Talk:Social networking service

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Proposed merge of Social media with Social networking service

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Do not merge, but articles need to be edited to more clearly articulate the difference. -- Beland (talk) 01:34, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

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The difference between a social media website and a social networking service is not made clear in these articles, and if it does exist at all, it doesn't seem important enough to warrant a split. Fundamentally, this is a gigantic redundant content fork, and it'd be better presented in a single article. Courtesy pinging Volteer1 and Enterprisey, who discussed this on Discord a few days ago. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:02, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support Weak oppose. I agree with everything written there. I don't think there's enough difference between the two that keeping them separate serves readers. Pinging in everybody from Special:Permalink/1049448746#Merge proposal: Buffaboy, Jaobar, and MarqFJA87. Jaobar said he was happy to discuss this further so I'd be interested in what he has to say about what difference exists between the two in the popular mind. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:44, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  (re-ping due to rename: Dekema) Enterprisey (talk!) 06:45, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  Switching to oppose. I have been convinced by the arguments below. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:36, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Media and networking are different concepts, at least in marketing. A medium is used to broadcast a message to a wide audience, such as an advertisement or PR piece. Networking is about building relationships among members of a network and messages passed are specific from one member to another. Social media and social networking can coexist on the same platform. For instance on Facebook a company can broadcast ads to a wide audience, but members can also communicate with each other, forming a network. Viral campaigns use both mechanisms: media are used inject a message into a community, such as a corporate tweet and networking is used to amplify that message, such as through retweets and linking. I don't think anyone in Web marketing would ever confuse social media with social networking. Facebook supports social networking on their platform, but makes money on the social media broadcast to a captive audience on that platform. Their coexistence on various platforms may cause confusion among lay people. But confusion among lay people is not a strong argument for merging. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 08:04, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  Ah, I think I get it. Thank you for the explanation. As I'm not an expert in the field, I think I rather need to think about this a bunch more before replying further. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:37, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. Social media is mainly about Web 2.0 and the advantages and disadvantages of User-generated content. Social networking service is a much broader concept. The merged article would be too long and unmanageable. The Social networking service article may be shortened by trimming down the discussion of social media and adding a hatnote referring to the Social media article. Agnerf (talk) 09:24, 9 November 2021 (UTC)Agnerf (talk) 09:10, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support as I believe that both of these topics can be explained and differentiated in one article. Although social media may concern itself with Web 2.0, they are all social networking services. dekema (Formerly Buffaboy) (talk) 22:56, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Hi everyone, apologies for taking a while to reply. I maintain what I said previously. The concepts likely still have distinct audiences, which is in part, perhaps due to differences in the literature. As you may know, there is a social networking literature that precedes Web 2.0. Something else to consider, yes, Facebook is both social media and SNS; however, Facebook and similar apps and websites are referred to as stand-alone services. There is also built-in social media functionality. This distinction complicates distinctions between what might be referred to as social media or SNS. Happy to discuss this further. --Jaobar (talk) 17:34, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: To those opposing @Mark viking, Agnerf, and Jaobar: I'd encourage you to edit the articles to attempt to articulate the difference between the concepts. You've laid out a bunch of possible distinctions, not all of which agree with each other or with the articles as presently written. The current lead of social media doesn't even link to social networking service. I'd also remind everyone that the existence of some difference in the terms does not necessarily mean that we ought to have two separate articles. Forking essentially doubles the editing workload, which is a huge cost to bear unless it's absolutely necessary. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:48, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

  Agree with this. As an example, one low-hanging fruit is the Definition section. It essentially duplicates the 4-point definition from the social media article and cites an article defining social media, not social networking services in general (Obar, Jonathan A.; Wildman, Steve (October 2015). "Social media definition and the governance challenge: An introduction to the special issue".)

  I feel like there is a distinction between SNS and social media (ex: maybe MMORGS are SNS but not social media), but I'd like to see more development of this distinction in the article. Quohx (talk) 21:40, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose: Ibid what Jaobar said. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 13:02, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Implementation

According to Social media#Definition and features, which seems to have a good reference, social networking services are a type of social media. I edited the intro of this article to say that. I dropped the "Definition" section from this article (which Quohx mentioned in the discussion above) that incorrectly applied the four-prong definition of "social media" to this one specific subtype of social media. Glancing very briefly at social media, I see sources that say sometimes the two are used as synonyms (most other types, for example the microblogging site Twitter or the photo-sharing site Instagram, also build social networks through follower relationships).

Quohx and Agnerf, you said that social media is a narrower concept than social networking services. I don't see any sources saying that, but if you know of some, please share so we can explain the terminology more completely. The main source for the typology of social media, this International Journal of Market Research paper, explicitly says that social gaming is a type of social media, and mentions two MMORGs as examples of social gaming and not social networks. Presumably this is because the primary purpose of MMORGs is not to build a network of people (the "social network") like Facebook and LinkedIn do.

@Mark viking: The International Journal of Market Research paper cited by Social media does not support the idea that the marketing industry distinguishes "media" as "one-to-many" as different from "network" as "many-to-many". Media (communication) says that the term includes both "one-to-many" and "many-to-many" communication mechanisms. Maybe "media" is sometimes used as shorthand for mass media? The way that article is written implies that term does have "one-to-many" connotations. But if you have reliable sources that define "social media" and "social network" the way you described, please share them so we can explain the terminology more completely. -- Beland (talk) 01:34, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your closing and thoughtful comments. This blog lays out the ideas of social media vs social networking fairly clearly, but wouldn't be considered an RS. More of an RS is the book Social Information Seeking, chapter 3, pages 29-33 where social media and social networking are described as different concepts. I think "media" in a communications context is often shorthand for "media platform", which can host both one-to-many social media and many-to-many social networks. I don't want to give the idea that these are hard and fast universal definitions, or that many people don't confuse social media with social networking, but I think there is enough daylight between these concepts (and enough instances in the literature that treat them as separate concepts) that it is worth describing them separately. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 03:47, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Are there any examples we can agree on that would be classified as one but not the other? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:20, 13 December 2023 (UTC)