A working definition of social media and why we couldn’t answer the question

At the first Social Media Club Sydney (#SMCSyd) Leslie Nassar (aka the fake Stephen Conroy) challenged the audience to provide a definition of social media. No one was able to satisfy his request and our collective inability to articulate effectively what social media is, was the subject of some humor and derision. Given the complexity of the subject and its fluidity that was perhaps a little unfair. At the second #SMCSyd a few people put forward their various definitions, but (if I recall correctly) they were generally orientated towards trying to differentiate which technologies did or didn’t classify.

“social software is about a movement, not simply a category of technologies… it’s certainly not complete and as a category, it’s difficult to make sense of its boundaries.” (boyd 2007b)

Like the quote by boyd above suggests, I prefer a looser definition. I see social technologies…social media…social software, whatever you want to call it, to be about both tools and practices. This makes it inherent messy and difficult to capture and describe.

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