Glossary
Access
Permission to read or view information online or in computer systems.
Advocate
A brand enthusiast who posts messages and helps others understand features or aspects of brands and who may act to raise brand awareness or favorability.
Aggregating content
Collecting information from multiple sources that may be Web-only or a combination of Web and in-house sources, like databases.
Aggregator
A tool or program that collects content from the Web, including blogs, message boards, or forums.
Alert
A notification system that advises when new content is added to a Web site, blog, or other online source.
API
An acronym for Application Programming Interface. APIs allow different software programs to “talk” to one another and share information.
Archive
An accessible history of Web site posts or other types of entries, usually organized by topic or data.
AstroTurfing
A fake grassroots push to generate buzz or interest in a product, service, or idea. Often, an astroturfing movement is motivated by a fee or gift to the writer of a post or comment. (source: The Social Media Guide.)
Attitude
A user's perspective, usually described in terms of positive or negative. Attitudes are commonly captured by thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons or buttons or links that indicate “liking.”
Authentication
The process of validating a person's identity, usually with a username and password.
Blog
A Web page that serves as a personal journal that is accessible by others and often indexed by search engines. Major blogging platforms are Blogger, WordPress, and MoveableType.
Blogging
Writing in one's blog.
Blogosphere
The collection of all blogs.
Blog post
A story of any type included in a blog. Blog posts may include text, pictures, video or sound files, or links to other blogs.
Blogroll
A list of blogs that the blog owner finds interesting, and links to.
Boardreader
An aggregator specifically tuned to collect message board posts and forum discussions.
Bookmarking
Saving the address of a Web location, typically in a Web browser. See also social bookmark.
Brand backyard
The compilation of sources controlled by brands, such as customer and private communities, blogs, discussion forums, e-mail, customer service logs, corporate Twitter accounts, and official presences on social networking sites like Facebook.
Brand page
A page on social network specifically for brands to manage.
Bulletin board
A message system that allows an online community of people to post questions and submit answers. Bulletin boards typically offer “guests” read-only access and require registration for people who want to post and reply. Also called a forum.
Category
1. A term or phrase used to organize content on a Web site. 2. In text analysis, a heading used to group one or more topics. See data structure.
Chat
Usually, a text-based discussion held among two or more people using an online service. Video chats are becoming more common as Webcam penetration increases.
Classification
In text analytics, the organization of information into high-level groups, which are then divided further into topics, subtopics, and themes.
Cluster
A grouping of related concepts.
Collaboration
People, usually team members, working together for a common end. Software offerings may include collaboration features that support business activities, such as customer care.
Comment
A response that people reading blogs may make to a posting. Commenters may also remark on responses made by other commenters.
Communities (online communities)
Groups of individuals who share common interests and are linked by online tools such as e-mail or social networks. Private communities are organized and run by brands, often with third-party help, to focus on learning from key customers, prospects, or suppliers.
Community building
The process of recruiting and accepting community members against defined criteria, helping them feel comfortable, and encouraging participation.
Consumer backyard
A place where people interact that is not brand-controlled. Blogs, forums, ratings and review sites, Twitter, social networks, and media-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr are all types of consumer backyards. Ethical listening harvests only publicly available information from the consumer backyard.
Content
A general term used to describe text, images, sounds, and video on the Web.
Conversation
In general, the variety of exchanges that occur online or offline among people.
Crowdsourcing
Utilizing a community or large group of people to help companies make product, marketing, or advertising decisions. This process usually includes presenting the “crowd” with a problem and then listening to and evaluating their solutions.
Dashboard
A display of key data and trends. Dashboards are usually configurable in some way to meet the needs of projects or analysts. Capabilities vary by vendor.
Data cleaning (or cleansing)
A quality control step undertaken to ensure that the data harvested for a listening project is relevant.
Data integration
The process of incorporating data from two or more sources for reporting and analysis purposes.
Data structure
Organizing listening data into meaningful units for analysis, and designing the relationships among them. Typically, data structures include entities, themes, subtopics, topics, and classification.
Delicious
A social bookmarking site owned by Yahoo! for storing, sharing, and discovering Web bookmarks.
Digg
A social news site that allows people to submit stories from anywhere on the Web. Digg users vote on stories, with the most popular making it to the front page. Digg provides tools for people to discuss topics.
Domain name
The name of an Internet site, such as thearf.org.
Engagement
Company interactions with customers and prospects in social media. Engagement can take many forms, including: answering questions through e-mail, Twitter, or support forums; participating in conversations; providing content; or furnishing customer support.
Enterprise
The full scope of an organization.
Enterprise vendor
A supplier offering solutions designed to be used throughout an organization.
Entity
Generally, a person, place, organization, brand, date, or other named thing that is extracted through text analysis. Entities are discrete.
Entity analysis
The process of analyzing entities, which can include counts, like frequencies, trends, co-occurrences with other terms of interest, or sentiment toward the entity.
Entity extraction
The process of identifying entities, usually through software-based rules, and pulling them out of content.
Entry
An individual post or article published on a blog.
Event blog
A blog specifically launched as a companion to an event.
A very popular social networking site, with more than 500 million active users, 70 percent of whom reside outside the United States.
Face-to-face
An offline meeting or encounter.
Fan page
A special type of Facebook page that may be either official—created by a brand or celebrity, for example—or unofficial—created by people for brands or celebrities. For the purposes of listening, fan pages are important because they are public and searchable, unlike groups, which are not.
Feed
Content that is “pushed” at regular intervals, or when updated. The most common type of feed is RSS (really simple syndication). People subscribe to feeds through feed readers.
Feed reader
A software program that enables users to subscribe to a feed, and automatically keeps track of updates. The reader provides functions that allow users to read individual items or manage numbers of items.
Filter
A tool that lets end users winnow results to manageable sizes by specifying the types of content (e.g., stories, comments, photos, etc.), categories of interest (e.g., lifestyle or entertainment), age of the content (minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc.), or people and brands.
Findability
The quality of content as locatable.
Flickr
An extremely popular photo-sharing site that allows users to describe their photographs with tags and content, which is searchable.
Forum
A discussion area where people can post and respond to messages.
Friend
(1. noun) A person with whom you agree to connect according to shared interests or relationships. Also called a contact. (2. verb) The act of adding a friend on a social network, such as “friend me on Facebook” or “add me as a contact on LinkedIn.”
Friend list
A user's list of friends or contacts on a particular social network. People can have many friend lists.
A very popular search engine. The company Google also provides valuable tools for analyzing search queries, such as Google Insights for Search and Google Trends.
Groundswell
A social trend whereby people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
Group
A collection of individuals who share common interests or values and form a community based on them. On social networks, groups usually have pages and require membership.
Hashtag
Short character-string tags, beginning with the number sign (#), used to identify Twitter posts so that they can be found easily by Twitter-capable search engines. For example, #ilfny09 was the hashtag used for the ARF Industry Leader Forum in November 2009.
Influencer
A person in a social network who is often recognized as an expert in one or more areas and capable of influencing others.
Instant messaging (IM)
The capability to chat online in real time with one or more persons using specialized software.
Lifestreaming
The process of aggregating a person's many digital communications in one place, such as photos, videos, Twitter posts, blog posts, and bookmarks.
Listening
The study of naturally occurring conversations, behaviors, and signals, which may or may not be guided, for the purpose of bringing the voice of consumers into a brand.
Listening level
Used to indicate a company's degree of sophistication in terms of social media listening. In this book, three levels have been identified: fundamental, companies that just launched a social media listening program and rely on free or low-cost tools; intermediate, companies that have some experience in social media listening and some internal expertise, a collection of listening tools, and vendor relationships, and that combine listening with traditional research; advanced, companies that have made a corporatewide commitment to social media listening, and make substantial investments in people, processes, and technologies.
Lurker
A person who visits a site to look around and read, but seldom contributes.
Media monitoring
The practice of regularly scanning traditional media and online sources for items of interest, such as brand mentions and people.
Media universe
The collection of media sources selected for a listening project.
Meme
An idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture, and may mutate or evolve. A meme can be thought of as similar to a gene, but for a unit of culture.
Message board
An online discussion site where people discuss particular issues and post messages and replies.
Metadata
Information about information. In social media, metadata may include descriptors for posts, photos, video, or audio. Metadata makes nontextual information searchable.
Microblogging
Sending short messages to subscribers of a service. The best-known microblogging service is Twitter, where entries are limited to 140 characters. People often link to Web content in their posts by using URL shorteners, such as bit.ly or tinyurl.
Multimedia
Typically, video, audio, pictures, and graphic files that are uploaded to Web sites or services like YouTube and Flickr. Content owners usually tag their content so that it can be searched and retrieved.
MySpace
A popular online social network, originally populated by artists and bands.
Netnography
The use of online data to conduct cultural research. An electronic version of ethnography.
Network
On Facebook, used to describe a larger social grouping of which people can be part, such as a city, large company, or college.
News reader
A program that manages RSS subscriptions and provides features for reading and managing them. Also called a feed reader, RSS reader, or news aggregator.
Offline
Disconnected from the Internet or computer network.
Online
Connected to the Internet or other computer network.
Online community
Typically, a group of people sharing common interests who interact on the Web using social media tools.
Page
A Web page.
People's Network
A marketing system using a series of interactions between people and companies to generate and spread word of mouth. The People's Network is global, and increasingly mobile. (Term coined by Rishad Tobaccowala.)
Persistent search
A search run repeatedly on a schedule, usually for the purpose of collecting social media conversations on a regular basis.
Phrase
Usually, two or more search terms used in a query.
Podcast
A downloadable audio file meant to be listened to through a media player.
Privacy settings
Features provided by blogs, social networks, and other sites that allow users to limit access to their friends or content. Privacy settings can restrict the information that can be harvested for listening.
Private online community
A group made up of invitation-only members. For listening purposes, such communities are brand backyard sources, run by brands or by third parties for the benefit of brands.
Profile
Description of a person's interests, demographics, and other attributes. The display of profile information is often controlled by privacy settings.
Property
A generic term for a page, application, widget, or Web site.
Real-time search
An aggregation of social media content, such as blog postings, comments, tags, bookmarks, tweets, and status updates that are presented nearly as they occur.
Real-time search engine
A specialized tool that allows for the search and display of real-time search results. These engines may include social media details, like retweets, and capabilities for passing along content or links.
Registration
A process for creating a username, password, and, often, other details for opening an account on a Web site, social network, or other service. Registered users are given access to areas or features that are otherwise restricted.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
A standard method for delivering Web content, such as stories, blog posts, images, and video. Newsreaders enable users to subscribe to feeds and stay current on publications or producers without having to visit numbers of sites.
Self-service
Software and services designed for end users to use themselves.
Sentiment analysis
An evaluation that determines the tone of a blog post, article, or conversation, typically expressed as positive, negative, or neutral. Sentiment assessment can be made by humans or machines.
Share
The act of distributing an individual piece of content with friends. Some search engines now include sharing in their results to show the virality of content, or to trace the path content moves through.
Social action
An interaction on a social network that triggers a story to be posted to a user's profile.
Social bookmarking
A method for enabling people to locate, store, organize, share, and manage Web page bookmarks without being connected to a particular machine.
Social graph
The network of online relationships in which people are a part. Some form of permission, like friending, is required to be included in a social graph.
Social media
Generally, online technologies that allow people to publish, converse, and share content online.
Social media listening
The act of gathering data (relevant to a company, brand/product, or service) from social media outlets for research purposes.
Social media listening metrics
Measures derived to analyze social media data. Social media listening metrics include such statistics as brand mentions, sentiment, topics, and themes.
Social monitoring
The process of tracking online brand mentions on a daily basis for PR, brand protection, operations, and customer service outreach and engagement (MotiveQuest definition).
Social network
An online environment that allows individuals to interact with one another using a set of tools and features that typically include profiles, friending, communications, adding media, and groups.
Social networking
Socializing in an online community.
Social news (social sites)
Sites, like Digg, that encourage people to submit and vote on news stories or other links. The most popular are featured on the site's home page.
Social research
The process of analyzing naturally occurring online categories of conversation to better understand why people do what they do; the role brands play in their lives; and the product, branding, and communications implications for brand owners (MotiveQuest definition).
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software solutions hosted by vendors and licensed for use; akin to a rental model. SaaS is an alternative to the traditional vendor software model that requires purchasing a license, and installing, configuring and maintaining it on company-controlled servers and networking infrastructure…
Standing search
See persistent search.
Status, or status update
Short descriptive comments, typically 140 characters or fewer, that describe what a person is doing at the moment. Popularized by Twitter, many social networks now offer their own status update capabilities.
Subscribing
The process of adding RSS feeds to an aggregator or newsreader. For many listening projects, subscribing is an important way to harvest content.
Subtopic
In text analysis, the grouping level under topic. A single topic usually has two or more subtopics. See data structure.
Tag
A keyword added to content to help users locate it through a search feature, classification scheme, or search engine.
Tag cloud
A visual representation of the popularity of the tags or descriptions used on a site. Tags are sized according to popularity.
Tagging
Writing and adding tags to content.
Technorati authority
A rating computed by Technorati that establishes the authority of a blog in the blogosphere by analyzing links. Technorati has recently added an authority rating for voices on Twitter, called Twitterati.
Term
A search term or phrase.
Text analytics
The process of analyzing unstructured text, extracting relevant information, and then transforming that information into structured information that can be leveraged for such purposes as creating topics and subtopics, or assigning sentiment.
Theme
In text analysis, an element of conversation. Themes are grouped into topics and subtopics. See data structure.
Threads
Strands of conversation that describe a discussion.
Topic
In text analysis, the category of interest. Topics are composed of subtopics. See data structure.
Trackback
A method, popular with bloggers, that lets one site “know” that a second site has made a reference to it. The collection of posts, comments, and trackbacks facilitates conversations.
Troll
A person posting controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, and whose main intent is to disrupt on-topic discussions.
Tweet
An entry on Twitter.
A popular social network where posts are limited to short messages, of 140 character messages or fewer. Considered a real-time social network, Twitter has spawned innovative ways for individuals and businesses to use the service.
Twitterverse
The universe of people using Twitter, and their conversations.
Update
A message sent to people who subscribe to being notified when new content is added to an online page.
Upload
Transfer of a file or other content from one device, such as a computer or video camera, to an online site.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator, the technical term for a Web address, such as www.thearf.org.
User-generated content (UGC)
All forms of user-created online materials, including blog posts, reviews, podcasts, videos, tweets, comments, audio, ratings, and such. Also called consumer-generated content.
Videoblog (or vlog)
A blog that contains video entries.
Wall
A type of discussion board centered on an individual, and part of his/her profile. Wall postings are presented in reverse chronological order and are made by friends. Privacy settings govern wall behavior.
Web 2.0
A Web constructed in part from user-generated content and conversations. Also known as the social Web.
Web analytics
The measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purpose of understanding Web site traffic and visitor behavior.
Wiki
Technology that allows group authoring and editing by providing a trail of creations and edits that can be approved or undone. Wikipedia is the most familiar example.
Word of Mouth (WOM)
Offline or online conversations that people engage in. For the purposes of listening, word of mouth related to brands is usually of greatest interest.
Workflow
The logical steps and pathways of work, from starting a task or process to completing it.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
A scripting language used to describe information so that it can be easily exchanged between different computer systems.
YouTube
Video-sharing Web site, owned by Google, where people and brands can upload, view, share, and comment on clips.