A guide to 5 common social media terms

Social media is something that exists in most of our lives, whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, many of us still have no clue what most of the terms surrounding social media mean. This simple guide can reduce some of that uncertainty by explaining some of the more common social media terms.

1. Tag

A tag can pertain to a number of things, depending on how it is used. When referring to blogs, tags often refer to the keywords that were used in the post. Tagging keywords in blogs allows search engines to recognize your post as pertaining to certain topics, and helps the post rank higher.

Tag may also pertain to the act of tagging a friend in photos on Facebook. This essentially means that you link someone to a photo that they are in. This feature has been around for years but it’s becoming more advanced as it now uses facial recognition.

The most recent form of tagging actually refers to mentioning friends in your posts and status updates. Now, if you tag them in your updates, they will be notified of your post and it will show up on their wall for all of their other friends to see.

2. Troll

A troll in this situation is a person that uses social media as a way to provoke people. Trolls often make taunting or offensive comments on pages or in groups in order to incite anger.

3. Friend

We all know what a friend is in the classic sense, but in social media it can be used as a verb. When you add someone as a friend over a social network, many users refer to this as “friending” someone.

4. Stream

Stream is another one of those double-meaning terms, depending on how it is used. Stream may pertain either to someone’s Twitter or Facebook home page that contains updates and posts from everybody in their social network. It can also refer to receiving a constant stream of information, often in the form of a webcast.

5. At mention

At mentions, or @ mentions, are used on Twitter and they are extremely similar to Facebook’s new tagging system for status updates. This allows you to mention someone in your Tweet and notify him or her of your post.

Although social media terms can easily become hazy, the purpose of this guide is to help clear them up. If you’d like an even more extensive guide to social media terms take a look at this article.