5 Spheres of Social Media

The social web is growing like never before, and as it does, the number of terms and categories of websites, communities and tools that fall into this grouping is becoming vast. The 5 Spheres categorizes the different areas of social media so that we can discuss them more intelligently and focus on which sites work best for which business goals.

Broad social networking is what most people think of when they think "social media". Myspace has captured the attention of the world with its widespread adoption by young online users and could be credited with much of the rampant growth the social web enjoys today.

The Social Networking Sphere includes all sites that are mainly geared around people meeting one another in a broad sense. These sites allow people to connect for various reasons, such as friendship, dating, resources, and careers. Most sites within this sphere will touch multiple other spheres as they try to provide as many valuable social media tools as possible to their users.

Examples: Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Meetup

Publishing, sharing and the promotion of various media is the focus within the Social Publishing Sphere. This includes the large subcategory of blogging, specific media sites for sharing video or photos, and reference sites featuring community generated knowledge.

Subcategories: Blogging, Micro Blogging, Music, Photography, Reference, Video

Examples: Youtube, Flickr, Last.fm, Wikipedia, Squidoo

Sharing links to articles and other content, very often for promotion, is the priority of sites within the Social Linking Sphere. Many of these sites are referred to as "social book marking" sites, but this term looses accuracy since most of these sites are now geared towards sharing links, or the promotion of content to other users, as opposed to just saving them for later recall.

Even a somewhat pure book marking site like Delicious.com is commonly used to promote links to others. Many of these sites utilize some type of accumulated voting value to promote the "most viewed" or "most liked" content for others to see.

Subcategories: Link Sharing, News Sharing

Examples: Mixx, Reddit, Stumble, HubDub, Newsvine

Virtual, gaming, and crowdsourcing networks fill the Social Interactive Sphere. The focus of these networks is on dynamic interaction with others. The interactive portion can be a virtual 3D world that mimics our own, large gaming environments, or communities where users work together to solve problems and create goods and services.

Subcategories: Crowdsourcing, Social Gaming, Virtual Communities

Examples: Second Life, NameThis, Webkinz, Mosio, Threadless

Micro-focused networks that can really fall within or across many of the 5 spheres. Niche networks will begin to create much more valuable hyper-local online community content. But geography is just one section of niche. Sites form around very unique interests, from TV shows to sports and beyond.

Examples: Kirtsy, Ning, My Church, Passport Stamp