Social Media Terms Glossary
Affiliate Marketing – practice in which a business rewards blog or other website authors for referring new visitors or customers for the business, usually by using cost per action (CPA) advertisements.
Aggregation – the process of gathering and republishing content from multiple websites, typically via RSS or Atom feeds. The results may be displayed in an aggregator webpage or by using a stand-alone newsreader or feed reader.
Alerts – service that searches periodically for specific keywords, phrases, or tags in published content and returns search results to the user via email or RSS feed.
API (Application Programming Interface) – a program that allows two or more applications to exchange data and work together.
Application – software served through a social network obeying platform rules and using user profile data.
ASP (Application Service Provider) – free or paid service which provides a complete software package including hosting and support.
Astroturfing – a fake grass-roots effort to generate buzz or interest in a product, service, or idea using blogs and other online venues.
Asynchronous – communications between users which are independent of time or place, such as on email lists, bulletin boards and forums.
Atom – allows users to subscribe to web content or summaries of web content and have it delivered via a feed.
Avatar – a graphical image or likeness of a user.
Back channel - private emails or other messages sent by the moderator of a public forum or between individuals during public conferencing or chat.
Backlinks – the incoming links to a website from another website.
Blog – short for weblog, a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries (posts) of any type of content, usually presented in journal format and arranged in reverse chronological order with the most recent post first.
Blogosphere – general term for the totality of blogs on the Internet.
Blogroll – list of recommended blogs.
Bulletin board (Forum) – asynchronous, public discussion areas on websites where users can post messages or comment on existing messages.
Chat – synchronous web-based text, video and/or voice interaction between two or more users; conversations happen in real time.
Cluster – groupings of content with similar tags.
Communities of Practice (CoPs) – groups that emerge around a shared discipline or to solve a problem. CoPs are defined by the subject that engages them, not by rank, department or corporate affiliation.
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) - communication via any online medium such as email, webpages or conferencing.
Conference – a collection of topics or threads, generally organized around a theme or subject matter.
Content – text, images, audio, video, and any other meaningful material available on the Internet.
Content management systems (CMS) – complete software suites offering the ability to incorporate tools and processes for document management and content creation.
Context ad – an advertisement placed directly inside or next to relevant content or features.
Cost Per Action (CPA) – payment by a business to the publisher of a blog or other webpage based on the specific actions by the user.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – when the user clicks on an advertisement link.
Cost Per Install (CPI) – when the user installs a specific application.
Cost Per Mille (CPM) – every thousand times an advertisement is viewed.
Crowdsourcing – outsourcing a task or project to an undefined group or community in the form of an open call; an application of open source principles.
Cybrary - online library or document repository. Direct Message: Private messages on Twitter that cannot be viewed by others.
Emoticon - keyboard characters used in combination to produce text symbols representing a range of emotions. Sometimes referred to as “smilies.”
Engagement Ad – an interactive advertisement targeted to the actions of a specific user on a particular social network.
Feed – subscription-based content from RSS and Atom-enabled blogs and other websites. Feeds may be comprised of headlines, full-text articles, excerpts, summaries, tags, and/or links to content specified by the user but are delivered without the design or structure of the associated webpage.
Feed reader (Newsreader) – an aggregator of RSS or Atom feeds subscribed to by the user. May be web-based or a stand-alone software program.
File sharing –multiple users sharing file data and/or storage space on a network.
Folksonomy – collective indexing via tags, labels, or keywords by the consumers of the content.
Forum (bulletin board) – asynchronous, public discussion areas on websites where users can post messages or comment on existing messages.
Hashtag: A method of organizing messages by topic to make them more easily searchable. Created by typing "# " in front of the term you want your message to be found by.
Hit – any request for a file from a web server, often used to measure site traffic.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) – refers to all technologies used for the manipulation and communication of information.
Instant Message (IM) – a synchronous personal message sent between two users.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) – a chat client that enables any online user to join a live discussion.
Listening – skimming multiple feeds for a specific topic.
Listserv – a proprietary name trademarked by the Lyris company, but commonly used to describe electronic mailing lists that enable users to send multiple copies of a single email message to all other users by use of a central address.
Mashup – a web service or application that combines data and content from more than one source into a single new service.
Meme – the spread of content such as a video, a link, or an email message from user to user. Generally not applied to content seen as legitimate or useful.
Micro-blogging – a form of blogging in which users compose brief text updates and entries/posts are limited to a certain number of characters or words, i.e. Twitter.
Moblogging – posting blog updates from a cell phone, camera phone, or other personal electronic device; short for mobile blogging.
Moderator – someone who manages an online group or forum by creating and enforcing rules, creating topics for discussion, organizing topic threads, and keeping users on topic.
Netiquette – generally accepted online manners.
Newsreader (Feed reader) – an aggregator of RSS or Atom feeds subscribed to by the user. May be web-based or a stand-alone software program. Also called a Feed reader.
Open Source – a software program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge. Typically a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community of developers.
OpenID – a decentralized service for user authentication which replaces the usual login process and allows users to access multiple websites using the same digital identity.
OpenSocial – a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for deploying the same application across multiple social networking platforms.
Peer to peer (P2P) – refers to direct interaction, usually file sharing, between two people across a network connection.
Permalink – the permanent address (URL) of an item of content that remains unchanged even if the containing webpage is dynamic.
Platform – the specific framework or software system within which tools work.
Podcast – a downloadable audio blog, typically updated weekly or daily .
Post – a blog entry or a bulletin board/forum message.
Profile – a user’s individual page on a social networking website.
Proprietary – software or a platform that is owned by a company or an individual developer, unlike open source.
Retweet: A repost of another user's tweet by entering "RT@username" in front of their tweet.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) – allows users to subscribe to web content or summaries of web content and have it delivered via a feed.
Scraping – a method of extracting information from multiple websites, usually used by third-party services to provide compilations or content feeds otherwise unavailable from a particular website.
Screencast – a recording of computer screen output, usually containing audio narration, and published as a video file. Often used to create tutorials.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - a form of Internet marketing to promote website visibility in search engine result pages. Methods include paid placement, search engine optimization (SEO) and context advertising.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a process aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine results.
Seeding - Posting an initial message or series of messages in an online discussion space.
Social Bookmarking – using a central specialized website like del.icio.us to search, organize, store and share links to online content.
Social media – a general term to describe the body of online tools and platforms people use to interact, collaborate, produce, publish and share online content. Includes websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, micro-blogs, bookmarking, wikis, etc.
Social networking sites (also social networking services) – websites like Facebook focused on building multiple online communities of users who share interests and/or activities. Usually categorized by the central use of a profile page.
Status update – a short description of what a user is currently doing.
Subscribing – adding an RSS or Atom feed to an aggregator or feed reader, usually free.
Synchronous – communications between users which are independent of place but occur at the same time such as a chat session or webinar.
Tags – a keyword or term associated with and assigned to an item of content, used to enhance organization and search results.
Teleconferencing– online meetings of multiple participants over a network connection using instant messaging (IM), web cameras, Voice Over IP (VOIP) or similar technology.
Tenancy – sponsoring advertisements on a blog or other webpage for a specified period of time.
Terms of Service (TOS) – the written rules of a public or commercial online website or service. Usually entails legal agreements required of users before they may access and/or post in an online interaction space.
Thread – a series of posts on a single topic or theme which constitute a related strand of conversation.
Trackback –notification for blog authors when a user links to a specific post. Often used to carry on a conversation between two or more separate blogs.
Tweet: A 140 character answer to the question "What are you doing?" on Twitter.
Vodcast – video podcast.
Voice Over IP (VOIP) – a category of hardware and software that uses the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls.
Wall: On Facebook, the wall is the center of your profile for adding new things like photos, videos, notes as well as updating your status.
Web 2.0 – a term used to describe an overall approach to software development and Internet-based services that emphasizes collaboration and sharing, rather than the less interactive publishing format of Web 1.0.
Webinar – an online seminar, usually a form of chat or teleconferencing.
Whiteboards – applications which enable users to write or sketch on a webpage.
Widget – small stand-alone applications that are created to perform a specific function and are embedded in other larger applications; short for window gadget .
Wiki – designed to allow multiple users to collaboratively create and edit content using any web browser. Allows for the organization of contributions and provides a reversible audit trail of edits and changes by each user.
WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) – describes tools that allow users to format content without knowing specialized programming code.
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