The Three Types of Social Media

Anonymous Vs. Scientology, 2/10/08, Los Angeles
Creative Commons License photo credit: Rob Sheridan

Social Media - content that allows user interaction.

There are three types of social media interaction, listed in descending authourity:

Identity Media: Content that is produced under the authors real name and fully backed as their work. Blogs like this one are Identity Media - good, bad, or ugly I generally believe the things I write here for at least the near term.

Alias Media: Content that is produced under a screen name. Many well-know content producers have an alter-ego on the web. Even when the real identities are well known there is less commitment in using an alias. For example I am Inflatemouse in several forums/portals, I stand behind my comments, but they don’t show up under my real name, very often.

Anonymous Media: Content that is created outside a registration wall. The comments in this blog are Anonymous Media, because there is no registration to ensure that all content made under a name is from the same source.

Most social media outlets are a mix of Identity and Alias content, but there are examples of other combinations, and even pure examples (i.e. Craigslist is pure anonymous content). When you choose how to engage a particular community you need to consider the repercussions and relative authority that you give your comments in each system.

This entry was written by Carlos del Rio, posted on May 21, 2008 at 4:12 pm, filed under Search Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

2 Comments

  1. Keyword Competitive Index
    Posted May 21, 2008 at 5:49 pm | Permalink

    Social media is an important aspect to the current state of the internet. I have developed the KCI or Keyword Competitive Index, it is the first web 2.0 index tool. This is the biggest seo index update in 10 years. It will change how we view keyword reasearch and competitive analysis. But most of all social media.

    Lance Young
    Inventor of the KCI

  2. Carlos del Rio
    Posted May 21, 2008 at 7:27 pm | Permalink

    Lance Young,
    The graphics on your site look suspiciously like photoshopped WordTracker results.

2 Trackbacks

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