Social Media Tools

*Social Networks

   Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue.That is to say, social network is a social structure made up of a set of actors (such as individuals or organizations) and the dyadic ties between these actors (such as relationships, connections, or interactions).
   A social network perspective is employed to model the structure of a social group, how this structure influences other variables, or how structures change over time. The study of these structures uses methods in social network analysis to identify influential nodes, local and global structures, and network dynamics. Social networks are distinct from information, biological, or electrical networks, but theories and methods generalizing to all of these complex networks are studied in the field of network science.
    There are some examples. These are collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter), content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). Also, technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few.

Three Kings – Three Companies that Transformed the Web;

1. MySpace

    Myspace is a social networking service. MySpace is a free online community composed of personal profiles aimed foremostly at a younger membership. A MySpace profile typically includes a digital photo and in-depth information about personal interests. The amount of detail included in the profile is up to the user and submitted voluntarily.

2. Facebook

    Facebook is a social networking website intended to connect friends, family, and business associates. It is the largest of the networking sites, with the runner up being MySpace. It began as a college networking website and has expanded to include anyone and everyone.

    A popular feature on Facebook is the ability to share photographs uploaded from a phone, camera, or hard drive. As with other private information, users have the option to allow only friends to see their pictures or anyone. There is an unlimited amount of storage available, which is a major advantage of Facebook's photograph sharing capabilities.

3. YouTube

   YouTube is an online public communications site. The site allows for registered users to upload and have available for the public their videos for viewing. Anyone who goes to the site can view the videos that are posted on this site. The videos are anything from beginner videos to more professional videos.

   You can put just about anything you want on the YouTube site. You can also watch just about anything on YouTube. There are some great videos out there on YouTube that are very interesting and entertaining and will never be seen anywhere else.

*Social Bookmarking

   Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online.

A short introduction to the concept of social bookmarking, using Delicious.com as the example.

 *Photo Sharing Applications

   Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others (publicly or privately). This function is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images. The term can also be loosely applied to the use of online photo galleries that are set up and managed by individual users, including photoblogs, facebook, etc.

Facebook is working on its very own Photo-sharing application.

*Video Sharing Applications

   Video sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's videos, thus enabling the user to share them with others (These may be publicly or privately).

*Podcasting


   Podcasting is delivering audio content to iPods and other portable media players on demand, so that it can be listened to at the user's convenience. The main benefit of podcasting is that listeners can sync content to their media player and take it with them to listen whenever they want to. Because podcasts are typically saved in MP3 format, they can also be listened to on nearly any computer.

*Blog

    A blog (as short for weblog) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order.Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or reflect the purpose of the Web site that hosts the blog.   Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet. There are top 10 best blogging sites WordPress, Google Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, Xanga, Textpattern, Tripod and Squarespace.

*Microblogs

   Microblogging is a web service that allows the subscriber to broadcast short messages to other subscribers of the service. Microposts can be made public on a Web site and/or distributed to a private group of subscribers. Subscribers can read microblog posts online or request that updates be delivered in real time to their desktop as an instant message or sent to a mobile device as an SMS text message.



*Really Simple Syndication (RSS)/Aggregators

   RSS (originally RDF Site Summary, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated work such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format. An RSS document includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.

*Wikis

   A wiki (sometimes spelled "Wiki") is a server program that allows users to collaborate in forming the content of a Web site. With a wiki, any user can edit the site content, including other users' contributions, using a regular Web browser. Basically, a wiki Web site operates on a principle of collaborative trust.

  *You can take more information about wiki in my address ====> http://serkan.pbworks.com/

  There are some popular global sites;
Wikipedia

• When your looking at wikipedia, type "list of wikis" in the search area, and you'll get a small list of popular wikis.

Wikibooks 
Wikijunior
Wiktionary
WikiHow
Wikitravel
Cookbookwiki
Wikisummaries
WikiMapia






*Virtual Worlds


   Virtual world is an animated three-dimensional world created with computer graphics imagining (CGI) and other rendering software. One of the hallmarks of a virtual world is that a user can interact within the environment by virtue of an avatar, or a computerized character that represents the user.
   There are many different types of virtual worlds, however there are six features all of them have in common:


1. Shared Space: the world allows many users to participate at once.

2. Graphical User Interface: the world depicts space visually, ranging in style from 2D "cartoon" imagery to more immersive 3D environments.

3. Immediacy: interaction takes place in real time.

4. Interactivity: the world allows users to alter, develop, build, or submit customized content.

5. Persistence: the world's existence continues regardless of whether individual users are logged in.

6. Socialization/Community: the world allows and encourages the formation of in-world social groups like teams, guilds, clubs, cliques, housemates, neighborhoods, etc.