Did you hear? Social media almost went away. From Wikipedia, that is. The entry for social media was nominated for deletion for being "a marketing buzzword of limited currency." I found a few sources to contribute to the discussion, and the entry survived the process, but only by default. It still needs a solid definition that's based on more than a blog post.
The basic problem is that social media is so often described by example or anecdote (see Lee White's new presentation for a good example). A list of technologies and venues and talk about how people use them are helpful for communicating the challenge and opportunity, but they don't lead to a rigorous definition.
It doesn't help that we have social media, social computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and who knows how many other variations, all with similar meanings. Yeah, I know they're not exactly the same, but there's a lot of overlap and hand waving going on.
I know it when I see it
We tend to get close to a definition, assume the rest and move on to the fun part. Take the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. The definitions of social media and social media analysis are implicit in the papers presented, but where's the definition? (However, the existence of peer-reviewed technical papers from ICWSM with social media in the title did help support the argument in favor of keeping the Wikipedia entry.)
Do you know of a good discussion of the term? I'd like to improve the Wikipedia entry, but I'll need more sources first. Published sources are best. Marketing materials are mostly worthless, and blogs aren't much better. As usual with Wikipedia, association with an interested party diminishes the value of a source.
The perception of social media as a term—at least by some Wikipedians—is that it's a marketing buzzword coined by companies who want to sell social media services. The right sources will put that concern to rest and shift the discussion to the parts that we all find more interesting.
So, who has sources?
Oh, yeah
A word on transparency: You probably know that the Wikipedia community can be sensitive about who edits entries. I joined in the discussion of social media using my real name, and my profile page describes my business interests. That's why I'm not just writing my own definition to incorporate into the entry.
Tags: social media wikipedia
