Social Media

It's such a buzzword, but I'm really starting to wonder what does it mean?

It's been almost a month now since I started experiment/searching facebook, twitter, linkedin and even this blog site. Have I missed the point somewhere? I've had great conversations with myself (I enjoy my own company so it's ok), and have watched others having great conversations with themselves. Where does the word 'social' come into it all.

Why have we been exploring putting ourselves out there? Well marketing of course. But from what I've seen it's only people from marketing departments who Twitter and the amount of marketing that is coming into my twitter box is as overwhelming as the spam used to be in my email. Is this the new spam?

I've just got one simple question. What have I got wrong in all of this? I really don't want to give up as I can see the potential, but I'm really missing a piece in the puzzle.