ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the role of online social media in popular culture. It begins with a visual and explanatory high-level topology of online social media. Some of the most popular social networking sites are presented and generally described for the benefit of the reader including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Other branches of social media are also explored, such as content sharing sites, discussion forums, news and blog sites, online shopping and review platforms, and social media revolving around games and music. Finally, some platforms and social media phenomena such as internet memes are expressed as a hybridization of other social media categories, as they fulfill multiple usage functions of generalized social media topology groups simultaneously. While games and music are large industries with millions of users and wide acceptance in popular culture, more niche interests can have similar categorizations, each with their discussion forums, instructional videos, and inside jokes.
