This post attempts to summarize some things about social media for the uninitiated. I will talk about social media in general, and focus on the different ways people use Twitter.

Of course, other people have already done most of the footwork. Please check out this post by Fred Cavazza, paying particular attention to the image of his taxonomy. Also note this essay by Paul Graham, which highlights the role of social media in the lives of those who use it.

There are a lot of different ways people use the tools that are available. This should not be unexpected, as people define their own uses for the spaces in which they find themselves (cf. Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies) Now I’ll go through Cavazza’s categories and describe briefly what each type of thing is for.

• Sharing tools allow people to post chunks of content, like pictures, videos, and playlists, in a place where other can access them.
• Publication tools allow people to publish anything from a personal diary to professional articles, and provide mechanisms to link them with the publications of others and share them.
• “Livecast” tools are for sharing live content, such as webcam video.
• Discussions tools are not new on the Internet - they are broken up into two categories -
  • Instant messaging and chatrooms allow people to communicate directly in real time - tools like Skype do this via voice.
  • Forums, long a staple of the Internet, allow many people to have a discussion, not necessarily in real time. Seesmic incorporates video into this concept.
• Microblogging tools, like Twitter, encourage the posting of short (usually 140 character) messages that anyone can read. In some cases, this is used similarly to instant messaging. I will describe Twitter in more detail below.
• Social aggregation tools link up social media from around the web in one convenient place, usually with some sort of central contact management. An excellent example is chi.mp - ask me for a beta invite.
• Social networks try to do it all. They manage contacts, provide tools for sharing and instant messaging, allow you to post content, and host games. They’re often accused of decreasing the interoperability of the web by being ‘closed gardens’, having limited interoperability with other applications.

These technologies can be used together to build an identity for oneself online. If I post a comment on Overcoming Bias, people can click on my name to go to my website - from there, they can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Chi.mp, or whatever other service they prefer to use. Someone interested in my ideas will have a ready tool to find out more about me, read what I’ve written, and get in touch with me.

This sort of ubiquitous personal information is changing the way people think about social interactions. For example, Melissa Sconyers wrote a post in which she described the awkward feeling of meeting someone for the first time without having had time to google them first. To clarify: according to this, I should feel apologetic if I meet you for the first time and don’t already know your background and interests. Compare this to the danger of “cyber stalking” warned about a decade ago, in which people who don’t even know you can find out about you on the Internet!

Companies are also using social media. Before social media, a brand was ideally defined by the company’s marketing efforts. Now, a brand identity is entirely in the hands of the consumer - you are whatever your customers think you are. Thus, companies try to get involved in social media to be part of the conversation where brand identity is established.

Twitter is a great case-study of a web app in the domain of social media. It was originally envisioned as a platform for micro-blogging. Instead of writing a long blog post, one could give smaller updates quickly and easily. Anyone could subscribe to your micro-blog, generating a ‘twitter stream’ similar to using an RSS reader.

Twitter was such a simple and easy-to-use device that it became adapted for many different functions. Some used it like public instant messaging, using the @username convention to direct replies and have a conversation. Others used it like a public chatroom, following thousands of people and watching the stream in real-time. Twitter can be accessed via Twitter.com, or by various clients giving different experiences; some resemble IM clients, others are more like IRC, and you can even tweet from your cell phone (I recommend the iGoogle gadget BeTwittered, as well as TwitterSearch). Various web services, like Sandy, used Twitter as an interface to quickly exchange messages between humans and machines. Computer ethicists might be particularly interested in that last point - Twitter doesn’t really care if it’s communicating with a human or a softbot, so it can be used as an interface between humans, machines, or both equally well.

Here are some ways people are using Twitter:

• Marketing etc.
• Life Hacking
• Odd stuff
• And finally, some Twitter etiquette.

If you think anything here needs more explanation or updating, please let me know. This was not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the Social Web, but hopefully was somewhat enlightening to someone completely unfamiliar with it.

EDIT: I don’t think I was clear enough about Twitter’s real-time search. It’s great for finding out what people are saying right now about different topics. cf. TwitterSearch.