Social Media

Social media is media designed to be distributed through social interaction using Internet and web-based technologies.  Social media use is said to be the defining factor in the idea that the current period in time will be defined as the “Attention Age.”

Wikipedia lists the following information and examples of social media:

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and bookmarking. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Examples:

Communication

• Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine, Xanga
• Micro-blogging / Presence applications: FMyLife, Jaiku, Plurk, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Yammer
• Social networking: Bebo, Elgg, Facebook, Geni.com, Hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Skyrock
• Social network aggregation: NutshellMail, FriendFeed
• Events: Upcoming, Eventful, Meetup.com

Collaboration

• Wikis: Wikipedia, PBworks, Wetpaint
• Social bookmarking (or social tagging): Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike
• Social news: Digg, Mixx, Reddit, NowPublic
• Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp

Multimedia

• Photography and art sharing: deviantArt, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Zooomr
• Video sharing: YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, sevenload
• Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam, Skype
• Music and audio sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter, ShareTheMusic

Reviews and opinions

• Product reviews: epinions.com, MouthShut.com
• Business reviews: Customer Lobby, yelp.com
• Community Q&A: Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, Askville, Google Answers

Entertainment

• Media and entertainment platforms: Cisco Eos
• Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online, Forterra
• Game sharing: Miniclip, Kongregate