Definition of Social Media

This is my bullshit-free definition of social media:

Web properties that amass a ton of users — ideally in the hundreds of millions, track their every move on the platform and give advertisers the opportunity to target them with sponsored posts right in the feed.

It doesn’t matter how users entertain themselves: with memes and photos of cats, keeping contact with long-lost friends and crushes, fighting about politics while trying to sound smart, with sexy photos of themselves, by self-aggrandizing or watching funny videos.

Nor does it really matter whether they are connected to people they know, in which case one should be speaking of social networks, or just with people they find interesting or sexy, celebrities or authorites in a field or just with more of the same funny, dumb videos.

All that matters is that there’s a proprietary platform, free or cheap user-generated bullshit (UGB), a ton of users, serious tracking, an in-house targeting system and the possibility to advertise right in the middle of the feed, or do what they call native advertising.