Social Media: What in the World IS it?

Before this quest began, I was extremely ignorant about social media. I thought it was Facebook and Myspace. My social media world was very small.

Now I'm only partially ignorant because I now know how little I know.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that there are many different categories of social media and even more programs/applications that fit into those categories. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia itself is considered social media.

Social Media Categories from Wikipedia:
Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine, Xanga
Micro-Blogging/Presence Applications: Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, fmylife
Social Networking: Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Ning, Elgg
Social Networking Aggregation: NutshellMail, FriendFeed
Event Applications: Upcoming, Eventful, Meetup.com
Wikis: Wikipedia, PBwiki, wetpaint
Social Bookmarking/Tagging: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike
Social News: Digg, Mixx, Reddit, NowPublic
Opinion Sites: epinions, Yelp
Photo Sharing: Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, Smugmug
Video Sharing: YouTube, Vimeo, Sevenload, Qik
Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam
Audio and Music Sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter
Product Reviews: epinions.com, Mouthshut.com
Q&A: Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers

I have no idea what most of these do, but I intend to find out!