Social Media – What is It & How Can it Help Business Owners?

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies – it’s a great tool for business owners wanting to build links back to their website.

Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.

Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Some Social Media / Networking / Blogging Platforms That AreOut There…

	ActiveRain		Last.fm
	Bebo		LinkedIn
	Blogger		LiveJournal
	Brightkite		Multiply
	del.icio.us		MySpace
	Digg		Netflix
	Disqus		OpenID
	DOPPLR		Plaxo
	eBay		reddit
	Evite		Second Life
	Facebook		Seesmic
	Flickr		Shelfari
	FriendFeed		SlideShare
	Friendster		StumbleUpon
	Google Calendar		Technorati
	IntenseDebate		The DJ List
	Jaiku		30 Boxes
	Kiva		ThisNext
			Trulia
			Tumblr
			Twitter
			Typekey
			Upcoming
			Wakoopa
			Wink
			Yelp
			YouTube
			Zillow
			Zorpia