What was the original purpose of social media?

[sophiawils59]

What was the original purpose of social media?

[duongtu]

People are using social media for a variety of purposes. The four main uses of social media form the acronym SLIM: sharing, learning, interacting, and marketing.

Sharing
With social media, you can share information and ideas in a variety of ways. Different outlets allow you to publish your own ideas in writing, with pictures, or through videos and voice recordings; and you can also hyperlink your audience to interesting articles, pictures, and videos. The information you share can be either private or public. For example, you can email a private message to one person and broadcast a video to a global audience via YouTube. Always consider your communication situation before sharing information.

Learning
Social media can also serve as personal learning tools. You can get updates about your friends and family, or learn about what’s happening in your community and around the world. The immediacy of the information flow allows you to get the gist of the latest news almost as it happens. Today, breaking news is often broadcast via social media before traditional media like TV and newspapers are able to cover it in detail. Social media can also reveal public sentiment about the big issues of the day or, on a less urgent level, opinions about a new restaurant or movie.

Interacting
Maybe the most powerful element of social media is their interactive nature. Social media break the traditional barriers of time and distance between people. With video chat technologies like Skype, you can talk to people face-to-face anywhere in the world. On Facebook and mobile devices, you can chat digitally and text with your friends and family. Twitter even allows you to interact with media members, public officials, professional athletes, and celebrities.

Marketing
More and more, social media are being used for marketing purposes. Businesses use social media to promote themselves and their products. Nonprofit organizations raise funds and promote charity events. Individuals market themselves to prospective employers. And you can use social media to promote ideas and events that are important to you.

[Naksh]

@duongtu has provided a very detailed answer

[CliffordPhillips]

The purpose of social media is vary man to man. Here you can share your informative information to others.

[ritesh3592]

One of the main uses is to interact with audiences to create awareness of their brand or service, with the main idea of creating a two-way communication system where the audience and/or customers can interact back; providing feedback as just one example.

[Alpatorix]

The original purpose of social media, of course earning money

[SteveGood]

Hi,


The main purpose of Social Media is Interect the people, Create the brand awareness, Generate good traffic, and Generate quality leads for your business.

[kibookogifty]

Social media can and does have several purposes but the original one, I believe was to connect people all over the world. Now it's different, now we can do practically everything with social media, from finding information, promote business, and find crowdfunding for your projects