this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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That's sounds like everything on the world wide web if not the entire internet.
The distinction is "through which users".
Merely putting something online does not make it social media. The key is the ability for users/passers-by to add their own content and/or comments, which then allows for interaction between users.
I mean, not really. Your online banking or bill pay site isn't social media, neither are (most) storefronts. A simple site disseminating information ( https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ as a bit of a contrived example ) has no direct engagement or content creation between users and no community forming.
But it makes sense that most of the hobby/fun website and applications will be social media because the primary purpose of the Internet is to connect computers and by extension humans and humans like to interact with each other, the main thing the internet does is let us talk together. It's not implicitly a bad thing that we do it.
While the term didn't exist at the time, I would also classify newsgroups and BBS's as social media as well.
And forums predated the term “social media.”