What is the difference between social media and social networking?

While both of these things are definitely “social”, there is actually a huge difference in the two.
You can have social media without social networking, but today’s world you can’t have social networking without social media!

Social media is a technology type, one where the media is designed to be easily shared amongst users based on things such as common interests, local communities, relationships, and other demographics. Social media is an umbrella term that covers technology such as blogging, podcasting, video, really simple syndication (RSS), photo sharing, micro-blogging, and online communities. It covers such brands as YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress, Technorati, and Feedburner.

Per Wikipedia “Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.”

Social Networking is connected to social media, but is vastly different. Social networking is geared towards using the technology benefits of social media (ease of use, interconnectivity, and relationships) to form new bonds between individuals and strengthen old ones. Social networking is based on understanding what types of social media and people create “hubs” of connections, and then leverages those points to create even stronger relationships with other focal points. All of the above sites and services have social networking aspects, but you can choose to ignore them.

Per Wikipedia “Social networking connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact base. These networks often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. Companies can also use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads. Since businesses operate globally, social networks can make it easier to keep in touch with contacts around the world.”

The confusion between the two generally occurs on sites like YouTube where you can share your videos with friends all around the world or privately build your own collection. You can also click a few buttons and start “friending” people or having common “favorites” and suddenly be vaulted into the realm of social networking.

Another example would be someone who chooses to write a professional blog just to voice ideas. They could choose to limit conversation and commentary, keeping solely in their own realm of thought and solitude and still be using social media (a blog) or they could visit a hundred other blogs and link to them via commentary and relations to quickly begin social networking.

In either case, the act of creating connections between users and finding common interests elevates a user to social networking with social media.

In many instances, users tend to use either term to describe the act of sharing like-minded information and interests with other people.

Professionally the largest social networking platform is Linkedin, and the largest personal social networking platform is Facebook.

As the technology of social media becomes easier to implement and customize, a trend is occurring where the social networking aspects online are becoming more niche on specific interests and geographies. The usability of social media is quickly allowing more and more non-technical users to establish themselves into social networking categories of traditionally non-technical communities such as artists and senior citizens.

The conclusion- if you read this entire article and don’t comment below you are indeed using social media. If you choose to leave a comment, you’ve just promoted yourself to social networking. You can read more about influencer marketing or how social media is dominating mainstream news.

I would suggest you join the conversation and do a little networking.

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