Social media refers to online technologies and practices that people use to share content such as text, images, video and audio. It allows for the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Social media is fundamentally changing how people learn, read and share information by transforming one-way communication into dialogue and democratizing information. Some key differences between social media and traditional media include lower costs of production and publication for social media, faster response times, and the ability for social media content to be updated versus traditional media content which cannot be altered once published. Social media also has fewer responsibilities around content quality and relies more on interactions and discussions between users to spread information.

1. Social media
Social media, social media in Italian, is a generic term for online technologies and practices that people
adopt to share text, images, video and audio.
The professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein have defined social media as a group of Internet
applications based on the ideological and technology of Web 2.0 that allow the creation and exchange of
user-generated content.
Social media is fundamentally changing the way people learn, read and share information and content. In
them there is a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog
(many to many) and place a democratization of information, transforming people from content users to
publishers. Have become very popular because they allow people to use the web to build relationships of
personal or business. Social media are also called user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated
media (CGM).
Differences compared to the average industrial
Social media are different from industrial media such as newspapers, television and film. While social
media tools are relatively low cost that enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish and access to
information, traditional media require large financial investments to publish information. Among the items
of expenditure of the media industry, we can mention for example the printing press or government
authorization. The media industry are commonly referred to as "traditional", "broadcasting", or "mass
media". A common feature of social media and industrial media is the ability to get an audience that is
large reduced, both the blog post that a television can reach millions of people, or anyone. The parameters
that help to describe the differences between the two types of media vary depending on the type of
analysis. Some of these parameters are:
1. catchment area: social media is that the media industry to offer everyone the opportunity to obtain a
global audience.
2. accessibility: the means of media production facilities are usually privately owned, or state, the social
media tools are available to everyone at a low cost or for free.
3. usability: the production of industrial equipment typically requires specialized skills and training, social
media is not, or in some cases reinvent skills, so anyone can manage the means of production.
4. speed: the time between the information produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks or even
months) compared to the time taken by social media (which have the technical possibility to react instantly,
just the lack of responsiveness of the participants can result in delays). Because now even the average
industrial use of social media tools, this may not be a distinguishing feature.
5. stay: once created, the media industry can not be altered (once printed and distributed, the magazine
article can no longer receive changes), while social media can be changed almost instantaneously by
comments and changes.
A further distinction concerns the responsibility. The media industry are required to account to the
company the quality of the content and results of their activities in terms of public interest, social
responsibility and editorial independence. Social media does not have as many responsibilities with regard

2. to their publishing activities. On one hand, social media can seem quite free from conflicts of interest, but
on the other hand, their economic value can be threatened by rising phenomena as Public Relations 2.0,
advertising networks and advertising for third parties.
The media community is an interesting hybrid. Though community-owned, or owned by the community,
some media have their professionals, amateurs and others. They use both the field of social media than
that of traditional media. In 2006, YochaiBenkler analyzed many of these differences and their implications
in terms of economic and political freedom. [5] Benkler, like many academics, uses the neologism network
economy or "network information economy" to describe the most important economic, technological and
social aspects of what we call "social media".
Dissemination of information and human interaction
Social media are primarily dependent interactions between people as the discussion and dialogue aimed at
building a kind of sentiment shared through the use of technology as a channel. The services offered by
social media stimulate the use of intelligence and inductive inference by the people. Complaints and
allegations lend themselves to quick generalizations because of the manner in which the allegations spread
may be posted and viewed by all.
The communication speed, the wide spread and impact, and the chance to see how the words build a case,
solicit the use of rhetoric. The method of persuasion is used frequently as a means to validate or
authenticate the statements and words of the people: the rhetoric is therefore an important part of the
language of social media.
In some respects, social media is limitless: there is a fixed number of pages or hours. Readers can
participate in social media by leaving comments, instant messages or posting articles on their own.
In social media, there was a general resistance to marketing measures. Most important is then revealed the
concept of social authority on the capacity - built through continuous operations, useful, relevant and
genuine - to influence the opinions in specific areas of interest.
Description
Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, Blogs, wikis,
podcasts, pictures and video. The technologies include blogs, share images, videoblogs, wall-postings,
email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name just a partial list.
Examples of application of the concept of social media are:
• Digrii (social networking),
• Google Groups (reference, social networking),
• Wikipedia (reference),
• MySpace (social networking),
• Facebook (social networking),
• Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing),
• sevenload (photo and video sharing, social networking and Web-TV), Second Life (virtual reality),

3. • Flickr (photo sharing),
• deviantArt (Art. sharing)
• Twitter (social networking and microblogging)
• Nuto (social networking for doctors Italian)
• Social Play (Sharing of social news, blogging, social reading)
or other sites microblogs are Jaiku
or Pownce.
Many of these services can be integrated via platforms such as MyBlogLog, a company Yahoo, and Plaxo.