TAcommunities

And speaking of format...

The dissemination literature places great emphasis on the power that interaction between users and disseminators has to make information dissemination effective. With that in mind, we’d like to establish the use of social media in the NDC’s approach to dissemination (and the network’s as well).

By social media, we mean “any communications format where the users publish the content”—multimedia, music, pictures, video, text. Its use revolves around the idea of listening, conversation, and the relationships created therein. Social media is often creative, playful, and yet focused.

Because we’re relatively new in this forest (and the forest itself is relatively new!), we thought a brief overview of social media might be in order. Brace yourself, here it comes!

Blog
A Web-based journal that is typically created and maintained by a person who is passionate about a subject, someone who has a fire in the belly and wants to communicate with the world and his or her area of expertise. Many blogs allow readers to leave comments. Blogs have emerged as an important tool in monitoring what millions of people are saying in your arena of expertise and in
shaping that conversation.

Forum
An interactive, online discussion about a specific topic. Might also be referred to as a “chat room.” Users submit postings for all to read and discussion ensues.

Listserv
A group email list that helps like-minded people stay connected to one another. Instead of going to a central place to read messages, the listserv sends messages out by email to everyone who’s signed up for the listserv.

Podcast
An audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback on a portable music player such as an iPod (hence, the term podcast) or to your computer.

RSS
Stands for “really simple syndication” of Web content. Most widely used in distributing news headlines on the Web. A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site.

Social Networking
A Web site that provides a virtual community for people interested in a particular subject or just to “hang out” together. Members create their own online “profile” with biographical data, pictures, likes, dislikes, and any other information they choose to post. They communicate with each other by voice, chat, instant message, blogs, and videoconference. The service typically provides a way for members to invite their friends to join, who in turn can invite their friends, and on and on. Globally, hundreds of millions of people have joined one or more social networking sites. Examples: MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Friendster, Linkedin

Streaming Video
A sequence of “moving images” sent in compressed form over the Internet and displayed to the viewer as they arrive. Streaming media is streaming video with sound. With streaming video or streaming media, a Web user does not have to wait to download a large file before seeing the video or hearing the sound. Instead, the media is sent in a continuous stream and is played as it arrives.

Wiki
A Web site that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wikis are unusual among group communication mechanisms in that they allow contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.