But here we are. Anybody who is blogging, twittering, publishing photos, friend-feeding, Viddler-ing etc… is social media-ing. But are they? I say that social media is the platform. The platform allows us as content creators to develop content that want to share. From there, it’s a matter of how it’s used.

Social Marketing

Social Marketing is the bulk of what social media is used for. There is a distinct difference between using Twitter to discuss the banal details of your life and using Twitter to distribute 20% off coupons for your restaurant. Using the tools available to you through social media in order to generate direct sales is social marketing.

Social Marketing is often thinly veiled and that is where some of the frustration confusion occurs. When “consultants” offer their services through social media they are participating in social marketing. But it is veiled as social media. Simply sharing ideas, right? But the intent is to ultimately lead to a sale.

Using content sharing services to promote your business and services is a great use of social media as a platform. Enabling your customers to evangelize and tell your story for you is one of the greatest ways to build your brand and message. Social media as a platform also enables those people to reach each other.

Social Networking

We all like to meet people. We all like to interact with humans. After all, if you remove the ability to physically connect with the people we interact with online, social media would shrivel to nothing.

Being able to use social media to share pictures of my pug or arrange to meet some friends are great benefits of the technology platforms that comprise social media. In fact, one of my favorite aspects of social media as a platform is it’s opt in. I get out of it what I put in and if I choose not to participate, the world doesn’t end.

Plenty of stories exist about people using social media to network their way into a job or raise funds for a charity or even find a spouse. Being able to foster relationships, both professional and personal, is one of the great uses of social media as a platform.

Social Education

If you are out to share information (like this blog?) or distribute a message then you are using social media as a means to educate. Social education utilizes the alternative definition of social. In this instance, social is a reflection of society as a whole. Building communities around lifestyles or the environment is an emerging use of social media as a platform.

The emergence of the “green” lifestyle and social awareness in general is able to reach new levels thanks to social media as a platform. Video blogs, micropayments and the Twestival for charity:water are great examples of our society taking advantage of the innovations in social media technology that have emerged recently.

What Does This Mean?

It means that there’s no right or wrong way to use social media. It means that we need to be aware of the progression of the platform and how we as marketers and social beings can utilize it in innovative ways.

Just because we’re out in the “social media-sphere” doesn’t mean we know what’s happening. This shift that is occurring around us changes daily. Having a platform to build on and capture our every thought and action is both intriguing and totally frightening.

What this means is that social media is here to stay. How will you use it?

Nobody was Twittering about the sun or the timeshare presentations. I had no IM, no email and no iPhone.

And I loved it.

Our world is expanding thanks to these tools, but there is so much of it we miss by chasing each other from social networking tool to social networking tool. The Web is going to change the world. But I think it’s going to change it in a way we don’t expect.

What’s happening

The world is actually going to get bigger because of our self-created isolation that these “social” networks strive for. Instead of going to see my good friend who is about to have a new baby, I sent him a message on MySpace. Instead of getting some friends together to watch the recent NFL draft, I went into a chat room.

We’re slowly eliminating human and social interaction from our lives by adding what we’re being told is being social. As our online presence continues to evolve and our Pownce/FriendFeed/SocialThing/Facebook/LinkedIn selves continue to spiral around the concentric circles, we are actually going to create a smaller world around us.

What it means

I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen in the next 10 years. There’s a lot of room for new technologies to bring us together. There’s a lot of room for technologies that bring niche communities together around a common theme. Unfortunately, that’s going to create a social world that is heavily divided within numerous microcultures.

I think that the social networking sites are innovative. I love Twitter and reading about the dynamic experiences of others. But I think that the future of these applications are in the enterprise. If somebody can figure out how to put Twitter to work or figure out how to increase productivity with these tools, a lot of people will make a lot of money.

I could be totally wrong, too. Or you can prove me wrong. Go introduce yourself to the person next to you and show me that our society isn’t going backward.