The Stratton Craig social media jargon buster: Part Six (P to R)

by Stratton Craig

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Welcome back to our series on social media jargon – we’re getting very close to the final instalment now, but there are plenty more words and phrases yet to come! This post will cover P through to R.
Each of the previous posts in the series can be found by following the links below:
Part One (A-C)
Part Two (D-F)
Part Three (G-I)
Part Four (J-L)
Part Five (M-O)
Ping: Not to be confused with the new defunct social network on iTunes, a ‘ping’ is sent by a blog to the server to notify it that there’s been an update. This announcement of a new blog post can then be used to keep subscribers up-to-date, refresh RSS feeds and update aggregating sites.
Pingback: You might think it’s just a ‘ping’ in reverse, but a ‘pingback’ is a way for Web authors to be informed that their work’s been linked to. WordPress is just one of the blogging software systems to offer automatic pingbacks, and advanced content management systems support them with add-ons or extensions.
Podsafe: Audio that’s cleared for use in podcasts, whether that’s music, speech or a comedy sound effect. The issue of copyright online – and the recent effort to curb illegal downloads – has contributed to the rise of sources for content that’s legal to put into a podcast under ‘fair usage’ rules. Musician Moby released 76 podsafe tracks online for free back in 2008 for use under Creative Commons licences, and several artists have followed suit.
Pub-sub: A model for posting content, where users publish and readers subscribe. Essentially ‘supply and demand’ for digital platforms, pub-sub systems help bloggers and content providers to work out who their readers are and what they want.
Quantcast: A tool that provides web traffic and demographics stats to advertisers. It’s got built-in tagging, scores a website’s audience against every other user on the Internet worldwide, and – most importantly to some people – it’s completely free to use.
Readiness: A check for a company’s state of preparation for interacting with their audience. Even if you understand social media and feel confident with the technology, readiness is also about being prepared to actually interact with an audience. Brands with a thicker skin are generally more ‘ready’ for open conversations on social media, where both fans and detractors tend to be more vocal.
Remixing: A method of approaching existing content from a new angle, whether it’s your own or someone else’s. Sometimes, bloggers who remix are known as ‘content DJs’, not to be confused with the Content DJ social media software that does a very similar job.
Rich media: A synonym for ‘interactive media’ – content that moves, updates, or can be used in some way. YouTube videos are the most obvious example, shortly followed by animated gifs (the popular choice on Tumblr) and 360-degree views of products on online shops.
It won’t be long until we post our seventh blog in this series, which will cover S, T and U. There’s still time to influence the list of words we include by making your own suggestions – tweet them to @strattoncraig or use the contact us page.