Social Media Guide
This page will be updated as we discover more social media resources. Have a good one? Have a question? Please send it to us.
For a simple introduction to social media in non-internet terms, make sure to watch this video from Common Craft. For a more complex overview of social media and recent technology trends, watch this video from The Economist. For further resources, check out this social media reading list.
Tools We Use
- RSS (Really Simple Syndication): This video from Common Craft explains it better than we ever could. But in short, RSS is a way to read the updates from all blogs and websites (including ours) you visit in one place, using what's called a "feed reader" or "RSS reader." We recommend Google Reader - you can set up a free account. Anywhere on our site you see "RSS," you can subscribe to new content from that part of the site. See more detailed instructions on our blog or on our RSS page.
- Blog: A weblog, or blog, is a website where one or more writers can share news, ideas, or opinions with the world online. CEDAM staff write articles (called posts) for the CEDAM blog. You can read them on our site or subscribe to them with an RSS reader.
- Facebook: Facebook is a free social networking site that lets members share information such as photos and upcoming events. See CEDAM's page.
- Twitter: Twitter is a website for sharing very short updates about anything – from what someone is eating to current policy issues (CEDAM does the latter, plus general resource- and news-sharing). The short updates are a great way to stay on top of issues as they happen. If you plan to use Twitter this article explains basic Twitter jargon.
- YouTube: YouTube allows its users to share videos with each other and the world for free. CEDAM shares videos relating to its mission and its members. You do not need an account to watch them.
Glossary
- Blog: short for "weblog" - an online journal
- Bookmark: a website saved on the computer or online so the user or others can view it in the future
- Browser: the application you use to surf the internet. Examples are Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox.
- Comment: a written response to a post, such as a blog post or Facebook update
- Content: in this case, any image, video, or words on the internet
- Download: to take content from the internet and store it permanently on your computer. Note that content on the internet can contain viruses - be careful!
- Feed: a stream of online content; often used to describe content retrieved from websites or blogs through RSS (see above)
- Hash tag: used in Twitter, a tag with # in front of it (ex. #cedam). Makes it easy to search for topics in Twitter.
- Link: usually appears as an underlined word, phrase, or URL. Clicking a link opens a website related to what the text in the link describes. For example, clicking “this video” next to our description of RSS will open the video.
- Meme: a piece of culture. In Web 2.0, a meme is content (like a song, video, or phrase) that is spread and shows up everywhere.
- Post: a piece of content on a frequently-updated page like a blog. CEDAM's posts include blog posts, Career Corner posts, Funding Corner posts, News posts, Facebook posts, and Twitter posts (also called Tweets).
- Profile: when you have an account on a social site like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, you often customize a page that describes you as a user. Other users of the site can see your profile and learn more about you.
- Status/status update: on Facebook and some other social networks, you can share what you are thinking or doing, i.e. you status. Other users can see this on your profile or on their home pages.
- Stream/streaming: When you watch videos on the internet, you can either download them onto your own computer, or have them load over the internet and watch them in your web browser. Watching them over the internet is called streaming.
- Subscribe: to sign up to receive content by e-mail or an RSS reader
- Tag: a keyword describing content. People use tags to organize content or help others find it.
- Tweet: a post on Twitter. Putting content on Twitter is called Tweeting.
- Upload: to move content (usually a copy of a file) from your hard drive to the internet. Note that when you upload content to the internet, it can be hard to control who has access to it.
- URL: the address of a website that you type into the address bar in your browser. URLs usually start with http://.
- URL shorterner: an online service to take long URLs and make them shorter. This is useful for Twitter posts ("Tweets") and other types of content that limit the number of characters you can post.
- Viral: describes web content that spreads quickly among many internet users through their social networks. For example, the CEDAM page on Facebook gained 150 fans in a week because a few people shared it with their connections, who then shared it with their connections, and so on. This is called "going viral." Often, YouTube videos will go viral on a much larger scale, gaining millions of views in a few days because viewers share them with connections, who pass them on, and so on. Note: content can only be described as viral after it has spread to many people.
- Web 2.0: refers to the newer generation of interactive content on the internet in the last several years, as opposed to the original web content that was just meant to be read/watched and not shared, commented on, or edited. Social media is a major component of Web 2.0.