Social Media

Social media aka: social networks, social media networks. This term encompasses six different types: social networking sites and microblogs (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), video content sharing (e.g., YouTube), collaborative information or instructional projects (e.g., Wikipedia), virtual game worlds (e.g., Runes of Magic and World of Warcraft), and virtual social communities (e.g. Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs (e.g., Flickr, Picasa, Pinterest), Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms. All of these forms are web-based and now formatted for mobile technologies that have turned simple communication devices into vehicles for widespread interactive dialogue. These scalable communication platforms and techniques have significantly changed the way individuals, organizations, communities, and businesses connect and broaden their reach.

Social media services provide some or all of the seven functional building blocks of; identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. These are built on the needs of the groups they serve. For example, LinkedIn users care mostly about career and business networking which is built on identity, reputation and relationships. In contrast, YouTube’s functionality and internal structure builds on the subject matter and relies on the viral aspects of social networking.

The U.S. patent applications that cover new technologies related to social media have grown rapidly over the past five years. So far there are approximately 250 published applications but only a handful of these applications have issued as patents- due in part to the multi-year backlog in examination of business method patents.