NetLingo Word of the Day

social media

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Social media can take many different forms, including social networks, blogs, vlogs, social bookmarks, user reviews, video sharing, podcasts, rating systems, collaborative ranking, wikis, comments, message boards, and online forums. Technologies include: picture-sharing, wall-postings, e-mail, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and VoIP, to name a few.

Examples of social media applications include: Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), Facebook (social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Instagram (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging). Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms (like Plaxo).

Social media depends upon interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words builds shared-meaning, using technology as a conduit, but free user be warned, many of these sites employ techniques to harvest your data.

Historical perspective: As of April 2007, the most frequently visited social networking sites were viewed by approximately one out of every four Internet users at least once a month. By the end of 2011, Twitter hit 100 million active users, connecting users in over 17 languages around the globe, and on average, there was over a day's worth of YouTube content uploaded every single minute. At the same time, Facebook had over 800 million users --an amount well over twice that of the population of the United States-- and by June of 2017, Facebook reached 2 billion users. Social media first came on the scene in 1997 with the platform Six Degrees.

little r

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

If you ever receive an e-mail message that says "can you please little "r" me?" it means to reply just to that person (and not to everyone that's cc'd on the list). Most commonly used at work where a bunch of people are included on an e-mail thread, this directive means to click the "Reply" option, not the "Reply to All" option.

spaghetti code

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Software in which the execution path is tangled to the point of being almost impossible to understand. Spaghetti code is often the result overusing of the g-word.

swerve

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

It means you’re in the wrong lane metaphorically speaking. When somebody requests that you "swerve," they’re saying "You’re not welcome here. Leave us alone, swerve please."

hyperlink

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

The text or graphics on a Web site that can be clicked on with a mouse to take you to another Web page or a different area of the same Web page. Hyperlinks are usually created (or coded) in HTML. They are also used to load multimedia files, such as AVI movies and AU sound files.

on velvet

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Slang for "sitting pretty," it means things are going very well. For example, "I saw Erin yesterday and she told me she got an exclusive sitewide sponsor, she was on velvet."

kubris

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Slang for an extreme form of arrogance found in multimedia auteurs who think they're Stanley Kubrick.

information dominance

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

A modern military term for having superior intelligence and the ability to cripple an enemy's information infrastructure, for example "In the Gulf War, the coalition clearly had information dominance. In Somalia, it was Aidid."

do not track

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

The digital equivalent of the "do not call" registry that prohibits telemarketing phone calls, the "do not track" initiative is a way for users to avoid being monitored online.

Spearheaded by Firefox, who is exploring ways to create a do-not-track mechanism, one approach would be to automatically opt-out of online tracking. For example, when you open a Web browser, a "do not track me" option would be available and as you surf, your browser would alert ad companies and other fingerprinters that you don't want to be tracked.

Historical perspective: In late 2010, the website "AboutAds.info" allows people to opt out of 58 tracking companies with a single click, and "PrivacyChoice.org" has compiled a list of 274 companies that use tracking technology.

post

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

A noun for a message entered into a network such as a newsgroup, discussion group, blog, social networking site, or online forum. The message is called "a post" or "a posting." As a verb, it means the same as "to put up."

For example, "I posted the 'for sale' message yesterday. That's probably why we have so many e-mail messages."