Zone 1: Social Communities

Social communities focus on shared interests, shared activities, and relationships. While all social media include networked relationships in one way or another, social communities feature those relationships as the primary reason to engage. Social communities provide their users with interfaces to carry on one-on-one communications or communications with larger groups of people. Different types of social communities include social networking sites, message boards and forums, and wikis.

Social networking sites allow users to create profiles and connect with other individuals. These sites also provide features or applications that allow users to participate and communicate with each other. These features often include the ability to share photos and videos, post public messages, or chat privately with one or more individuals.

Message boards and forums are the online equivalent of bulletin boards. These sites focus entirely on conversations between users. The conversations usually center around a topic, or thread. Users initiate a thread by posting opinions or questions. Other users are then free to comment on the post and join an ongoing conversation.

Wikis are defined in our text as “collaborative online workspaces that enable community members to contribute to the creation of a useful and shared resource.” Wikis make use of “crowdsourcing” as a means to collect and disseminate information. Crowdsourcing relies on the collective knowledge of a large group of people to provide the most meaningful and exhaustive amount of information on a topic. Users are expected to contribute information, as well as to act as curators to ensure the validity of the information gathered.

Zone 2: Social Publishing

Social publishing sites allow users to share content with an audience. Types of social publishing sites include blogs, microsharing sites, media sharing sites, and social bookmarking and news sites.

Blogs are most easily defined as online journals, though they are not always as personal as a paper journal or diary might be. Blogs feature content that is updated regularly and may include text entries, video, photos, music, and more. Blogs are created and edited by all types of people (professional journalists, traditional media providers, amateur enthusiasts, or everyday people). They are considered part of the social media landscape because they usually provide methods for users to share the content, as well as methods for users to comment on posts.

Microsharing sites are similar to blogs but usually impose some kind of limit on how much content can be shared in each entry. A prime example is X (formerly Twitter), which limits text posts to 140 characters.

Media sharing sites are also similar to blogs in that they host content. In the case of media sharing sites, however, the content typically features video, music, photos, or a mix of media.

Social bookmarking sites allow users to gather content from the web that they find useful or interesting and then share that information with other users.

Zone 3: Social Entertainment

Social entertainment sites offer opportunities for play and enjoyment. These can include social games and gaming sites, socially enabled console games, alternate reality games, and entertainment communities.

Social games are hosted online and allow users to interact with other game players and post status updates online.

Entertainment communities allow users to share entertainment content (often music and movies) and explore the posts and contributions of others. Examples include Myspace (which began as a social community and has since morphed into an entertainment community) and Spotify (which allows users to create playlists for sharing).

Zone 4: Social Commerce

Social commerce sites assist in the online purchase of goods and services. These sites can include reviews and ratings, deal sites and deal aggregators, social shopping markets, and social storefronts.