"Social media is a web-based technology that transforms how people communicate by enhancing interactive conversations. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Social Media is a web-based product that is optimized solely by the use of its public. The only way social media can expand depends exclusively on the user and their wants."

http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/academics/communications/research/vol2no1/01Cabral.pdf