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!

The Quest Begins

Any quest requires you to leave home. You have to leave where you are comfortable and go somewhere that may be better, or it may be worse. A quest involves a gamble.

I am the marketing manager of a non-profit ministry called I.N. Network USA in Zeeland, Michigan. We are a small office doing big things around the world. We want to reach a lot of people with our message and we don't have much money to do that because we are purposeful about sending as much money as possible to our overseas ministries.

Lately, we have decided to explore the endlessly changing world of social media to see how we can reach a new generation of tech savy people who are unlikely to find us through traditional print media. So, what did we do? We formed a committee and began our quest.

As I started exploring more about social media and networking, I have run across other folks who are equally baffled. This blog will detail our ministry's journey. Maybe it will help your non-profit. Maybe not. I guess it's a quest for you too.