I am a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Lecturer in the Department of Computing at Sheffield Hallam University. My research interests include the use of social media for learning, digital literacies and online presence. Currently a focus of my work is on the use of social media within higher education. I am a member of the Journal of Social Media for Learning editorial team.
The aim of this blog is to introduce you to what social media is. I hope it will give you an overview of some of the current popular social media tools that can be used for communication, collaboration, curating and creating using a variety of multimedia.
The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and JESS3 is an infographic that demonstrates just some of the wide variety of social media tools that are available.
We Are Social captures by country the most popular social networks. Whilst Facebook would seem to dominate most of the world, within countries like China and Russia this is not the case. However the use of social networks across the globe has become a mainstream activity. Alexa lists the top visited sites which can be filtered by country. Within the top 10, Facebook continues to hold a place.
Sue Beckingham
Social Media for Learning 
A lot of food for thought here.