Interactive versus Social: What’s the Difference?

A simple distinction between interactive and social was drawn by Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social: “Interactive websites connect customers with software applications: Social sites connect customers with each other.” As an example, compare social listings from CitySearch in the United States or India’s Burrp with the more socially connected Eventful. Although all have great listings, the latter offers significantly more opportunity for social interaction between visitors.

You can follow Gaurav on Twitter (@Gauravonomics) and read more from him at his blog: http://www.gauravonomics.com The move beyond consumption is an important realization in the development of your social business: Content consumption without a direct consumer/audience role in creation—think TV, radio, print—is an interactive but not necessarily social approach to building a successful business. In a content-driven interactive media site, the content is the draw and the consumption of it is the primary activity. In a social application, Interactive Versus Social: What’s the Difference?

A simple distinction between interactive and social was drawn by Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social: “Interactive websites connect customers with software applications: Social sites connect customers with each other.” As an example, compare social listings from CitySearch in the United States or India’s Burrp with the more socially connected Eventful.

Although all have great listings, the latter offers significantly more opportunity for social interaction between visitors. You can follow Gaurav on Twitter (@Gauravonomics) and read more from him at his blog: http://www.gauravonomics.com 17 ■ T he Social W eb and E ngagement the content still matters—no one wants to hang out in a vacuum—but the interactions and conversations that the content enables between members take center stage.

Curation Curation is the act of sorting and filtering, rating, reviewing, commenting on, tagging, or otherwise describing content. Curation makes content more useful to others. For example, when someone creates a book review, the hope is that the review will become the basis for a subsequent purchase decision.

Conclusion

However, the review itself is only as good as the person who wrote it, and only as useful as it is relevant to the person reading it. Reviews become truly valuable when they can be placed into the context, interests, and values of the person reading them.