It’s not just you… There is a lot of haze surrounding certain terms in the new media realm, so never be shy to ask — “What the heck is a XYZ anyway”. Chances are there will be more than one person in the room grateful you did!
Some of these terms are considered outdated today, but you will occasionally hear them bandied about. We have collected these definitions from a variety of online sources that range from the encyclopedic (Wikipedia) to the specific (individual researchers).
Generic Terms
New Media — New media refers to non-analogue content platforms. Sometimes going so far as to extend to digital television, it is generally intended to encompass web and mobile applications. When we speak of “new media” strategies, we mean “strategies for extending your content to the web and mobile realms.”
Digital Extension — The use of new media to extend an audience’s experience with a film or television property into other platforms such as web and mobile.
TV 360 — A term popularized by NBC for multi-platform content based on a TV series.
Content Strategy — The art of developing content for new media platforms that will elicit the desired reaction and actions from an audience.
User Experience — Connected to content strategy, user experience refers to the ways in which content is presented, explored, and reacted to by audiences. The most impactful content can be destroyed by bad user experience design.
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Platform — This term has many definitions in the digital realm, but the one of most significance to producers seeking to develop a new media strategy is “a pre-existing construct for the dissemination of content and interactions.” The iPhone is a platform. Facebook can even be a platform in this context.
Format — Again, a term that has many different meanings. For our purposes, think of it as the particular incarnation of content on a platform. For example a game, or a magazine, or a drawing tool could be all be formats of content that you launch on the iPhone platform.
Social Media — Content and user experiences brokered mainly by the audience themselves via tools provided through social networks or other online and mobile platforms.
Web 1.0 — The internet as it existed prior to 2001. The “visual” web’s focus was more on presentation of information through digital channels.
Web 2.0 — The social web — Web 2.0 refers to the social aspects of the internet and the ability for users to easily create and share their own content.
Web 3.0 — The mobile web. Not a very popular term as of the time of print, Web 3.0 is beginning to be used to describe the reality of the internet as a portable and ubiquitous presence in people’s daily lives.
Media
Blogs — A type of website, usually maintained by an individual and often deeply personal, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Blogs can range from what are essentially public diaries to extremely rich sites that aggregate content on a particular topic of interest to people.
Mash-up — A new piece of content that is comprised of completed content from other sources. For example, users may create a mash-up by recutting the existing trailer of one film together with the trailer from another film to create a completely new experience from the one originally intended by the creators. Some of the most popular videos on YouTube have been mash-ups, and IP rights holders have begun intentionally releasing content as mash-up fodder to tap into the free publicity it can garner.
Mobisode — Short video series that can be watched on mobile phones.
Podcasts — The audio version of a blog, often syndicated. Unlike blogs, people are willing to pay for subscriptions to some podcasts that provide content of high value.
Social network — A social network is a site comprised of nodes (generally individuals or organizations) that are tied together by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, fandom, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.
Vlogs — The video equivalent of a podcast.
Webisode — Short video series that can be watched in web browsers. At the time of writing, the optimal length of such videos is felt to be between three and five minutes, a limit that forces creators to make careful narrative choices.