What is social media?

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.

I am writing an article for a law journal about the use of social media by attorneys. This week’s FreeStyleFriday post is an excerpt from the article which is a work-in-progress:

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.[1]

For the purposes of this article, “social media” includes the realm of digital products that allow people to communicate and share information on or through the Web.

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I say social media is about conversation: communicating with people online, catching up with old friends, making new friends, exchanging ideas and useful information. Establishing and building relationships. Social media is not a new form of media, it is a familiar activity happening over new a medium — the World Wide Web.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."

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July 23, 2010

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