Socialmedialand

You may have noticed that my blog has taken a new name, Socialmedialand, and a new URL – socialmedialand.net. It’s an exciting day!

For the last 6 months or so I’ve been mainly focused on getting started and filling in some content but now that SXSW is coming up I wanted to polish some of the rough edges to get it ready.

While I was thinking about my personal brand in terms of the name of this blog, the direction I’d like it to take and what my niche is here it lead me to think a lot about the term “social media.”

What is “social media”?

I’ve read a few people’s blogs and heard some great arguments regarding the term “social media” and whether or not it’s descriptive of what we do in this industry. Here are my two cents:

One of the concerns regarding the term “social media” is that it’s too narrow. That it will be outdated in a few years and like the “Railroad Companies” that eventually had to rebrand into “Transportation Companies” we’ll find ourselves boxed in by our names. I don’t really agree with this. I think the narrow definition is only in the way individuals tend to associate “social media” with certain things – not the definition itself.

So here’s my definition:

 So-cial [soh-shuhl] Me-di-a [mee-dee-uh]: refers to any technology, space, network, or type of media that facilitates communication, sharing, learning, or other social activities.

By this definition, social media isn’t just Facebook and Twitter; it can be mobile applications; it can be email and IM; it can be things we haven’t even come up with yet – anything that uses a medium of some sort to promote or support any type of social activity.

How does this relate?

Using my working definition of social media I think it’s the appropriate name for the topic that I wish to discuss in this space. This blog, Socialmedialand, and the Alice in Wonderland theme will speak to the way that, like Alice,  we’ve found ourselves in a totally new world that is accelerating and changing at a pace unparalleled in human history. That means that the rules aren’t clearly defined and, like I did above, we’re free to make them up, change them, mold them and evolve them as we see fit. The things I write here will be the explorations of social media including thoughts on what the rules are (or aren’t), ideas on how to shape it and use it, examples of things that have gone right or wrong and more (got to leave room to evolve right?)

If that sounds good to you, click on the subscribe button over there on the sidebar.

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