What is Social Media? It’s very common to hear the phrase Social Media nowadays, but what is it exactly?

Social Media is a term used to describe forms of electronic communication on a variety of Web-based platforms and applications that enable people to create online communities. It is where people share information, messages, content and socially interacts with one another.

Social Media is one of the best ways to connect with people. It improves information sharing, whether it be text, photos, video or information in general – social media makes it easier.

Examples of Social Media Websites:
• Social networking sites are websites that lets users create public profiles and form relationships with other users of the same website that access their profile. Facebook and MySpace are some of the most popular social networking sites today.

• Social bookmarking sites are websites that provides users with a place to store, edit, categorize, annotate and share favourite Web pages, documents and files. Users can add comments to the bookmarks and make them private for friends and family or public for everyone. Flickr and del.icio.us are some of the websites dedicated to bookmarking.

• Social news sites are websites that allows users to submit news stories and articles to share. These websites cover a wide range of news and topics such as politics, business, entertainment, technology and general news. The most popular social news websites with a large user base are Reddit and Digg.

• Social photo and video sharing sites are websites that lets users interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions. Some of the most popular photo and video sharing sites are Instagram and Flickr, whilst Youtube and Vimeo are on the top list for popular video sharing sites.

• Social microblogging sites are websites that lets users microblog. Microblogging is a mixture of blogging and instant messaging where users send short messages or micromedia like photos and posts them on their profile to be viewed by the site’s users. Twitter and Tumblr are some of the most popular microblogging websites today.

• Wiki sites are websites that allows users to add, edit, delete or revise content, including other author’s previous work. It is a collaborative work of many authors who add articles and edit existing articles. The most famous wiki site is Wikipedia.

There are numerous other websites out there. The best part is most of them are free! Just keep in mind that any interaction among people wherein they share, create or exchange information via virtual communities and networks fall under the definition of social media.