I’m often asked to define what I mean by “social media”.
Here’s what I came up with in the heat of a live radio interview with Pooja on Westside Radio on Friday. (skip to minute 30:30)
Social Media is editorless content prioritised by popularity.
It is articles and programmes that have been published by individuals directly to friends and the rest of the world without going through an editor.
The filtering and prioritising role, traditionally done by an editor, is achieved by monitoring the popularity of the article. The more people that read it the article, comment on it, agree with it and pass it on – the higher that article appears in the list of social media items.
A great way to see this process in action is at Digg where you can see the headlines ordered in terms of popularity by all the members.
Update: 25/Feb/2009 – “prioritised editorless content”
Prioritising by popularity, or tyranny of the majority?
By: James Barbour on July 7, 2008
at 7:46 pm
Ha ha, yes I’m not that sure about the prioritisation bit of this definition – it can be by popularity (digg.com) or by a clever engine (facebook). I suppose the main definition should be that it is prioritised automatically by some predefined rules and machine sorted.
By: Toby Beresford on July 24, 2008
at 10:51 pm
[...] Toby Beresford: “… editorless content prioritised by popularity” [...]
By: What is Social Media? A not so critical review of concepts and definitions < life under electronic conditions on November 14, 2008
at 9:43 pm
[...] Toby Beresford: “… editorless content prioritised by popularity” [...]
By: KoopTech » Literatur » “Social Media”, “Social Computing”, “Web 2.0″, “Social Web” oder “Kooperative Technologien”? on November 15, 2008
at 5:28 pm
[...] Toby Beresford: “… editorless content prioritised by popularity” [...]
By: The definition of SOCIAL MEDIA « Bilal Al-Badry’s Blog on February 27, 2009
at 9:09 pm