Social Ah Ha!

As I delve deeper into the world of Blogosphere and Social Media, a few things are becoming obvious to me.

First of all, Social Media types have their own lingo! Here is an example: I am currently “blogging” about something that I “stumbled upon” and “liked.” I am going to “hashtag” and “tweet” this to my “followers” through “Hootsuite” so that my “Klout” score goes up.

Get the drift?

You can also make up things on the fly. For instance, a “splogger” is a spam blogger”, “nomophobia” is no mobile phobia, and “lifecasting” is, well, broadcasting your life on the web, not unlike Big Brother.

To simplify what appears to be a complex planet of the apps and tools, you can broadly categorize them into three types:

–         User-generated content: While, YouTube, Craigslist, and Flicker may be obvious, try the following to get a sense of what is out there:

• http://www.stumbleupon.com
• http://digg.com

–         Social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the most popular ones in this space. Some other sites gaining momentum include:

• https://foursquare.com/
• https://plus.google.com/

–         Reviews and rating sites: The days of the Better Business Bureau are numbered. Reviews for most products and services are available online at sites like:

• http://www.yelp.com/
• http://www.angieslist.com/

In conclusion, here is some food for thought. If you are still waiting for the newspaper to get your news, you have some ways to go. I am going to go to http://addictomatic.com/ to get all caught up. They do say “Inhale the web!”