader • A newsreader gathers content from The framework or system within which blogs and similar sites using RSS feeds tools work. That platform may be as so you can read the content in one broad as mobile telephony, or as place, instead of having to visit narrow as a piece of software that has different sites. Online newsreaders (like different modules like blogs, forums, Bloglines, Pluck, or Newsgator) are web and wikis in a suite of tools. As more sites that let you read RSS feeds from and more tools operate on the web, within your web browser. Desktop rather than on your desktop, people newsreaders download the news to refer to the Internet as the platform. your computer, and let you read your • Plaxo news inside a dedicated software A business oriented networking site. program. • • Newsvine A podcast is audio or video content that An open-source community news can be downloaded to a website, an service which lets members customise mp3 player, a desktop computer, or the news viewed by "seeding" articles many other portable media players so or posting for others to view and rate. you can view or listen offline. Podcasts are often updated weekly or daily. • Ning An online platform for building social • Post networks. A post is content contributed to a blog or forum or other form of social media. • Offline Offline means not online, that is, not To post is to contribute that content. connected to the Internet or not logged • Presence in to a service. Online Presence refers to being easy to find online. This could be because you • Online Online means being connected to the can be easily found in a search engine Internet, and also being available for or because you use tools that show you reading or producing content. are available for contact by instant messaging, voice over IP, or other • Open ID synchronous methods of A technology for sharing identity across communication. different web sites. • Privacy settings • OpenSocial The ability to limit social content by A technology for deploying the same network or friend lists. application across multiple platforms. • Profiles • Open Source Software The information that you provide about Open Source Software is software for yourself when signing up for a social which the underlying programming networking site. As well as a picture code is available to the users so that and basic information, this may include they may read it, make changes to it, your personal and business interests and build new versions of the software and tags to help people search for like- incorporating their changes. There are minded people. many types of Open Source Software, mainly differing in the licensing term • Registration under which (altered) copies of the The process of providing a username, source code may (or must be) password and other details when redistributed. seeking to access a website that has restricted access. • Peer-to-peer (p2p) Direct interaction between two people • Remixing in a network. In that network, each Taking different items of content, peer will be connected to other peers, identified by tags and published through feeds, and combining them in

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

different ways. You can do this with blogs and news services. It is a multi- other people's content if they add an purpose aggregator. appropriate copyright license. • Status • Really Simple Syndication (RSS) A post describing of what a user is A format for storing online information doing right now. in a way that makes that information • StumbleUpon readable by lots of different kinds of StumbleUpon is an Internet community software. Many blogs and web sites that allows its users to discover and feature RSS feeds: a constantly rate Web pages, photos, and videos. updated version of the site's latest content, in a form that can be read by a • Subscribing newsreader or aggregator. Subscribing is the process of adding an RSS feed to an aggregator or • Searching newsreader. It's the online equivalent Google is the best-known Internet of signing up for a magazine, but search engine. Specialist search usually free. engines like Technorati concentrate on blogs. As well as searching by word or • Tags phrase you can search on tags, and so A keyword or term associated and find content others have keyworded. assigned to an item of content (i.e. blog post, video, photo, etc.). You can Seismic • assign multiple tags to the same online A video blogging web application. resource, and different people can • Sharing assign different tags to the same Sharing is offering other people the use resource. Usually added to an item of of your text, images, video, bookmarks content to enhance search engine or other content by adding tags, and optimization and to make content applying copyright licenses that easier to organise and find. - encourage use of content. enabled web services include social bookmarking sites (like Digg), photo • Skin sharing sites (like Flickr) and blog The background for a user profile. tracking sites (like Technorati). Tags • Social Graph provide a useful way of organizing, The social graph is a diagram of the retrieving and discovering information. interconnections between people, with the people serving as nodes, and the • Taxonomy lines between them showing the An organised way of classifying connections. content, as in a library, for example content contributors could be offered a • Social Media set of categories under which they can The tools and platforms people use to add content. Allowing people to add publish, converse and share content their own keywords is Folksonomy. online, including text, images, audio and video. The tools include blogs, • Technology steward wikis, podcasts, message boards, Someone who can facilitate community and network development from a forums, communities and sites to share photos and bookmarks. technical perspective. Technorati • Social networking • Social networking sites are online sites An internet search engine for searching where users can create a profile for blogs. themselves, and then socialise with • Teleconferencing others using a range of social media Holding a meeting without being in the tools including blogs, video, images, same place, using a network connection tagging, lists of friends, forums and and tools like Voice over IP, Instant messaging. Messaging, Video, and Whiteboards. Spambot • Threads Automatic software robots that post Strands of conversation. On an e-mail spam on a blog. list or web forum they will be defined by messages that use the use the same • Splog Spam Blogs, or blogs not providing subject. On blogs they are less clearly their own or real content. Sploggers defined but emerge through comments use automated tools to create fake and . blogs full of links or scraped content • from other sites in order to boost Some blogs provide a facility for other search engine results. bloggers to leave a calling card automatically, instead of commenting. • Startpage Blogger A may write on blog A about an A startpage - like Pageflakes, Netvibes item on blogger B's site, and through the or Google Personalised Home page - is web page that you can configure to pull trackback facility leave a link on B's site in content from a range of web-based back to A. The collection of comments services including e-mail, feeds from and trackbacks on a site facilitates

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

conversations. desktop. • Troll • Webinar A user, who for whatever reason, is both An online seminar. obsessed by and constantly annoyed • Whiteboards with, and deeply offended by everything An online area where you can write or you write on your blog. You may be able sketch with a “marker” and wipe your to stop them commenting on your blog, scribblings off later. but you can’t ban them from commenting on other sites and pointing back to your • Widget blog, and you can’t ban them from A stand-alone application that can be posting things on their own blog that embedded in other applications, like a point back to your site. website or a desktop, or viewed on its own on a PDA. • Tweet Tweets are text-based posts of up to • Wiki 140 characters, displayed on the A technology designed to allow many author's profile page and delivered to different people to edit a web page by other users - known as followers - who providing an easily reversible audit trail have subscribed to them. of edits and changes. Wikis are frequently used to allow people to write • Twitter a document together, or to share A social networking and micro-blogging reference material that lets colleagues service. or even members of the public • Upload contribute content. The best example of Transfer a file or other content from a Wiki is the online encyclopaedia your computer to a website or other Wikipedia. media. • Windows Live Groups • Uniform Resource Locator (URL) An invitation only community-driven A specific address used by Web service that allows groups to create, browsing software to locate and access share and discuss content. information on the www. • XING • Viadeo A business oriented networking site. A business oriented networking site. • Yahoo! Groups • Virtual worlds A community-driven Internet Virtual worlds are online applications communication tool that allows groups like Second Life, where you can create to create, share and discuss content. an avatar and socialise with other • Yelp residents. Basic activity is free, but you The service has been designed with can buy currency (using real money) in several goals in mind, the primary one order to purchase land and trade with being to allow people to share their other residents. Second Life is being current location to their social network, used by some voluntary organisations as well as see which of their friends are to run discussions, virtual events and in their vicinity. See also Facebook fundraising. Places, Foursquare and Gowalla. VOIP (Voice Over Internet • • YouTube Protocol) A video sharing website on which users VOIP allows telephone calls to be made can upload and share videos. over the Internet, typically by using a headset attached to your computer. By using headphones and a microphone you can also free your hands to use instant messaging to keep a shared note of conversations or use other virtual presence tools. The best-known VoIP tool is Skype. • Web 2.0 A term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes. • Web-based tools The increasing range of free or low-cost tools including e-mail, calendars, word processing, and spreadsheets that can be used on the web rather than your

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Glossary of Social Media Terms

Further Information Important Notice You may wish to read our publication 763- © Copyright 2019, Martin Pollins, Social Media and other Online Networks for All Rights Reserved Business. This publication is published by This guide is for general interest - it is always Bizezia Limited. It is protected by copyright law and reproduction in essential to take advice on specific issues. whole or in part without the We believe that the facts are correct as at the publisher’s written permission is date of publication, but there may be certain strictly prohibited. The publisher errors and omissions for which we cannot be may be contacted at responsible. [email protected]

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Publication issued or updated on: 15 February 2012

Ref: 764

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