Social media refers to internet-based applications that allow the creation and sharing of user-generated content, allowing users to interact with each other. While television and radio can also enable some social interaction, such as reality shows where audiences vote or calling into radio stations, social media differs in that it provides more accessibility and usability since anyone can participate at low cost without specialized skills. Social media also allows for more recent and editable communications compared to traditional media.

1. How has media become social?
• Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as
"a group of Internet-based applications that build on the
ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which
allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content."
• (Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities
of Social Media , Business Horizons, Volume 53, Issue 1,
January-February 2010)

2. Are television and radio not social in some way too?
• Social Television is a general term for technology that
supports communication and social interaction in
either the context of watching television, or related
to TV content. Social television systems can integrate
voice communication, text chat, presence and context
awareness, TV recommendations, ratings, or video-
conferencing with the TV content either directly on
the screen or by using ancillary devices.
• Also, the idea of reality TV programmes where the
audience can vote to change the outcomes can be
considered as a form of social media.
• This idea can be transferred to radio where listeners
can call into the radio station to chat to the host and
request songs to be played. It can be argued that this
is media interaction and therefore, social media.

3. What is special or different about ‘social media’?
• One characteristic shared by both social media and industrial media
is the capability to reach small or large audiences; for example,
either a blog post or a television show may reach zero people or
millions of people. The properties that help describe the differences
between social media and industrial media depend on the study.
Some of these properties are:
• Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale
and enable anyone to reach a global audience.
• Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are
typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are
generally available to anyone at little or no cost.
• Usability - industrial media production typically requires
specialized skills and training. Most social media does not, or in
some cases reinvent skills, so anyone can operate the means of
production.
• Recency - the time lag between communications produced by
industrial media can be long compared to social media (which can
be capable of virtually instantaneous responses).
• Permanence - industrial media, once created, cannot be altered,
whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by
comments or editing.

4. Statistics
• Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US.
• A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile
devices in December 2009.
• Twitter processed more than one billion tweets in December 2009 and
averages almost 40 million tweets per day.
• Over 25% of U.S. internet page views occurred at one of the top social
networking sites in December 2009, up from 13.8% a year before.
• Australia has some of the highest social media usage statistics in the
world. In terms of Facebook use Australia ranks highest with almost 9
hours per month from over 9 million users.