Five years ago there was media and social media and the two were distinct. You know what was what. It was like there elephants and zebras. You knew the difference.
Today all media is social, all social is media. It's impossible to separate the two.
The media all actively use social technologies to innovate, converse and collaborate with their audiences. Meanwhile, social content from friends - be it tweets or status updates or videos - all should be considered media. Yes, the elephants and the zebras have cross-mated.
My colleague overheard me say this and he drew this little doodle for me a few months ago. I keep it handy and refer to it often when thinking about big topics, like this one: just what is media? I don't have an answer any more. But it's important we have one. Google has a bunch of definitions here, but none of them seem to apply any more.
The reason we need a new definition for media (as opposed to a definition for new media - a topic for another day) is because entire industries depend on it. People say "I work in the media business." There are "media buying" agencies. And so on.
So in asking this question, I turn to you. How would you define media today? Maybe we can begin to crowdsource a definition.
