My husband is a computer geek (a main-frame computer geek) and is comfortable working on PCs.  He isn’t as comfortable with social media but recognizes its value and the need to learn it.  When talking about social media communication he frequently uses the wrong term, I wouldn’t be surprised if he does it just to tease me.

I worked up a chart to help explain the different social media communication terms and what they are related to in a non-digital communication form.  Here is what I put together for him.  As I told him, there are more but this is to get him started.

• E-mail = mail only faster and cheaper
• Text = phone call only not as many words and no “call-flower” ear
• Post = a flyer you give to your friends who might give it to another friend
• Tweet = a notice you put in the newspaper for the subscribers to see
• Message = a telegram you send to a specific person using a particular program

After this exercise, it hit home how much our communication has changed.  In another generation, people won’t recognize a newspaper or telephone.  The telegram is almost gone now.  My generation is a gap generation, we know what all these things are, have used them, and now we use digital communication.  Times they are a-changing, and it’s all good.