FORTE CULTURA - Social Media Concept EN

Social Media Concept for fortified heritage 5 2 C ONCEPTUAL F OUNDATIONS 2.1 D EFINITION Social media is a virtual platform where users, often by the use of profiles, exchange informa- tion, experiences, opinions and impressions as well as gather knowledge. They use exclusively digital-based communication channels and applications. The essential features of social media are interaction and dialogue. The communication re- sources are text, images, audio or video. A variety of social media channels are available for a variety of interest groups and areas (see Fig. 2.2). 2.2 S OCIAL M EDIA : A N O VERVIEW Social Networks The most well-known representative of the social media are the social networks. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Co. are the world's leading portals. With approximately 1.35 billion peo- ple 1 Facebook is the network Olympus. Users create a personal profile, network with friends and acquaintances, follow celebrities or companies on fan pages and create thematic groups. They create and consume status mes- sages promptly and often react spontaneously and directly. Blogs Blogs are web pages that represent the contributions of one or more bloggers (authors) in a downwardly sorted chronological order. Typical applications are for example, the public diary of a private person, or product presentations by companies. Blogs contain important elements of social networks like commenting features. Microblogs Through microblog users post short text messages to their audience, the "followers". Here, the text length is often limited to less than 200 characters. Famous representatives are Twitter or Tumblr. Media sharing portals Media sharing portals allow users own media files (images, music, video) to be published online and shared with other users. Known portals are Youtube (Video), Spotify and Soundcloud (music) or Instagram and Flickr (photo). Users can comment, evaluate and share the content that ap- peals to them. Popular videos can easily reach click rates of over one million. 1 October 2014, source: statista.com