Back in 2008 I wrote a post about all the social networking, news sharing, cataloging, social shopping, and bookmarking websites out there. Since then much has changed and social networking and social media has literally exploded online. It's everywhere.
What hasn't changed is the Internet is still growing and adapting. What may have been in a few years, months, or even days ago might not be in now. Not only have all the social networking services, social news sharing services, social cataloging services, social shopping websites, and social bookmarking services websites exploded, but there are social media management tools now to help you manage all your social networking accounts.
While all the social media websites, applications, and services are all just a little different what they do have in common is they are basically social media type websites where you can interact with them and contribute to them in a various number of ways, either by joining their community, suggesting websites you like, sharing your lists and collections, sharing your likes and dislikes, rating various items, commenting on various things, blogging, sharing photo's or video's, sharing news stories, interacting with people who share similar interests, buying products or asking for suggestions as to what to buy, asking questions, looking for suggestions, sending a message, scheduling a get-together, or just telling them what is going on in your life. You might be asking for advice, sharing some advice, asking where to go for advice, or trying to learn something. Just about anything and everything is handled via social media these days.
If you're unfamiliar with the terms social media, social bookmarking, social networking, social cataloging, social shopping, social news sharing, social network aggregators, or social media management systems and tools here's what they mean:
a)
Social media are interactive websites and tools that use the internet to communicate and share information either using: text, audio, video, images, podcasts, blogs, forums, and other means of communicating. Also known as user-generated content (UGC) websites. According to Wikipedia,
"Social media technologies take on many different forms including blogs, business networks, enterprise social networks, forums, microblogs, photo sharing, products/services review, social bookmarking, social gaming, social networks, video sharing, and virtual worlds." For more information on social media please
CLICK HERE.
b)
Social bookmarking websites allow users to share, manage, search, and organize bookmarks of their favorite URL's. Sometimes they contain descriptions, comments, tags, keywords, and votes for or against. Sometimes the bookmarks are public or they have your restrictions on who may see your bookmarks. They may or may not have web feed capabilities, and other social networking features like groups, email capabilities, etc.
c)
Social networking websites are usually groups of people who share common interests or activities. Usually they contain individual users profiles, social website links, email or instant messaging capabilities, blog capabilities, photo storage capabilities, etc. Usually there is a sharing of ideas, activities, events, and interests by each user. The focus is individual versus forums which would have a group focus. The social network's niche might be old friends, classmates, books read, music liked, interests, services offered, and more. Social networking is accessible through desktops computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices.
d)
Social cataloging websites help users to catalog and share things owned or of interest to them, like: books, CDs, DVD's, recipes, photos, hobbies, crafts, etc.
e)
Social shopping and social commerce websites offer shopping and selling over the Internet in a social networking and information sharing setting.
f)
Social News sharing services are websites where you can submit and share a news story and have the users of that website vote on it. Social news sharing websites may also be aggregator type news sites that gather and catalog articles by interest and then provide an RSS feed for those interests.
g)
Social Network Aggregators are tools and services that collect all the information from multiple social networking services and gather it in one place for you.
h)
Social Media Management Systems and Tools are websites, apps, and systems that allow you to easily manage your online social media presence or update and/or schedule posting to all your social media accounts from one application.
The various social bookmarking, social networking, social news, social shopping and social cataloging websites are always evolving - even to the extent that it's difficult to tell some of them apart. The lines are blurring. For sure - there are many of them, with many more to come as the trend towards connecting, communicating, and selling over the Internet continues to grow.
You see the buttons everywhere to share this URL, page, comment, or blog post on the various toolbars, blogs, websites, and social networking websites. But, who are all these social networking services, social news sharing services, social cataloging, social shopping, and social bookmarking service websites? Here's a summary of some of the more popular services:
