Type S

In order to tackle the question of what to do with all this information…. we need to break it all down to the most simple elements possible.  What is in all this data? What does it mean, and who cares?

When we really break down the elements of social media, we get to the “Who, what, when, where, and how” of user generated content.  This posting will being to explore the what.

• Ratings (about products, movies, songs, guitar tab, etc…. )
• Reviews (in the form of comments)
• Personal/private messages (private messaging)
• Status (what are we doing right now…aka micro-blogging)
• Journal entries (aka blogging, or web blogging)
• Tags (tagging context can vary - you can tag for the entire WWW …aka social tagging, or simply within a blog post, site, etc)
• Photos
• Videos
• Audio files

And the list goes on… more to come…

There is no doubt that social media is taking the world by storm.  There is also no doubt that it is not a fad.  When was the last time you purchased a big ticket (or even small ticket) item without doing a little research? 

The consumer world has developed a dependency on listening to what others say before making decisions.  I guess one could almost say its an informal (yet massive) collection of “Consumer Reports” ratings.  

The issue, however, that we face today (as opposed to last year, or even 6 months ago) is that this huge gargantuan cloud (almost an atmosphere) is growing with each second.  Every letter I type means hundreds (maybe even thousands) more opinions are being posted to the world wide web.

What do we do with all this data?  In the information age…. information is the most valuable asset within the social media space.  But what does it all mean?  What good is data when you don’t know how to use it, or when to consume it?

I will be publishing a series of blog entries to explore this topic in greater detail over the next few weeks.  What tools are available to help the consumer get what they want?  How do we know if what we are reading can be trusted?  And then on the flip-side, how do retailers and businesses use social media to place content in front of their target audience?  Likewise, what tools are available on that end?