New media
Social media glossary
By the Ourmedia staff
Here are a few terms you may come across in the social media and personal media arenas:
Blog
A blog is an online journal that's updated on a regular basis with entries that appear in reverse chronological order. Blogs can be about any subject. They typically contain comments by other readers, links to other sites and permalinks that let others link to a specific entry within the blog. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization and licensing system that offers creators the ability to fine-tune their copyright, spelling out the ways in which others may use their works. See full entry.Digital story
A digital story is a short personal nonfiction narrative that is composed on a computer, often for publishing online or publishing to a DVD. They are told from the narrator's point of view and the subject is generally about something the maker experienced personally. Digital stories typically range from 2-5 minutes in length (though there are no rules) and can include music, art, photos, voiceover and video clips. They are also typically created by one person with little technical training, rather than by a team of professionals. You can see digital stories at the following sites:
Embedding
The act of adding code to a website so that a video or photo can be displayed while it's being hosed at another site. Many users now watch YouTube videos or see Flickr photos on blogs rather than the original site.
Feeds
A feed is simply a method that lets you conveniently capture the latest video, podcast, blog entry or news item published via RSS (see below). By subscribing to a feed, you can read the latest posts or watch the newest videos on your computer or portable device on your own schedule.
Mash-up
Mash-ups have several meanings. Music mash-ups are a combination of two or more songs, generally the vocals of one song overlaid on top of the melody of another. Video mash-ups are the result of combining two or more pieces of video, such as news footage with original commentary. Mash-up sites result when a programmer overlays information from a database or another source on top of an existing website, such as homes for sale taken from Craigslist plotted on Google Maps.
Open source
Open source generally refers to software code that is non-proprietary and made available to anyone to improve upon. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)Personal media
Personal media — user-created material — refers to grassroots works such as videos and audio. When the works are shared in a social space, the works are more commonly referred to as social media.
Podcast
Podcast, which the Oxford American Dictionary named the "Word of 2005," is a media file (usually audio but sometimes video) made available for download to a portable device or personal computer. Podcasts use feeds that let you subscribe to them, so that when a new audio clip is published online, it arrives on your digital doorstep right away. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)
Prosumer
Prosumer is a term that combines producer (or professional) with consumer. In general, it refers to an amateur who displays the skills of a trained professional or producer. The term was coined by Alvin Toffler in 1980 when he predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to merge. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)Public domain
A work enters the public domain when it is donated by its creator or when its copyright expires. A work in the public domain can be freely used in any way, including commercial uses. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)
Remix
To remix content is to take elements of two or more media files and mash them together to create a new piece of media. Often, these are called mash-ups (see above).
RSS
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format that lets readers stay current with blogs and news content using a feed reader, or aggregator. All blogs, podcasts and videoblogs contain an RSS feed, which lets users subscribe to content automatically and read or listen to the material on a computer or a portable device. (For more details, see What is RSS?)
Social media
Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, wiki or video hosting site. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)
Streaming media
Unlike downloadable podcasts or video, streaming media refers to video or audio that is intended to be listened to online but not stored permanently. Streamed audio is often called Webcasting. Traditional media companies like to stream their programs so that they can't be distributed freely onto file-sharing networks. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)
Tags
Tags are keywords adding to a blog post, photo or video to help users find related topics or media. For more details, see our Learning Center: What are tags?
Torrents
BitTorrent is software that lets users share files between peers, without the use of a central server. With BitTorrent technology, the more peers who host the file on their personal computers, the faster the file can be shared with others. Torrents are small files that contains metadata about media files to be shared as well as about the host computer that coordinates the file's distribution. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)
Videoblog
A videoblog is simply a videoblog that contains video entries. A videoblogger posts videos to a weblog and encourages an audience response. Some people call it video podcasting, vodcasting or vlogging.Vlog
A vlog is a videoblog, or a blog that includes video on a regular basis. videoblogs. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of the Web, which enables people with no specialized technical knowledge to create their own websites to self-publish, create and upload audio and video files, share photos and information and complete a variety of other tasks. In this new world, the Internet becomes a platform for self-expression, education and advocacy that "regular people" can use on their own without having to go to an expert to do it for them. Some of the best-known Web 2.0 websites include Wikipedia, MySpace, Digg, Flickr and YouTube. (For more details, see Wikipedia, TechSoup's What Is Web 2.0 Anyway?, and publisher Tim O'Reilly's essay, What is Web 2.0.)
Wiki
A wiki is a collaborative website that can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. Small teams often find that they can accomplish a task easier by creating a collaborative online workspace using wiki software such as pbwiki, Socialtext, mediawiki or phpBB. (For more details, see Wikipedia.)
Notice: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, compatible with Wikipedia.
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