App: Short for 'application' – refers to a functionality that allows a service to be accessed from a hand-held device – an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or other smart-phone.
Avatar: An image or username that represents an individual online within forums and social networks.
Bit.ly: A free URL shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Most used to condense long URLs to make them easier to share on social networks such as Twitter.
Blip.TV: An online video sharing site providing a free and paid platform for individuals and companies hosting an online video show.
Blog: Derived from "web log", a blog is an account posted by an individuaol or organisation with regular entries of commentary, imagery, graphics or video. Also used as a verb – 'to blog' means 'to add content to or maintain a blog'.
Blogger: A free blogging platform owned by Google enabling individuals and companies to host and publish a blog. The blog is named via a sub-domain (such as myblogname.blogspot.com).
Chat: Any kind of communication taking place over the Internet, usually one-to-one communication through an ‘instant messaging’ text-based chat application such as Skype or MSN.
Comment: A response usually provided as a reaction to a blog post or message on a social network.
Compete: A web-based application offering users and businesses web analytics and enabling people to compare and contrast the statistics of different websites over time.
Delicious: A free online bookmarking service allowing users to save website addresses publicly and privately online and shared with friends.
Digg: A social news website allowing members to submit and vote for articles – those with the most votes appear on the homepage of the site, reaching the widest audience.
Eventbrite: An online event management and ticketing service provider. Eventbrite is free if an event is free, while if tickets are sold, Eventbrite collects a fee per ticket.
Facebook: The largest social networking site in the world - connecting people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Facebook currently has more than 500 million users.
Flash mob: A large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an act/song, then quickly disperse. While seemingly very impromptu, flash mobs take a lot of organisation and planning. Generally organised via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails and filmed to release online with an intention to spread across the internet.
Flickr: A social network based around online picture sharing, allowing users to store photos online and share them with others.
Forums: An online discussion site, allowing users to share advice and opinions with like-minded individuals.
Foursquare: A social network where friends can share their locations and connect with others in close physical proximity to each other. The service awards digital badges to players who “check in” to different locations.
Google+: A social network created to connect friends and others with interests and places in common, allowing multiple users to connect and communicate by video calls, create select groups to communicate with targeted contacts, and streamline news feeds to limit content.
Hashtag: A tag used onTwitter as a way to categorise a message. A word or phrase preceded by a “#” enables users to search specifically for a feed of dialogue related to that tag. Hashtags are commonly used to show that a tweet (a Twitter message) is related to an event or conference.
hi5: A social network aimed at the youth market. It is a social entertainment destination, focused on providing an entertainment-driven social experience online to users around the world.
HootSuite: A web-based Twitter client, enabling the user to manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and view metrics.
Instant messaging: Also known as IM, this is a form of real-time direct text-based communication between two or more people. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice and video calling.
Like: An action that can be made by a Facebook user – rather than commenting on another user’s update or message, a Facebook user can click the "Like" icon to share the message.
Link building: An aspect of search engine optimisation where website owners develop strategies to generate links to their site from other websites with the aim of improving their search engine ranking. Blogging is a popular method of link building.
LinkedIn: A business-oriented social networking site dedicated to professional networking, allowing business people to share their CVs and expertise online, while giving them access to contacts across the world. LinkedIn currently has more than 70 million users across 200 countries.
MySpace: Became the most popular social networking website in the United States in June 2006, but was overtaken by Facebook two years later. News Corp paid $580m (£361m) for MySpace in 2005, but users and advertisers left the site for rival social sites like Facebook and Twitter, and in June 2011, NewsCorp sold MySpace to Specific Media for $35m.
News Reader: A news site that enables users to aggregate articles from multiple websites into one place using RSS feeds, making news consumption more efficient.
Permalink: An address or URL of a particular post within a blog or website.
Podcast: A series of digital audio or video files, often downloaded through an RSS feed.
Posterous: A blogging and content syndication platform allowing users to post content from any computer or mobile device via e-mail.
Qik: An online video streaming service that lets users to stream video live from their mobile phones to the web.Quora: A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organised by its user base. Quora aims to become the best place for people to visit for reference to a specific question.
Qype: An online community that provides users with a platform to review, rate and discuss local businesses. With 22 million visits per month, the site aims to help users worldwide to make decisions about services, hotels, restaurants, shops and bars, both at home and on the go, using the Qype smartphone app, while allowing businesses to manage their online reputation and interact with their users. The service awards digital badges to players who “check in” to different locations and according to the number of type of reviews they post.
Real-time search: A method of indexing content being published online into search engine results with no delay.
Seesmic: A desktop and mobile social application which allows users to share content on social networks such as Twitter from the same application.
Skype: A free program allowing text, audio and video chats between users. Users can also buy plans to receive phone calls through their Skype account.
Social media: Media designed to be discussed through social interaction, created using highly accessible publishing methods.
Social media monitoring: A process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to an organisation that appear within social media
Technorati: A blog search engine that also provides categories and authority rankings for blogs.
TweetDeck: An application connects users with contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more, allowing them to schedule tweets in advance and manage multiple accounts.
Tweetup: An organized or impromptu gathering of people that use Twitter.
Twitter: A platform that allows users to share 140-character-long messages publicly. User can “follow” each other as a way of subscribing to each others' messages, and send public and private messages to one another, interacting with others and responding to ongoing discussions.
Twitter Search: A search engine operated by Twitter to search for Twitter messages and users in real-time.
Tumblr: Allows users to share content in blog form. Users can post text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from a desktop or on the go.
URL: More commonly known as the "address" of a web page.
Viral marketing: Marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to try to increase brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives.
Web analytics: The measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data to help understand and optimise web usage.
Webinar: Live meetings, training, or presentations carried out via the Internet.
Wiki: A website that allows the easy creation and editing of interlinked web pages via a web browser, enabling collaboration between users.
Wikipedia: A free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project. Its15 million articles are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.
WordPress: A content management system with blog publishing tools enabling users to host and publish blogs.
Yelp: A social network and local search website that provides users with a platform to review, rate and discuss local businesses.
YouTube: A video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos, YouTube is operated as a subsidiary of Google and is the largest video sharing site in the world.