Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

Chapter 10. The New Media University: Social Media 401

In the 401 series of the New Media University program, we will undergo initiations that introduce us to the technology undercurrent as well as the philosophies and social sciences that govern and enrich human behavior on the Social Web.

SOCIAL OBJECTS

The topic of social objects will force us to think about social media as the connection of abstract objects that trigger and host related dialogues and activities.

In social media, these objects are personified by the pictures in Flickr, the videos on YouTube, the events in Upcoming, the profiles in Facebook, the links in Delicious, the votes in Digg, the places in FourSquare, the documents in Scribd, a destination or service in Yelp, a subject in Ning, a thought shared in the comment of a blog post, and so on.

Essentially, Social Objects in social networks take the form of content or media and can induce responses and reaction in each network in which they're launched as dictated by those who notice and are prompted or notified.

Subscribing to the school of thought that aligns effective social media strategies with anthropology and sociology, social objects therefore represent the epicenter for the extensive, diversified, and distributed micronetworks that are formed within larger, established social networks. Social Objects become the hubs for specialized engagement and discourse at the point of introduction and also as time, relevance, and the debut and discovery of related objects ...