Meaning of Social Media – In today’s age, it cannot be denied that human life today is very much related to social media. Social media plays an important role in almost all walks of life. Starting from sending messages to friends, sharing information, to finding information that is hot in the community. So, it is not surprising when someone mentions that social media has become one of the important needs of almost everyone.
The presence of social media in today’s society has provided enormous benefits, especially in the current pandemic era. Social media is quite helpful in erasing the distance between people, so it is very effective in shortening the time in communicating. However, something that has a high positive impact, does not close the possibility of giving a high negative impact as well.
Well, the following will be explained about the ins and outs of social media, starting from the meaning of social media to all aspects. For those of you who want to learn more about social media, this article will be very suitable to help you understand what social media actually is.
A. Meaning of Social Media
Social media can be understood as a digital platform that provides facilities to perform social activities for each user. Some activities that can be done on social media, for example, communication or interaction to provide information or content in the form of writing, photos and videos. Various information in the shared content can be open to all users for a full 24 hours.
Social media itself is basically part of the development of the internet. The presence of the past few decades has made social media able to develop and grow widely and quickly as it is now. This is what makes all users who are connected to the internet able to disseminate information or content anytime and anywhere.
B. Meaning of Social Media According to Members
Social media can actually be said to be one of the popular phenomena that attracts a lot of people’s attention. In some of his works, experts have given various definitions about the technology that society always needs today. The following is the definition of social media according to the opinion of experts, including:
1. BK Lewis (2010)
BK Lewis in his work titled Social Media and Strategic Communication Attitudes and Perceptions among College Students published in 2010 states that social media is a label that refers to digital technology that has the potential to make everyone connect and interact, produce and share order.
2. Chris Brogan (2010)
Furthermore, in 2010, Chris Brogan in his book entitled Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business, mentioned that social media is a communication tool that contains various possibilities for the creation of new forms of interaction.
3. Dave Kerpen (2011)
Meanwhile, Dave Kerpen in his book titled Likeable Social Media which was published in 2011 stated that social media has a definition as a place where pictures, videos, writings and interaction relationships in the network, both between individuals and between groups such as organizations.
C. History of Social Media
Quoted from the online site maryville.edu, the beginning of the creation of social media itself occurred on May 24, 1844. The beginning of social media was a series of electronic dots and lines typed on a telegraph machine. Also at this time, Samuel Morse sent a telegraphic message to the public for the first time.
The roots of digital communication, along with the origins of the modern internet and the current understanding of social media, were pioneered by the emergence of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet) in 1969. This digital network was created by the US Department of Defense to connect scientists from four universities to share with each other. software, hardware, and other data.
Then, in 1987, the National Science Foundation launched a stronger national digital network called NSFNET. After running for a decade, precisely in 1997, the National Science Foundation launched its first social media platform to the public.
However, according to The History of Social Networking on the Digital Trends website, the growth and development of the internet around 1980 to 1990 had the potential to introduce online communication services, such as CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy. This communication service successfully provides users to interact via email, bulletin board messages, and realtime online chat.
This is one of the driving forces behind the birth of the earliest social media network, namely Six Degrees which launched in 1997. Six Degrees itself is the first social media platform that can make users connect with real world contacts, for example creating a profile in database.
After the emergence of Six Degrees social media, which turned out to be short-lived. In 2001, the world of communication technology innovated again by presenting a new social media called Friendster. Unlike the fate of its older brother, Friendster managed to attract millions of users by simply registering email addresses and basic online networks.
Meanwhile, as one of the other early forms of social media communication services, after it was launched in 1999, a weblog or blog called the Livejournal publication site began to attract a lot of interest from many people. gain high popularity. Meanwhile, a few years later, the Blogger publishing platform created by the technology company Pyra Labs was officially bought by Google in 2003.
Furthermore, in 2002, a social networking service from social media called LinkedIn managed to attract the attention of many users. This social media itself was established for professionals who are developing their careers. After almost two decades, LinkedIn has grown and developed into one of the most famous social media in the world with more than 675 million users worldwide. LinkedIn is currently still a social media site for someone who wants to find a job as well as companies looking for human resources.
Still in the social network social media, Myspace managed to launch in 2003 and managed to become one of the most visited websites on the planet in 2006. This social media provides facilities for users to share music directly on their profile pages.
However, precisely in 2008, the power of Myspace was defeated by Facebook. As a giant in the internet world, Google also tried to launch social media in 2012 with the name Google+. It’s just that this social media doesn’t have a long life after it was reported to breach the data security of around 500,000 of its users.
D. Functions of Social Media
After knowing and understanding the definition of social media in general and based on experts, in this section you will be explained about the function of social media. As one of the most widely used digital platforms today, social media has managed to connect almost everyone with internet access.
However, the function of social media is not only limited to that, there are many other functions that you can get from social media. Well, the following are some of the social media functions that Sinaumedia.com can summarize, including:
1. Communication
The first function of social media is of course communication. Before growing to this point, social media initially only focused on building a good communication ecosystem for users. However, with the development of the internet and technology, social media is more than just communication, social media has become a second world for people all over the world to gather and interact. Social media has succeeded in developing communication that is not limited by time and geography.
2. Branding
The second function of social media is branding. After successfully building a gathering place for all people from various parts of the world, social media is always growing and providing various needs from people, one of which is branding. Branding itself is a person’s way of building an image in the eyes of many people.
To do branding, users usually have a unique and special way to design social media accounts so that they are attractive to other users. This is what makes social media accounts similar to the real world, because everyone has their own unique characteristics.
3. Place of Business
The third function of social media is as a vehicle to do business or business. After successfully providing communication and branding, social media is slowly growing so that every user can build a business in the network or online. As a place that is open for 24 hours, social media is proven to make it very easy for its users to build a virtual business. This is predicted to have a lot of potential to reach more people than businesses that only rely on the real world.
4. Marketing
The fourth function of social media is to do marketing or marketing. As a platform that is almost always used by humans, now social media has succeeded in creating services that make it easier for businessmen to introduce and reach more consumers. This method is proven to be effective in increasing profits and making it easier for users to get what they need.
E. Types of Social Media
High demand, making many new social media emerging and competing to attract interest and attention from users. The development of social media is also very fast, many social media platforms that used to be very popular, have now slowly disappeared, or been acquired by larger parties. Well, the following are various services and types of social media that are very popular in the community, including:
1. Blog Services
Blog services can basically be understood as a personal journal that has internet. One of these types of social media has the function of sharing posts or views of its users about various specific issues. This type of social media user is usually referred to as narablog or blogger. Examples of social media blog services are such as: WordPress, Blogger.
2. Social Network Services (Social Network)
Social networking services or commonly referred to as social networks is one of the most widely used social media by people in various parts of the world today. One of these types of social media has a function as a gathering place for many people to socialize with each other. In this service, users usually send each other messages, information, photos, and even videos. Examples of social media services are Facebook and Linkedin.
3. Micro Blog Services (Microblogging)
The next type of social media is the service of micro blogs or commonly known as microblogging. Although it has almost the same services and uses as a blog, this type of social media presents a simpler page. This makes the micro blog service have a better speed than the blog service. One example of micro blogging services is Twitter.
4. Media Sharing Services (Media Sharing)
The next type of social media that you need to know is media sharing services or commonly referred to as media sharing. When you often spend leisure time or study time through social media platforms YouTube or Soundcloud. So, you have actually gotten used to using this media sharing service. One of these types of social media basically has a main focus to make its users share media content such as photos, audio, or video. Another example of media sharing services is Instagram, Flickr, and so on.
5. Collaboration Services
The following types of social media are collaborative services. This collaboration service itself is used to make users mutually invite other users to create a contribution. Not only invite, in this collaboration service, users are usually allowed to create content and make corrections to the content of ‘members’ of the site.
One example of the most popular contribution service today is Wikipedia. Wikipedia itself is a multilingual encyclopedia project in a network that operates freely and openly. This contribution service is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is one of the non-profit organizations located in Florida, United States.
6. Forum Services
This last type of social media is known to have a classic form. This type of forum service can be said to be one of the types of social media that has been around for a long time and has been widely known for a long time. The forum service itself can be used by users as a place to discuss various matters or specific topics with other users in a discussion space. Examples of social media forum services are Kaskus, Quora, and so on.
F. Benefits of Social Media
After you know and understand various information about the meaning of social media and others, the following will be explained about the benefits you can get from maximizing the use of social media, including:
1. Means of Learning, Listening, and Delivering
There are several social media platforms that are now available that you can use to learn, from finding various information, data, to issues that are hot in the community. In addition, you can also use social media as a means to share information with other users, both friends in the real world and friends in the virtual world.
2. Documentation, Administration, and Integration Tools
The second benefit you can get from using social media is to create documentation, administration, and integration. Social media applications are basically a place for you to store a variety of content, ranging from profiles, information, reportage, events, recording events, to the results of research studies. Not only that, these are some of the benefits of social media, such as creating an organizational blog, integrating various lines in a company, sharing relevant content according to the target community, and operational effectiveness of the organization.
3. Means of Planning, Strategy, and Management
The third benefit of social media is as a means of planning, strategy, and management. In the hands of management and marketing experts, social media can turn into one of the weapons used to launch planning and strategy. For example, to carry out promotions, attract loyal customers, explore the market, educate the public, to gather feedback from consumers or the community.
4. Means of Control, Evaluation, and Measurement
Finally, the fourth benefit of social media is as a means of control, evaluation, and measurement. Social media itself can be used to control the organization as well as evaluate, starting from planning and strategy. In addition, social media can also process data related to community and market responses as a measuring tool, calibration and parameters for evaluation.
This is a discussion about the meaning of social media, starting from the understanding of experts, the history of social media, the function of social media, the types of social media, to the various benefits of social media. Hope it can be useful for you.