I'm fed up with "Social Media". 

Not with the mediums themselves; sure Digg users can be a bit moronic, but the block button is handy (I'm sure my rants have been blocked by several) - I'm more annoyed with the phrase itself: "social media"  Ugh.

Why?  It's a perfectly normal phrase; it's not irritating on the brain like phrases such as chav, organic, (the middle class get out clause for posh food and products), war on terror, blogosphere, noob, singing from the same hymn sheet...

I think the main irritation is when you hear it so often in the course of the day,  hailed as the next era in internet marketing, yet many aren't yet sure exactly how that would translate for their own business, and so it gets used as a kind of blanket phrase for all that mysterious online stuff that kids do in their bedrooms and shouldn't we get on Facebook, yah?

More and more we're being consulted on just putting the whole social networking scene in plain English, and explaining how it can be used practically.  After such sessions (cheat sheet on social media) the phrase "social bookmarks" is regarded too woolly: instead of the generalisation we start chatting about the individual services such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Digg which is much more focused on practicalities and a lot more interesting for all involved.

Alternatives to the "social media" phrase, anyone?

A few ideas to start off:

Web/User Interfacing

Smedia

Professional Internet Stalking

Collective Communications

Communal Intelligence

Gregarious Expression    

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Tags: socialmedia, seo, smo