Social Media vs. Social Networks
According to Daniel Nations (2010), social
media is hard to define and is a two-way street that gives you the ability to
communicate. Social Media can be called a strategy and an outlet for
broadcasting, while Social Networking is a tool and a utility for connecting
with others (Cohen, 2009; Stelzner, 2009). Furthermore, Cohen (2009) reports that „‟the difference is not just
semantics but in the features and functions put into these websites by their
creators which dictates the way they are to be used.”
In fact, there are several differences
between social media and social networks (Hartshorn, 2010). The first one could
be the definition; social media is still a media which is primarily used to
transmit or share information with a broad audience, while social networking is
an act of engagement as people with common interests associate together and
build relationships through community (Cohen, 2009; Hartshorn, 2010).
Another difference is the communication
style as it is reported by Bedell (2010). Indeed, social media is simply a
system, a communication channel; it is not a location that you visit. In
contrast, social networking is a two-way communication, where conversations are
at the core, and through which relationships are developed (Bedell, 2010;
DigitalLikeness, 2008; Hartshorn, 2010).
The return on investment, or ROI, is also a difference
between social media and social network. It is difficult to determine precise
numbers for the ROI from social media yet the social networking‟s ROI is a bit
obvious (Hartshorn, 2010; Hoffman & Fodor, 2010; Wilfong, 2010).
Then, the timely responses and the „‟asking
or telling‟‟ fact are another dissimilarity between social network and social
media. Social media is hard work, and it takes time in which you can‟t automate
individual conversations; whereas, social networking is direct
communication between the user and the people that he chooses
to connect with. Despite the fact that in social networking people can write
blogs or discuss anything, social media does not allow users to manipulate
comments, correct errors or other data for personal or business benefit
(Bedell, 2010; Cohen, 2009; Hartshorn, 2010; Nations, 2010; Stelzner, 2009).
The year 2005 marks the beginning of many
social networks such as Yahoo 360 and YouTube, and Facebook. Facebook was only
for the Harvard community, but became accessible by high school students (Jasra,
2010). Later in 2007, the growth of Facebook was staggering, as it gained over
1 million new users every week.
Yahoo! 360 was a website launched by Yahoo!
Inc., and people could create a profile with photo albums and interact with
other people with similar interests or get in contact with some of their
friends like in any other social network (Roeder, 2010; Yahoo, 2010). YouTube
was created by three PayPal employees who wanted to have a website where people
could upload and share many different videos. YouTube was a revolution in the
social media world because it did need a simple interface in a world where it
was not easy, almost impossible to post videos online (PCmag, 2010).
Twitter
2006 was the year for Twitter to exist while
Facebook began to open its doors to everyone. Twitter gained a lot of
popularity first because it offered more different options such as micro
blogging and secondly because it was used by some celebrities (Jasra, 2010;
Tweeternet.com, 2010).
Until 2010, there was several social
media created, such as Friend feed in 2007 which was a feed to consolidate the
updates from social media and social networking websites and was acquired by
Facebook in 2009 (Jasra, 2010).
Ping.fm was created in 2008 and was defined
as „‟the auto magic‟‟ micro blogging and networking web service that enables
users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously (Hendrickson, 2008;
Pirillo, 2010).
In 2009, Net log formerly known as Facebox
and Bingbox, was launched and is a Belgian social networking website
specifically targeted at the European youth demographic (AppAppeal, 2010), and
Google buzz was born in 2010.
Google buzz is a social networking and
messaging tool that integrates a web-based email program which will work
through the popular Gmail service, will allow users to post status updates,
photos and links to members of their network, as well as pull in their activity
on other sites like Twitter or Facebook (Google, 2010; Gross, 2010).
BY MWINYIJUMA REHEMA
BAPRM III - 42686
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