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Social media are talk technologies. They are the means of production in an age of communication. They aid in the production and exchange of knowledge and information and culture, based on human interests. They are media in which people see themselves represented. Their impact is as much psychological and social as it is technical. In recent years, social media have come off the page. Social tools have become more talkative, mobile, and real-time. They have taken a conversational turn. And as these social tools increasingly facilitate relationships and communication, their role in these deeply personal and social dynamics has become a matter for design. The need for a deeper understanding of the fit between tools and social interactions calls for a new design practice. This is social interaction design

The crux of using social media in any endeavor, as Gina Schreck has said, is, "Social media invites and allows interaction from others. How are you inviting that interaction?" The popularity of social media tools means that sooner, rather than later, those of us in the field will need to examine what this means for us. Among other things, as noted by Taleo's Tom Stone, use of social media tools is an excellent means of making learning more transparent. As he says, "It's captured, searchable, and has much greater reach beyond the two people talking in the hallway."

"What does it mean to socialize the enterprise? Often, the primary focus of this term is the outward-facing social media strategy of the company and/or the social collaboration infrastructure it uses. But in reality, these two aspects are just the tip of the iceberg. A socialized enterprise incorporates the entire stakeholder landscape and platforms for bridging these connections: the consumer-facing social media strategy of the company, collaboration within the organization and the way the company interacts with clients and, no less important, its external partners."

Do you find that your employer is resistant to incorporating social learning tools to enhance the business?  Maybe, we just need to communicate the value better. First of all, let's get on the same page with what 'social learning' even means. Wikipedia defines social learning as:  learning that takes place at a wider scale than individual or group learning, up to a societal scale, through social interaction between peers.

"Over the past few decades, Moore's Law, processor speed and hardware scalability have been the driving factors enabling IT innovation and improved systems performance. But the von Neumann architecture-which established the basic structure for the way components of a computing system interact-has remained largely unchanged since the 1940s. Furthermore, to derive value, people still have to engage with computing systems in the manner that the machines work, rather than computers adapting to interact with people the way they work."

Brand stories are no longer limited to blobs of text on "About Us" pages. Social media has given brands a platform to relay their story in multiple ways and to various audiences. At a recent South By Southwest Interactive Festival Panel, Becky Johns, CC Chapman, Charlie Wollborg and Karl Gude, spoke to educate the audience on how to build a visual storyboard that benefits their brands; in essence, how to not just tell a story, but how to tell a good story. Here are several tips to communicate your story and connect with your audience using photos, videos and design.

"Virtually everywhere one looks we are in the midst of a transition for how we organize and manage information, indeed even relationships. Social networks and online communities are changing how we live and interact. NoSQL and graph databases - married to their near cousin Big Data - are changing how we organize and store information and data. Semantic technologies, backed by their ontologies and RDF data model, are showing the way for how we can connect and interoperate disparate information in ways only dreamed about a decade ago. And all of this, of course, is being built upon the infrastructure of the Internet and the Web, a global, distributed network of devices and information that is undoubtedly one of the most important technological developments in human history. There is a shared structure across all of these developments - the graph. Graphs are proving to be the new universal paradigm for how we organize and manage information. Graphs have an inherently expandable nature, and one which can also capture any existing structure. So, as we see all of the networks, connections, relationships and links - both physical and informational - grow around us, it is useful to step back a bit and contemplate the universal graph structure at the core of these developments. Understanding that we now live in the Age of the Graph means we can begin studying and using the concept of the graph itself to better analyze and manage our interconnected world. Whether we are trying to understand the physical networks of supply chains and infrastructure or the information relationships within ontologies or knowledge graphs, the various concepts underlying graphs and graph theory, themselves expressed through a rich vocabulary of terms, provide the keys for unlocking still further treasures hidden in the structure of graphs."

"Welcome to the 21st century-where views on technology, work ethic and cultural diversity are strikingly different from generation to generation.  The complex dynamics of social interaction, standards for performance and long-understood patterns of behavior are under direct assault-if not washed away by the cross-generational tide. Each generation is leaving its own mark on its own terms, and disconnects between intention, action, and understanding can cause negative consequences"

Gamify Your Marketing Strategy and Reward Social Influencers" by Mara Lewis, Co-founder and CEO, Stopped.at Leveraging gamification principles as part of the user experience and value proposition magnifies the effects of recognition and subsequently, the engagement of all users, power or casual. These principles help to package and promote recognition across the site so users interact and respond to it more often and to a greater extent.

 It's always surprising just how polarizing the idea of gamification is. Some people love the concept of adding game-like elements to all different types of social and commercial interactions, while others hate it with a seething vehemence, either because they're "gamers" who hate seeing their favorite art form debased, or because they're anti-gamers, who don't [...]