Over the next few days we’ll be sharing a white paper which aims to explain what social media is, exactly, complete with sectors and examples.

We’ll talk about what does and doesn’t go on in this space, what the key distribution mechanic really is and the vital role user generated everything plays in this (from content to connections).

We’ll end up (in the last part) with a nice long list of success stories, which we hope you’ll want to add to with links of your own.

We hope you’ll find it useful - and that you’ll help us make it better.

So, let’s start with:

What is social media? (Part 1)

Broadcast media functions by sending a message from one central point to many destinations.

Social media, as the name implies, takes a pluralist approach.

Here messages are sent from many points to many points.

Social Media is a catch-all term to describe all forms of digitally enabled peer-to-peer environments. It includes all forms of many-to-many communications.

These include:

• Text messaging; sms and mms
• Email; including webmail(gmail etc) and fixed (outlook)
• Instant Messaging:  eg Windows Messenger;  skype
• Forums; of the traditional message board variety.
• Social networks: such as Facebook, MySpace, Itsmy
• Blogging: Platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress
• Microblogging: eg Twitter, Plurk
• Video sharing sites: eg Youtube, Vimeo
• Image sharing sites: such as photobucket, flickr
• Conversation aggregators: such as Friendfeed, Disqus
• Human-powered search sites such as mahalo, ditto.net
• Human filtering sites such as digg, delicious, stumbleupon
• Comments on more traditional ‘broadcast-style’ sites – such as the BBC, Guardian.co.uk
• Wikis: wikipedia et al

What goes on in these spaces?

First, it may be wise to consider what doesn’t go on in this space.

The broadcasting of one-size-fits-all messaging tends to fail.
Broadcast is effective when you have an audience ready to consume the message.

In social media there are no audiences – there are many, many, communities of people talking to each other about things they care about. Sometimes, if you are lucky, they’ll talk about you.

They self-form into groups of shared interest/purpose – as evidenced by Facebook groups and the more adhoc interest groups which emerge in Twitter.

They are talking to each other not looking at the stage from which advertisers would like to attract their attention.

They attract each other’s attention. They act as navigators and arbiters of choice.

This is clear from the click-thru rates on ads in social networks. They are typically very low (0.01% on average).

In context and related ads can increase this rate. But even when the CTR increases advertisers are faced with the fact that ads are only trusted by 5% of the UK population (Edelman trust report, 2009).

Trust cannot be broadcast. It now resides in our relationships with our peers. More than 70% of all purchase decisions are made on the recommendation of peers (according to Forrester).

So how can we reach into this ever-lengthening, ever fragmenting long tail of demand (people are still making decisions about buying things, just not in the traditional ways)?

We can’t. They can.

How? See part two, tomorrow!

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