The document provides definitions for over 50 terms related to social media and web technologies. It explains key concepts and platforms including hashtags, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others. Terms are organized alphabetically from A-Z and include short descriptions of each term and examples when relevant.

1. Social Media Glossary<br />A<br />Aggregator refers to a website or computer software that aggregates a specific type of information from multiple online sources, such as news, reviews and videos.<br />Avatar is an image or username representing a person online within social networks or forums. <br />B<br />Bit.ly is a free URL shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Bit.ly is popularly used to condense long URLs to make them easier to share on social networks such as Twitter. Blog is short form for “web log”. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs and web pages on a particular subject or topic. Entries (or blog posts) are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. There are several blog platforms, such as Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad.<br />Blogosphere describes all the blogs on the Internet.<br />Bookmarking is saving the address of a website or item of content, either in your browser or on social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon.<br />C<br />Champions are a group of enthusiasts willing to get conversations started in an online community, by posting messages, responding, and helping others.<br />Cluster is a grouping of content with similar tags. <br />Comment is a response that is often provided as an answer of reaction to a blog post or message on a social network. Comments are a primary form of two-way communication on the social web. <br />Community building is the process of recruiting potential community or network participants, usually bases on shared interests and goals, to develop useful conversations.<br />Content describe texts, pictures, video and any other meaningful material that is on the Internet.<br />D<br />Digg is a popular social news site that allows users to discover and share content from anywhere on the Web. Digg users submit links and stories and the community votes them up or down and comments on them. Users can “digg” stories they like or “bury” others they don’t.<br />Delicious is a free online bookmarking service that lets users save website addresses publicly and privately online so that they can be accessed from any device connected to the Internet. Users can be followed and have their public bookmarks shared with their network.<br />E<br />Embedding is the act of adding code to a website so that a video or photo can be displayed while it’s being hosed at another site. Many users now watch embedded YouTube videos or see Flickr photos on blogs rather than on the original host site.<br />F<br />Facebook is considered the leading social networking site with over 500 million users. It connects people with friends and increasingly to brands and organizations.<br />Findability refers to having a locatable and navigable presence on and across the web and social networking sites.Firefox is an open-source web browser. It has emerged as one of the most popular web browsers on the Internet and allows users to customize their browser through the use of third-party extensions. Flickr is a social network based around online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups and sets.Forums are online discussion sites. They may also be referred to as a message board.Foursquare is a geo-location-based social network in which friends share their locations and connect with others in close physical proximity to each other. The service uses a system of digital badges to reward players who check in to different types of locations. <br />G<br />Geotagging is the process of adding location-based metadata to media such as photos, video or online maps. Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of businesses and services based on location.<br />Google Documents is a group of free web-based office applications that includes tools for word processing, presentations and spreadsheet analysis. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time. <br />Government 2.0 is the creation of transparent, open interaction between government and its citizens, businesses and inter-governments online. It is also referred to as e-government or digital government. <br />Gowalla is a geo-location social network in which friends share their locations and connect with others in close psychical proximity to each other. It is very similar to Foursquare, but not as popular.<br />H<br />Hashtag is a tag used on the social network Twitter as a way to annotate a message. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a “#”. Hashtags are commonly used during events to organize conversation.<br />HootSuite is a web-based social media management tool. It is used most often to manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and view metrics. It can also update other social media accounts, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.<br />J<br />K<br />L<br />Like is an action that can be made by a Facebook user as a quick way to show approval and share the message. Link building is an aspect of search engine optimization in which website owners develop strategies to generate links to their site from other websites with the hopes of improving their search engine ranking. LinkedIn is the largest business-oriented social networking site. It is mainly used for professional networking. LinkedIn had more than 75 million registered users, in over 200 countries and territories worldwide.<br />M<br />A Mashup is combining two or more web services to create something new. For example, TwitterVision resulted from combining Twitter posts with Google maps.<br />Memes are ideas that catch on and a variety of people expand on them. In the simplest terms: an idea that spreads.<br />Mention (or @ reply) is using the at sign (@) in front of a Twitter username to reply to someone, to refer to them, or direct a new message to another user on Twitter.<br />Microblogging is the act of broadcasting short messages to other subscribers of a web service. The most well known microblogging website is Twitter. Others include Plurk, Jaiku and Yammer.<br />Multimedia is media and content in different forms such as videos and pictures.<br />MySpace is an online social network that caters to artists, bands and pop culture who enjoy the flexibility of creating an individual “look” for their page. MySpace allows users to connect with each other and create groups.<br />N<br />A Newsreader is a website or desktop tool that act as an aggregator, gathering content from blogs and similar sites using RSS feeds so you can read the content in one place. This allows users to go to one site, rather than visiting multiple sites to be updated on news or other content. Google reader is a popular newsreader.<br />Ning is an online platform that allows people to create a customized social network. They are usually created based on interests or for members of an already established group. <br />O<br />The Open Data Movement is advocating certain data be freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The movement largely relates to advocacy of open data from Government.<br />P<br />A Podcast is a series of digital media files, either audio or video, that are released episodically and often downloaded through an RSS feed.Posterous is a blogging and content syndication platform that allows users to post content from any computer or mobile device by sending an e-mail. <br />A Profile is the information that you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site. This can include pictures, basic information and interests.<br />Q<br />R<br />Reddit is a social news site that is built upon a community of users who share and comment on stories. <br />A Retweet (RT) is a repeated tweet. It is sometimes used in a reply to allow everyone to see the original tweet. It is also used to forward a message onto one's own followers.<br />RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication. This allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you through a feed. It allows readers to stay current with favorite publications or websites without having to manually check for updated content.<br />S<br />Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of building your website to give it the best chance of appearing near the top of search engine rankings. A popular SEO tactic is link building.SlideShare is an online social network for sharing presentations and documents. Users can favorite and embed presentations to websites and blogs as well as share them on other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.Skype is a free program that allows for text, audio and video chats between users. Additionally, users can purchase plans to receive phone calls through their Skype account.<br />Social Media refers to any online technology that lets people publish, converse and share content online.<br />Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a set of practices for generating publicity through social media, online communities and social networks. <br />Social Media Monitoring is a process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occur in social media. <br />A Social Network is an online environment to connect, share and communicate with friends and colleagues. <br />Social networking is the act of socializing in an online community. <br />StumbleUpon is a free web-browser extension that acts as an intelligent browsing tool for discovering and sharing web sites.<br />Subscribing is the process of adding an RSS feed to your aggregator or newsreader. <br />T<br />Tags are keywords added to a blog post, photo or video to help users find related topics or media. It allows users to browse the topic on the site. It also makes the entry more relevant to search engines.<br />A Tag Cloud is a visual representation of the popularity of tags that people are using on a blog or website. Popular tags are often shown in a large type and less popular tags appear smaller.<br />Technorati is a popular blog search engine that also provides categories and authority rankings for blogs. TweetDeck is a free downloadable application that manages several social media accounts. <br />A Tweet is a post on Twitter. Tweets are a maximum of 140 characters long.<br />A Tweetup is an organized or impromptu gathering of people who use Twitter. Users often include a hashtag, such as #tweetup when publicizing a local tweetup.<br />Twitter is a microblogging social networking site with over 100 million users. Users share content, including links in tweets. Brands, organizations and non-profits are increasingly using the site to monitor and interact with their target audiences.<br />TwitPic is a Twitter application that allows you to upload photos to share on Twitter. <br />Twitterverse is the universe of people who use Twitter and the conversations taking place within that sphere.<br />Twitter Search is a search engine operated by Twitter to search for Twitter messages and users in real-time. Tumblr lets users share content in the form of a blog. Users can post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, or email.TypePad is a free and paid blogging platform similar to Blogger. It allows users to host and publish their own blogs. <br />U<br />User generated content refers to all forms of user-created materials such as blog posts, reviews, podcasts, videos and comments.<br />USTREAM is a live interactive broadcast platform that enables anyone with an Internet connection and a camera to engage to stream video online.<br />URL: is short for Unique Resource Locator and is the technical term for a web address.<br />V<br />A Video Blog is a blog done in the format of a video.<br />Vimeo is a popular video sharing service in which users can upload videos to be hosted online and shared and watched by others. Vimeo user videos are often more artistic and the service does not allow commercial video content. Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks (such as YouTube) to produce rapid word-of-mouth marketing online. It can help accomplish marketing objectives, such as increasing awareness.<br />W<br />Web 2.0 is a term used describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (referred to as Web 1.0). <br />Webinar is short for Web-based seminar. It is a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web.<br />Wiki are collaboration tools that allow multiple people to work in the same document online. The most well known wiki is Wikipedia.<br />WordPress is a content management system and contains blog publishing tools that allow users to host and publish blogs. <br />X<br />XML (or Extensible Markup Language) is an advanced language developed by the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) to complement HTML. In contrast, HTML is about displaying information, while XML is about describing information<br />Y<br />Yammer is a business communication tool that operates as an internal Twitter-like messaging system for employees within an organization. It is used to provide real-time communication and reduce the need for e-mail. Yelp is a social network and local search website that provides users with a platform to review, rate and discuss local businesses. YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It is the largest video-sharing site in the world and currently the second most popular search engine.<br />