SOCIAL MEDIA Vocabulary in English: 30 words to learn

Hi again, welcome to engVid.com.

I'm Adam.

In today's video, I want to talk to you about social media.

Now, all of you are, I'm sure, are aware of social media.

There're the big companies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

Social media has basically taken over almost everyday life for a lot people, so today I

want to give you some vocabulary that you might need in order to be able to talk about

social media or understand people who are speaking about social media.

So, the first things I want to look at are - I want to look at a couple of pronunciation

issues, and I want to look at people, people you need to know who are on social media and

who affect everyday social media use.

So, the first thing I want to talk about is Twitter and tweeter, okay?

Twitter is a big company that you can send, you can post short messages and photos and

videos, etc.

And when you send out anything on Twitter, that's the company name, so Twitter is the

company, and a tweet is the message or the picture or video that you send out.

And a person who uses Twitter is called a tweeter, okay?

Someone who tweets.

So, it - ee.

A very slight difference, but it's important to understand.

If someone is talking about a tweeter they're talking about a person.

Anyone who makes videos on YouTube is a youtuber.

Now, generally speaking, when we talk about youtubers, we're talking about someone with

a following, someone who has a lot of subscribers, or a lot of followers, a lot of people watching

their videos.

Right now, there are about - there's millions of people making YouTube videos, you can't

call all of them youtubers.

The ones who are a bit more well known are youtubers.

So, I'm a youtuber, let's put it this way.

And all the other EngVid teachers are youtubers.

Now, someone on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or any social media platform, and it's very

important to know this - all these social media sites are platforms where people can

engage each other.

So, a person on a social media platform who is very, very popular and many people following

and many subscribers, we call this person an influencer, okay?

Some people say "YouTube star", star, okay, so maybe very popular, but the more important

word is influencer, because this person has the power to influence a lot of people.

So, advertisers and, like, a lot of big companies, they try to get in touch with these influencers

to help them promote a product or sell a product or an event or information, etc.

So, influencer.

So next, we have trolls and haters, okay.

Very similar but subtle difference between the two.

A hater is just like the word says, a person who hates.

So, there are people who go online and they look through social media sites and look at

posts and pictures and whatever, and they just put something negative.

They put some sort of bad comment - "I hate you.", "You look ugly.", "You're stupid.",

"You're this and that".

These people have absolutely nothing else to do, okay?

They're sitting at home, they're bored and - "What should I do?

Ah okay, let me write some bad things to this person".

Why?

Because it's anonymous.

What does anonymous mean?

It means nobody knows the identity of this person.

So, a hater is basically somebody with nothing to do, who is bored, gets online, and writes

bad things.

The best thing to do with haters is ignore them.

If you're putting things on the internet, if you're posting things on your Facebook

page, on your Instagram page, on your Twitter page, whatever, and somebody comes and says

something negative, let it go.

Just move on.

It doesn't matter.

Don't worry about what this person says.

Even this person doesn't care about what he or she is saying.

But then you have a troll.

Now, a troll is generally similar to a hater, will usually come and write something negative,

the difference is that the hater, once he or she has written something, they just forget

about it.

A troll is trying to get a reaction, which - this makes a troll a lot more dangerous,

okay?

A troll will come and say something that he or she knows will annoy you or irritate you

or make you angry or make you sad, but he or she is hoping that you write something

back, because then they can write something bad again, and they want this exchange.

Again, the best thing to do: ignore the trolls.

And you'll hear if you listen to the news or you read newspapers, you hear about "trolling",

this is the action of what a troll does, you'll hear about people trolling each other, famous

people trolling each other.

They're acting like little children.

Ignore them, ignore the trolls on your site, move on.

Both of these people are considered cyberbullies.

Cyberbullying is a very, very serious social phenomenon.

Very dangerous; it's making a lot of people angry, it's increasing the suicide rate in

many cities and many countries.

It's very dangerous but also very difficult to fight because of the anonymity, because

these people are anonymous, so in many cases you don't know who is doing it.

You have a lot of, especially teenagers, who are doing bad things to themselves because

of cyberbullying.

If you see it, do something.

Act against it, write against it, try to stop it, but ignore it.

That's the main thing if it happens to you, ignore it, move on.

Now, again, if you're on social media and you have a lot of people who come and visit

your page or your site or whatever, these are called followers.

They're essentially your fans.

And when we talk about all of your fans or all of a person's fans, that is called the

fanbase.

These are all the people who are following you, who are fans of your content, okay?

And that's what social media is all about, it's about content.

It's about articles, it's about vlogs and blogs, etc., about things that people put

online to share with other people.

I'll talk more about that as well.

Now, a very cool part of social media is something called a flash mob.

It used to be very, very popular a few years ago but it still happens every now and again.

A flash mob happens when somebody puts on their social media feed, their social media

page, that they want people to come to a specific location at a specific time and wait for a

signal.

And when that signal happens, everybody who got this message will get together and start

doing a dance, okay.

They've practiced this, it was all shared through social media, they know the song,

they know the steps, they know where everybody should be, and these are all strangers who

got together to have fun and it's actually a very interesting and very cool sight, okay.

So - there's good and bad to the social media thing, but we'll get more about that.

Now, you can often hear about social media campaigns.

Now, what is a campaign?

A campaign is an effort to do something, to achieve something.

So, you'll have a lot of campaigns like educational campaigns, ad campaigns, where they're pushing

a certain piece of information to get people to buy something, to act on something, to

go somewhere, take some action, etc.

But a very interesting and becoming more and more popular campaign is called crowdfunding.

So, there's a site or there're applications called Kickstarter or GoFundMe, where people

have a very good idea and they need money to make this idea come alive, so they create

a crowdfunding page, they create a crowdfunding campaign, and people from all over the world

send them a little bit of money, and they collect all this money, sometimes it can be

very huge quantities, and they take this money and they can pursue their product.

Now, some people start companies, some people invent a new machine, new technology, etc.,

so it's a very positive use of social media.

However, there are also a lot of scams.

A scam is like a trick to try to get something from you, so a lot of people will get on these

sites and say, oh, you know, "My wife, she's pregnant, but she has cancer and I need a

surgery for her but I don't have money, will people please help me?"

And people are nice, they're generous and friendly, they're helpful, they send money

to this person, but this person is not married, is young, has nothing going on but, you know,

just taking the money and going on vacation.

So, you have to be very careful about the places you send your money to.

Be very, very careful where you're sending your money.

Now, crowdsourcing is very similar to funding, but it has nothing to do with money.

Let's say I want to start a new website and I have a very, very good idea for a service

to provide people.

The problem is that I have all the content, but I don't actually know how to build a site.

I don't know how to make functions on the site.

So, I can go to crowdsourcing sites, especially social media sites, and I can ask people to

help write the code or look for people to do the coding to help me build this site and

create my vision of the website.

So, crowdsourcing is getting people to help you with actual work, with tasks, with their

knowledge, with their skills, which is actually a very interesting thing.

A very good thing.

And now there's also something called Creative Commons.

So, what social media has done is it connected the world.

It made everybody be able to reach basically everybody and work together.

So, Creative Commons, a lot of people are sharing photos and videos and articles for

free, and they say you can use this information, you don't have to pay me anything, there's

no license, if you want to use this picture in your website, go ahead, it's free.

So, you get a Creative Commons license.

I'm going to go to black because I lost my red [marker].

So, you get a Creative (Commons license.

You can go to some website where they have some kind of really beautiful pictures and,

of course, there are websites where you have to buy the picture and they're a little bit

expensive.

There are Creative Commons sites where you can take the picture and use it and you have

a Creative Commons license, it means it's not copyrighted.

It's free for everybody to use and share, so it's a very nice thing.

Now, very common, very popular thing to do on social media is a blog, which is a web

log, and that's basically people - you know, it started off as people just writing their

ideas and thoughts and whatever.

It was like a journal and they shared it on the world wide web.

Now, more common is vlog - video log, which is essentially YouTube and other streaming

services where people can share videos about anything and everything.

Now, clickbait.

Very interesting little situation here.

Click, you know, on the mouse, you click.

Bait, this word, bait, if any of you have ever gone fishing, okay, you have your rod

and you have your line and at the end of your line you have your hook.

If you throw this into the water, the fish won't come.

They won't care, you know, it's just a piece of metal.

But if you put a worm on the hook, or a piece of bread, or another little fish, then other

bigger fish will come and bite it.

So, that's the bait.

The stuff you put on the hook to attract the fish is called the bait.

So, clickbait is headlines, very powerful headlines or pictures that really, all these

people want is for you to click on them.

The more you click, the more money they get.

The more visitors to their site they get, the more advertising money they get, so be

careful about clickbait.

It's very, very tempting.

Now, I personally have clicked many things that were just clickbait because you can't

help it, they're so attractive, you go to them, you click, and then ah, clickbait!

And then you've wasted your time.

Feed.

Everything you put on your social media site or social media platform is called a feed

or post.

On Twitter you put a post, on Facebook you put a feed, and it goes up and down, and up

and down, and it keeps moving.

So, your feed is basically the collection of posts, and they keep moving up and down.

The more posts people put on, the more crowded the feed gets until nothing really matters

anymore.

And then, of course, unless something goes viral, alright.

If it goes viral, it spreads very quickly to a lot of people and it becomes very popular

until people forget about it and something else becomes viral.

And then you have something that's trending.

Now, something that goes viral is one thing, spreads very quickly.

Something that's trending is more of like a topic and more and more people start talking

about it.

So, it's not one thing, it's one category, and more people start adding things to it

to get the conversation going.

Trends last longer than viral posts or things.

Livestreaming is basically you're taking a video and instead of recording it and then

posting it later, you're doing it live.

So, whatever the person is doing on the camera, other people can see at the exact same time,

and then you can even communicate with people who are livestreaming.

This is becoming more and more popular.

And that's why we have something, it's more and more streaming media.

More and more live video broadcasting, okay?

Now, something that happens on a mass scale, this is a very important phrase.

Mass means a lot or big.

Scale means size, so a big size.

So, anything that happens on a mass scale means it affects a lot of people; travels

to a lot of places.

It's a very, very big audience, I guess you could call it.

An app is short for application, so anything you don't do on your desktop computer, you

do it on your mobile computer, it is specifically set just for that platform.

For example, Twitter, you can do on your desktop computer.

If you want to do it on your phone, you download the Twitter application, and that application

is only for Twitter and it doesn't interact with other things.

Hashtag.

Hashtags used to be very popular, they're still popular, but a hashtag basically looks

like this: # and then whatever words come after it.

A hashtag just connects this word to other posts that have the same hashtag.

So, if you put something with a hashtag, it will connect with all the other posts with

the same hashtag so it's easier to find information about a particular thing.

A meme - the pronunciation meme, not meh meh or mi mi or whatever, meme.

A meme is basically a picture or an expression or a video, a short video, that is taken out

of its context, out of its original context and lots of different things are added to

it and it gets sent back out onto the internet.

So, for example, somebody posts a picture of a smiling baby.

And then somebody else takes that picture of the smiling baby and puts that smiling

baby surrounded by lions and then they say, "Who's happier?", right?

And then someone takes the baby and puts it in a different situation; someone takes the

baby like it's speaking something.

They take one picture or one thing and put it in many different contexts because they

think it's funny.

Okay, so lastly, we have something called phishing.

So, like I mentioned before, it's similar to clickbait but it's a lot more dangerous

and a lot more negative.

So, first of all, notice that I have phishing with a "ph", so "ph" can sound like "f", so

it's phishing with a "ph" not fishing with an "f" like the fish, okay.

So, what is phishing?

One of the problems with social media is that people can interact with people directly and

they can sort of establish relationships.

So, what people do with phishing is they try to connect with people who are -- maybe they

need a friend, maybe they're lonely, they try to become friends with them.

They try to attract them and gain their trust and then they will run a scam on them.

They will try to steal something from them.

Steal their identity, steal money, steal anything they can, and that's the whole purpose of

phishing.

So, if you meet strangers online, especially on social media, always have a little bit

of questioning.

Like, don't 100 percent trust any stranger, just like you wouldn't trust a stranger on

the street that you just meet for the first time, don't trust somebody you just meet on

the internet.

And again, some of these people will spend months or years trying to gain your trust

until they can finally work out their scam.

So, be careful.

Always use common sense on the internet.

So, again, as you see, the social media.

Good uses, bad uses, use your common sense to know which is which.

Enjoy the social media; be a little bit wary, be a little bit careful and always keep your

eyes open.

Be sure you know what you're doing, okay?

So, I hope this was a little bit helpful.

You're going to be on the computer, social media is getting bigger.

Know the words, know what's going on, take care of yourself.

If you have any questions about any of this, please go to www.engvid.com and ask me there.

There's also a quiz; you can practice this vocabulary and make sure you understand it.

If you like the video, give me a like.

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and come back for more helpful videos on English

and other things, okay?

See you again soon.

Bye.