Cover Story

For the first time in history, technology has reached a point where everyone has a voice. It is no longer the domain of a select few. The ‘someone like me’ is a reality more trusted than the concept of ‘what experts say’ and we have social media to thank for this phenomenon. For the uninitiated there are lots of questions though: What is social media? How do I benefit from it? How do I stay safe using it?
Here are the answers to your questions!

Social Media is best understood as a group of online media,which share most or all of the following characteristics:

Participation
Social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between media and audience.

Openness
Most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, comments and the sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content - password-protected content is frowned on.

Conversation
Whereas traditional media is about "broadcast" (content transmitted or distributed to an audience) social media is better seen as a two-way conversation.

Community
Social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively. Communities share common interests, such as a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show.

Connectedness
Most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, making use of links to other sites, resources and people.

6 KINDS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Social networks:
Allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with friends to share content and communication. The biggest social networks are: MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

Wikis:
These websites allow people to add content to or edit the information on them, acting as a communal document or database. The best-known wiki is Wikipedia.

Blogs:
Perhaps the best-known form of social media, blogs are online journals, with entries appearing with the most recent first.

Podcasts:
Audio and video files that are available by subscription, through services like Apple iTunes.

Forums:
Areas for online discussion, often around specific topics and interests. Forums came about before the term "social media" and are a powerful and popular element of online communities.

Content communities:
Communities which organise and share particular kinds of content. The most popular content communities tend to form around photos (Flickr), bookmarked links (del.icio.us) and videos (YouTube).

Microblogging:
Social networking combined with bite-sized blogging, where small amounts of content ('updates') are distributed online and through the mobile phone network. Twitter is the clear leader in this field.

MAJOR BENEFITS
Apart from the social benefits, social networking sites can be used to document school research, promote artistic talents and experiment with other forms of content creation. They provide a way to interact with others who share the same interests and to get constructive feedback on ongoing projects.

Helping people connect
The reason why so many people use online social networking is that it provides a way for people to connect. You can keep in touch with friends, share information about events and even help one another with homework. It's the ultimate networking tool. Most social networking websites have tools that enable you to track down old friends and colleagues. Online social networking is a great way to expand your social circle and get in touch with people you otherwise wouldn't speak with regularly, or at all.

Collaborating at work
Social networking tools are also very useful for work. If you're looking for a job, you can use it to get references from old coworkers. You can also connect with other people who work for the same company, or in the same industry. Managers looking to hire people with specific skills can then find you using social networking tools. You can also convey a sense of who you are and what you have to offer through your use of social networking sites. Both businesses and individuals use social networking for marketing purposes. They use it to advertise new products and deals, to stay in touch with customers or to follow other people who might have items or offerings they could use.

THE FLIP SIDE
Along with these benefits come some risks. Most social networking sites are open to all, especially MySpace, which means that you could be exposed to harassment, bullying or sexual advances.

Cyber-bullying and harassment are most often perpetrated by other teens and tend to happen most to older girls and to teens of either gender who have a strong online presence. It may take several forms: