Social Media Jargon Buster

Meme

An online 'chain letter'. Sort of.

Mashup

Lock techies in a room with web tools, feed them Smarties, then come back a day later and, hey presto, they'll have knocked the tools together to create a hybrid, or 'mashup'.

Message boards

Online cork boards.

Metadata

The content descriptions, used by search engines, to reference websites. Rubbish meta-tags are the online equivalent of donning a balaclava, sombrero, dark shades and changing your name to Ian Cognito.

MicroBlogging

Blogs consisting of brief text updates. These messages can be submitted and received by a variety of means and devices, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, mobile device, MP3 or the web. Twittering.

Micro Payments

Small value one-off payments to buy, usually, virtual goods. It's big business for the owners of the best and most attractive goods ($m's per year) and the purchaser barely feels the pain.

Microsite

A mini, self-contained website.

Mobcast

Audio delivered directly to multiple mobile phones.

Mobile Search

Is it a) When you lose your mobile, you've looked everywhere and you resort to calling it to try to find out where it is, or b) An internet search, but done on your mobile. Answer: Both.

Moblogs

A blog published directly to the web from a phone or other mobile device. Not to be confused with Joe Blogs, the world-famous Yomego blog. Most moblogs contain photos that have been taken using a camera phone.

MSM

Main-stream media eg TV, radio, smoke signals. Old skool. You know the score.