Appendix A: Social Media Glossary

Please reference the below list of commonly used terms and acronyms in social media.

A

Avatar: an image or username that represents a person online, most often within forums and social networks.

B

Bio: a short bit of text that explains who the user is.

Bitly: a free URL-shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Bitly is popularly used to condense long URLs to make them easier to share on social networks such as Twitter.

Blog: a word created from two words: “web log.” Blogs are usually maintained by an individual or a business with regular entries of content on a specific topic, descriptions of events, or other resources such as graphics or video. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

C

Channel: technology-based communication methods conducted through the internet and mobile devices, such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Chat: any kind of communication over the internet but traditionally refers to one-to-one communication through a text-based chat application, commonly referred to as instant messaging.

Click-through rate: a common social media metric used to represent the number of times a visitor click-through divided by the total number of impressions a piece of content receives.

Comment: a response that is often provided as an answer or reaction to a blog post or message on a social network.

Community manager: person responsible for building and managing the online communications for a business in an effort to grow an online community.

Cover photo: the large photo displayed at the top of a Facebook profile. The header image is also commonly referred to as the header image on Twitter. 

Crowdsourcing: the act of soliciting ideas or content from a group of people, typically in an online setting.

D

Direct messages: also known as "DMs.” Private conversations that occur on social media platforms. Both parties must be following one another to send a message.

E

Ebook: an electronic version of a book. Some ebooks are not available in print (unless users print them), and are typically published in PDF form.

Engagement rate: a popular social media metric used to describe the amount of interaction a piece of content receives, such as likes, shares, and comments.

F

Facebook: a social media platform founded in 2004 that connects people with friends, family, acquaintances, and businesses from all over the world and enables them to post, share, and engage with a variety of content such as photos and status updates. The platform currently has around 1.49 billion active users.

Flickr: a social network for online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets, and other methods.

Forum: an online discussion site, also known as a message board. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dial-up bulletin board system.

Follower: a person who subscribes to your account in order to receive your updates.

Friend: the term used on Facebook to represent the connections you make and the people you follow. These are individuals you consider to be friendly enough with you to see your Facebook profile and engage with you.

G

Geotag: the directional coordinates that can be attached to a piece of content online. For example, Instagram users often use geotagging to highlight the location in which their photo was taken.

GIF: an acronym for “Graphics Interchange Format.” In social media, GIFs serve as small-scale animations and film clips.

H

Handle: the term used to describe someone's @username on Twitter. For example, NJC’s Twitter handle is @NortheasternJC.

Hashtag: a tag used on a variety of social networks as a way to annotate a message. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a “#" (i.e. #mynjc). Social networks use hashtags to categorize information and make it easily searchable for users. 

Header image: the large photo displayed at the top of a Twitter profile. The header image is also commonly referred to as the cover image on Facebook. 

I

Impression: a way in which marketers and advertisers keep track of every time a post on social media is "fetched" and counted.

Instagram: a photo-sharing application that lets users take photos, apply filters to their images, and share the photos instantly on the Instagram network and other social networks like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. The app is targeted toward mobile social sharing, and has more than 300 million users. 

Instant messaging: a form of real-time, direct text-based communication between two or more people. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice or video calling.

L

Like: an action taken by a Facebook or Instagram user. Instead of writing a comment or sharing a post, a user can click the “Like” button as a quick way to show approval. On Facebook, the “Like” button is a thumbs-up symbol; on Instagram, it is a heart symbol.

Live streaming: the act of delivering video content over the internet in real-time.

M

Meme: a method to describe a thought, idea, joke, or concept that's widely shared online. It is typically an image with text above and below it, but can also come in video and link form.

Mention: a Twitter term used to describe an instance in which a user includes someone else's handle (@username) in their tweet to attribute a piece of content or start a discussion.

N

Newsfeed: the content displayed to social media users, supplied by the activity of all accounts the user follows or subscribes so as well as ads. On Facebook, the newsfeed is the homepage of users' accounts where they can see all the latest updates from their friends. The news feed on Twitter is called Timeline.

P

Photostream: the public-facing page of all photos uploaded to a Flickr account

Podcast: a series of digital media files, usually audio, that are released episodically and are accessible through RSS feeds, apps and websites.

R

Reply: a Twitter action that allows a user to respond to a tweet through a separate tweet that begins with the other user's handle (@username). This differs from a mention, because tweets that start with an @username only appears in the timelines of users who follow both parties.

Retweet: when someone on Twitter sees your message and decides to re-share it with his or her followers. A retweet button allows them to quickly resend the message with attribution to the original sharer's name.

RSS feed: a family of web-feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs and videos in a standardized format. Content publishers can syndicate a feed, which allows users to subscribe to the content and read it when they please from a location other than the website.

S

Search engine optimization: the process of improving the volume or quality of unpaid traffic to a website from search engines. Also referred to as “SEO.”

Selfie: is a self-portrait that is typically taken using the reverse camera screen on a smartphone or by using a selfie stick (a pole that attaches to your camera). Selfies are commonly shared on social media networks like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook using the hashtag #selfie.

Snapchat: a social app that allows users to send and receive time-sensitive photos and videos known as "snaps," which are hidden from the recipients once the time limit expires (images and videos still remain on the Snapchat server). Users can add text and drawings to their snaps and control the list of recipients in which they send them to.

T

Tagging: a social media functionality commonly used on Facebook and Instagram that allows users to create a link back to the profile of the person shown in the picture or targeted by the update. 

Twitter: a real-time social network that allows users to share 280-character updates with their following. Users can favorite and retweet the posts of other users, as well as engage in conversations using @ mentions, replies, and hashtags for categorizing their content. 

U

User-generated content: content such as blogs, videos, photos, quotes, etc. that is created by consumers.

V

Viral: a term used to describe an instance in which a piece of content -- YouTube video, blog article, photo, etc. – quickly achieves noteworthy awareness. Viral distribution relies heavily on word of mouth and the frequent sharing of one particular piece of content all over the internet.

Vlogging: a piece of content that employs video to tell a story or report on information. Vlogs are common on video sharing networks like YouTube. 

Y

YouTube: a video-sharing website.