Social Media and Work

Abstract

What is social media? Social media can broadly be defined as Internet sites and apps designed around social interaction. I could argue that the Internet has always been a social invention, but instead I’ll tell you the story of when I attended a friend’s birth shower several years ago. I’d met this friend online, even though she lived in the same town, and at one point during the party, everyone in the room introduced themselves by name—and LiveJournal username. LiveJournal was a blogging/social networking service that predated MySpace and Facebook. I’m used to people my age socializing electronically, but when the grandmother-to-be also introduced herself by LiveJournal username, I knew social networks weren’t just something kids used to find dates.