1.1 WHAT ARE SOCIAL MEDIA? WHAT CHANNELS ARE AVAILABLE?

The German association for digital economy (Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft e.V. - BVDW) defines social media as a variety of digital media and technologies that allow users to interact and to create media contents individually or as a group. In Web 2.0, the user is no longer just an information recipient but also becomes a sender.

The social web is characterised by three things:

  • Participation
  • Networking
  • Communication

The following Social Media Prism gives you an overview of the social media landscape:

The different social media channels and platforms can be categorised in a simplified way in four categories:

  • Knowledge Communities
  • Consumer Communities
  • Content Sharing & Entertainment
  • Social Networks

Knowledge communities are platforms that share or jointly create knowledge. This includes blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter), wikis (e.g. Wikipedia), forums and social bookmarking functions (e.g. Facebook "Like" button).

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1.1 WHAT ARE SOCIAL MEDIA? WHAT CHANNELS ARE AVAILABLE? S.1