Do we need to define social media?

We spent a lot of time in class yesterday trying to define exactly what social media means. I'm not convinced we need a better definition (besides media that is social) and think its the kind of thing that "we know it when we see it".

Rather than spend time defining, we should look the aspects that many successful media campaigns have in common:

• Authentic third-party conversation, which can be on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but can also occur through popular blogs. The blogs act as Gladwell's Mavens and Connectors for specialized topics
• Engagement in an activity which provides a benefit (typically entertainment or customized information) to the person interacting. Companies exist simply to set up generic engagement activities, like the countless "What _______ am I?" polls that end up in my Facebook news feed.
• A clear action that the person can take which draws more people to your content, such as Digging an article, sharing a funny video, or posting the latest song you downloaded from Free All Music.com into your Facebook news feed.