Have you seen my dongle?

May 28 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

THE internet industry is one of the worst culprits when it comes to creating fancy words for new services, trends and websites.

And whilst terms such as wodget or shozzboggler might make perfect sense to people who use them every day (except they won’t, because I just made them up), they’re more apt to baffle the average business person.

With that in mind, here’s my plain English guide to five of the latest buzzwords and phrases being bandied about in technology circles.

SOCIAL MEDIA: A catch-all term used to describe websites that allow people to share stuff with other people. Exactly what they share varies a lot but it could be, for example, a review of a product or service, a funny video or a piece of news.

Popular examples include Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Sites including Flickr and YouTube also include social media functions.

Opinions on social media vary greatly. Some people think they’re going to completely revolutionise the way we live and how businesses market themselves. Others think it’s simply, “how the narcissistic keep in touch with the feckless,” as advertising boss Bob Hoffman says of Twitter. In truth, it’s probably somewhere in between.

MICRO-BLOGGING: Nobody has time to read anything these days. So it was from this idea that micro-blogging was born. They are shorter versions of blogs – an entry could consist of a single sentence, an image or a brief video clip.

TWEET AND TWITTERER: Twitter.com is the most popular micro-blogging service around. A tweet is a single message written and published on Twitter.

A twitterer, as you might have guessed, is a person who uses Twitter.

INTERNET MEME: A phrase used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the net.

The term is a reference to the concept of memes – coined by Richard Dawkins– although it refers to a much broader category of cultural information.

DONGLE: A small piece of hardware that connects to a computer’s USB port – in most cases it enables you to connect to a wireless network. So don’t panic if one of your colleagues threatens to get out their dongle during a meeting.

Remember, sometimes it’s appropriate to use jargon and buzzwords.

But at other times they can be confusing and off-putting to customers. Make sure you know which is which.

Lewis Harrison is communications manager at North East digital industry body Codeworks, www.codeworks.net