Social Icons – What The Heck Are Those Thingys?

I recently set up a new computer for my friend’s mom.  It was her first “in home” computer and her first time using the internet in her home.

Hard to imagine right?!

Oh she had used the internet before at a friend’s house and the library but she had never had a home computer and never really used the internet for any length of time.  To her this was a new frontier.  It was a thrill to watch her as she explored the web.  It was also a very rare opportunity to gain insight from this point of view.  There were so many things that I take for granted while surfing that seemed so foreign to her.  It became very apparent of how ‘trained’ I was by the internet and how I expected things to be in certain places on a page or within a site.  If they were not where I expected them to be I grew frustrated rather quickly as I was attempting to show my newbie where to look for information.  This was, to say the least,  a great learning experience.

As we went to one particular site my friend’s mom inquired about the Orange RSS feed button.  “What the heck are those thingys?”, she asked.

I began to explain what the symbols meant and how they were mostly universal across the web.  I further explained how she could set up a reader and centralize her information (I used a newspaper analogy to make it easier) to save her from going back and forth between favorite sites.  After I explained this to her she told me that I should write an article about the icons so that other new users would know what they were as well.  So as promised, here it is!

WHAT ARE THOSE LITTLE THINGYS ANYWAY?

Those bright shiny buttons you often see on web pages, more often blogs, are called Social Icons.  Website owners use them as a way for readers to connect to other accounts that the website owner may have.  You may also see icons that allow readers to subscribe to the sites content.  These are commonly referred to as RSS Feeds. Although there are various designs for these Icons, they generally have the same recognizable look based on the sites they represent.  Below I have outlined some of the most commonly used Icons and what they are for.

FEED ICON

This symbol represents a link to the RSS Feed for that site or blog.  It allows you to subscribe to the content on the site through a reader. You can read more about RSS FEEDS here. You can find a READER here.

TWITTER ICON

This is a link to a site called Twitter. Twitter is one of many Social Networking sites which are common and growing rapidly on the web today. Twitter itself is a micro blogging site that is used to update information about yourself or your company to others in your network of followers. You will also see many people use various types of little blue birds (Twitter’s well known symbol) to represent Twitter. You can learn more about TWITTER here.

FACEBOOK ICON

Facebook is another Social Networking site that is commonly used by websites and individuals. It is extremely interactive and one of the biggest. You can learn more about FACEBOOK here.

MYSPACE ICON

MySpace is yet another Social Networking site which is similar to Facebook but most commonly used by the teen age group. If you know a 12-17 year old I almost guarantee they are on MySpace. You can learn more about MYSPACE here.

YOUTUBE ICON

YouTube has become the single most popular Video Sharing sites on the planet! It allows users to upload and share their videos with the world. It also allows anyone to view some of the millions of videos available from the web. Learn more abut YOUTUBE here.

DELICIOUS ICON

Delicious is a Social Bookmarking site. It allows users to ‘bookmark’ pages they find while surfing the web and “tag” them according to topic. This allows the user access to all of their favorite websites in one centralized location. You can learn more about DELICIOUS and how it works here.

There are just a few of the more common Icons you will see but the complete list is huge and changing all the time. Sometimes you will see these at the top of webpages, othertimes they will be at the end of articles so that users can share the information on their social network sites.

So now you know.

Keep Learning!

Did You Know 4.0