GLOSSARY

Blog:
A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs. With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning… that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.(Source Wikipedia)

Folksonomy:
Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. Folksonomy describes the bottom-up classification systems that emerge from social tagging. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is generated not only by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary.Folksonomy (from folk + taxonomy) is a user-generated taxonomy. (Source Wikipedia)

Perpetual Beta:
Perpetual beta is a term used to describe software or a system which never leaves the development stage of beta. It is often used by developers in order to allow them to constantly release new features that might not be fully tested. As a result, perpetual beta software is not recommended for mission critical machines.

Perpetual beta has come to be associated with the development and release of a service in which constant updates are the foundation for the habitability or usability of a service. According to publisher and open source advocate Tim O’Reilly: “Users must be treated as co-developers, in a reflection of open source development practices (even if the software in question is unlikely to be released under an open source license.) The open source dictum, ‘release early and release often’, in fact has morphed into an even more radical position, ‘the perpetual beta’, in which the product is developed in the open, with new features slipstreamed in on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. It’s no accident that services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, del.icio.us, and the like may be expected to bear a ‘Beta’ logo for years at a time.”(Source Wikipedia)

Social Network:
A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.(Source Wikipedia)

• Well-known examples include Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

Wiki:
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranets and Knowledge Management systems. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work.” (Source Wikipedia)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Basic Definition: The practice of marketing or advertising your site through search engines.

• SEM can include SEO, pay-per-click advertising and paid inclusion (paying to be listed in directories)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Basic Definition: Process of increasing your site’s traffic by improving organic search engine rankings.

• Optimizing your website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines

Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Basic Definition: Process of promoting a site, business or brand through social media channels by engaging and interacting with existing consumers or potential consumers.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Basic Definition: Methods to increase your publicity through social media channels and online communities; may include adding RSS feeds, blogging, creating your own YouTube channel, etc.

Social Bookmarking
Basic Definition: Sites allow you to organize your favorite sites, tag them for keywords, and keep them all in one place.

• Well-known examples include del.icio.us, Furl, Ma.gnolia

Social Recommendation
Basic Definition: Sites combine the best of social networking and bookmarking to create user generated recommendation sites.

• Users submit what they like and others can vote on them
• The higher it rates on this bookmarking sites, the more traffic it gets
• Well-known examples include Digg, Netscape, StumbleUpon

RSS Feed
Basic Definition: A format for distributing and gathering regularly changing web content.

• Stands for Really Simple Syndication
• News sites, magazines, blogs, etc., syndicate their content as an RSS feed for anyone who wants to
  receive it
• News feeds that includes links, headlines and summaries
• People use programs called “feed readers” to subscribe to your content

Bloggers
Basic Definition: Someone who regularly writes entries of commentary, events, diary, etc on a website web log (blog).

Widget
Basic Definition:  A mini web application you can put on your webpage, blog or social profile.

• It is a piece of code that brings in live content from a third party site; third party site makes updates and are automatically displayed on widget
• Often take the form of on-screen tools like news, clocks, event countdowns, tickers, weather, videos, pictures, ticket purchase link

Podcast/ Videocast
Basic Definition: Downloadable audio or video recordings that are distributed on the Internet through syndication (like RSS feed).

• Automatically updated when new content is added

Twitter
Basic Definition: Answers the question “What are you doing” in 140 characters or less.

• Micro-blogging
• Posts thoughts, observations and goings-on in news feed
• Lets you stay connected to friends, family, and co-workers by following them
• Following someone means you receive their Twitter updates
• Can send updates through website, phone, m.twitter.com, or other third party applications
• Companies are using Twitter to keep in touch with consumers
• Tweet – term used for an update

In-House Social Network
Basic Definition: Customizable social network programmable to fit your needs.

• Basic Features
• Customize brand with your own logo and theme or create your own design with CSS
• Add text and widgets
• Member profiles – each member of your network can have own customizable profile page
• Event listings – schedule events and keep track of invitees
• Create interest groups
• Real-time activity stream
• Discussion forum
• Video players, photos, and slideshows
• Viral Widgets – members can display on their own Facebook page, blog, etc
• Facebook Integration – members can share photos, videos, and music on their Facebook profiles
• Can use your own domain name, control advertising, and increase storage and bandwidth as needed

Yelp
Basic Definition: Site where you can find information, read reviews, and write your own for events, restaurants, stores, doctors, etc in your city.

Wigadoo – UK based only, hope to expand to US within a few months
Basic Definition: A site that allows you to organize events, invite friends and not have to worry about collecting money from each person.

• Invited friends decide if they want to go and pledge money using their credit cards
• Event organizer determines if the event should happen
• Wigadoo collects payment by charging the credit cards entered
• Wigadoo issues a virtual credit card that can be used by the event organizer to pay for the event

Going.com
Basic Definition: Site where you can find out what is going on, who is going and what people think of it.

• Post your own events and/or fill out your interests and they will suggest events that fit within that
• Anyone can post an event, including promoters
• Caters to the 20-something age group

ONLINE ADVERTISING TERMS:

Click Through Rate (CTR)
Basic Definition: The number of clicks divided by the number of ad impressions/views. It’s the rate at which people see your ad and actually click on it.

Cost Per Click (CPC)
Basic Definition: The price you pay when someone clicks on your sponsored listing/paid search ad.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)
Basic Definition: The price you pay per thousand page impressions of your ad.

WEBSITE REPORTING TERMS:

Visitor
Basic Definition: Represents the number of actual, distinct people who visited a website.

Unique Visitors
Basic Definition: Represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period.

Page View
Basic Definition: A review of a page on your website. If someone navigates away from a particular page and then comes back or simply refreshes it will count as a second page view.

Unique Page View
Basic Definition: Aggregates page views that are generated by the same user during the same session.

Depth of Visit/Page Depth
Basic Definition: The amount of pages a visitor views during a session on your website.