How To Understand Social Networking and Techie Terminology

We are curious about innovations and breakthroughs in social networking that seem to come up every week. But when we seek to satisfy our curiosity, we are faced with industry jargon that is beyond our comprehension. In many cases there are no definitions or explanations for the jargon and we simply move on with our busy lives.

Today, I accepted an assignment to discuss speculation about a much anticipated new business page feature that might be coming soon to the Google + social network.

In researching the issue, I was slapped with two terms: "brand pages" and "post click engagement tracking". I was going to get some pitiful pay, so of course I tracked those two terms down and added a couple of explanations that would make it easier to read my article.

For completion's sake, brand pages are for businesses that want to interact as if they are members of social networking communities. Those pages have to be different from a real person's profile because they allow social networkers to see adds, get coupons and deals, and get more information.

Post click engagement tracking is for advertisements that tell us to "like us at Facebook" for example. Businesses draw people to their Facebook page from ads that are outside of Facebook and they need to know how many people responded. Right now, no social network has that capability. The hope is that Google + will solve the problem.

But this article is about the terminology that stops most laypersons from reading any further when they have a genuine interest in reading social networking, web, and tech articles.

Two effective ways to find answers about technical jargon include having a collection of the best online glossaries and knowing how to do a persistent Google or other web search.

A persistent search means that the reader does not ever rely on one source for information about an important term that they will be using in the future. This term also means that the reader does not give up and will try several search terms and ways of getting results.

One website, HubSpot Blog, has a fairly comprehensive encyclopedia of web marketing and social networking terms. This site also has a large collection of articles on internet marketing. The page to look for is The Ultimate Glossary.

For everyone, Net Lingo has a comprehensive set of pages on social networking and internet terms. There is even a section for information that parents need to know. This is a great place to go when trying to make sense of articles that are primarily written for industry professionals or insiders.

For a deep dive with a snorkel and a mask, try Webopedia. This site has a comprehensive database.

Wikipedia is no slouch in the esoteric information category, either. Before we bash Wikipedia, know that this site, plus a couple of other sources like Hub Pages, will give a good understanding of a wide array of complicated web concepts and events.

For a basic Google or other web search:

Start at the site of the article that you are reading. If it is a quality online journal, the site will have a search window that will take the reader to other articles. Type in the confusing term or word to see if an older article will give up explanation or some good leads to the truth.

Try a web search with just the word or phrase. If nothing comes up, try the following phrases

What is (term)?

(term) definition

History of (term)

Also, Google Advanced Search is a must have. Experiment with different dates, different web domains, like .edu or .gov, and other parameters.

Finally, go to Google Trends and type in different versions of the word or phrase. Google Trends will show if the phrase or word has a significant web presence at all.

Finally, this may seem unbelievable, but some of the most rewarding search results come from clicking on "images" when search results come up. These days, a lot of blogs, websites and articles that include photos will lie behind the Google Image for the topic.

As a bonus, here is another goofy web concept: Modal boxes. Modal boxes are giving us the cool features that allow us to preview a Facebook friend's photo without having to load a new web page. The photo will "float" over the existing page and will go away when the cursor is moved away from it.

Many Google images are in "modal boxes" that float over a website or blog. You can click to get just the image or you can close the modal box and see what the website or blog has to say.

Using "images" as a back door allows us to see perfectly good web pages that we would never be able to find because they do not qualify to show up at the top of the web search or news results.

Everyone is welcome to use the comments to add other links and tips for giving us a heads up on tech, computer and Social networking Jargon!

Splog: A badly written blog that uses mostly plagiarized or borrowed content to get ad revenue.

Plonk: To filter out a person's unwanted messages from newsgroups.

Salmon Day: Spending the entire day on the web, swimming upstream.

Middle School Dance: When two pieces of equipment sit there, waiting for each other.

All your base are belong to us: Famous bad translation from the Sega Zero Wing game.

Cornea Gumbo: Overloaded web site that assaults the mind and eye

Zen Mail: Email with no text in the body of the message

Cluster Funk: When everything goes wrong with the system

Source: NetLingo "Top 50 Funniest Terms..."