Describing Social Media and Jacob Morgan

It’s an exciting week indeed, I’ve got the new version of Shuaism launching tonight. So that will be awesome, and then on Thursday we’ll have an awesome guest post by the awesome Jacob Morgan. That’s right shuaism fans we have Jacob Morgan posting up a bit of his advice right here.

So lets all hope that it goes smoothly so we can get a treat on Thursday.

With the announcements being done, lets move on to the show.

When describing social media to people, what methods do you find helpful? Personally, I like to compare the tools to real world situations to get the concept across to clients, parents, friends, etc

Twitter – It’s like a large cocktail party and everyone brought their computers. Everyone is sharing pictures,
videos, articles, links and there are discussions constantly going. You can follow any of the conversations / people you find interesting and just ignore the rest.

FaceBook – It’s a bit like a big house party. You show up and the first thing you do is find someone you know and then they introduce to people they know and so on. There are
people playing games in different rooms of the house, people are holding groups discussions and the whole thing is ran by a very attentive host that tries to introduce you to new
people and games or activities to enhance your experience.

MySpace – It a lot like High School. The profile is much
akin to your high school locker. Pictures of your friends, bands, books, all the stuff you like is plastered all over the
front and people decorate them in often gaudy expressions of
themselves. There are “study groups” where you can discuss
things you like or don’t like, a place to play games and even find some of the businesses you like getting involved. This is a very ME
based site but don’t disregard the value there. If this is the
crowd you want to target then it’s the place for you.

LinkedIn – A business mixer / meetup. People are exchanging their opinions and advice on business and what’s happening. Q&A sessions and group discussions on business issues
are being discussed, and you can leveage your contacts to meet more contacts.

Delicious – Your own personal refernce library filled with the information you’ve ever found useful and you can share it with other people, organize it and network with people who are interested in like subjects.

So What about you? How would you describe social media tools to people? How would you compare them to real world things?

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