Today, I’m talking to Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky Social, which is a decentralized competitor to Twitter, er, X. Bluesky actually started inside of what was then known as Twitter — it was a project from then-CEO Jack Dorsey, who spent his days wandering the earth and saying things like Twitter should be a protocol and not a company. Bluesky was supposed to be that protocol, but Jack spun it out of Twitter in 2021, just before Elon Musk bought the company and renamed it X.
Are social networks and social media the same thing?
Depends on the usage.
“Social Networks” can be a reference to the various social media services available online, but they can also be an reference to the collection of social connections one has offline.
Social media provides the tools and platforms for social networking to take place, but social networking is the actual practice of using those tools to connect with others.