I’m often asked to define what I mean by “social media”.

Here’s what I came up with in the heat of a live radio interview with Pooja on Westside Radio on Friday. (skip to minute 30:30)

Social Media is editorless content prioritised by popularity.

It is articles and programmes that have been published by individuals directly to friends and the rest of the world without going through an editor.

The filtering and prioritising role, traditionally done by an editor, is achieved by monitoring the popularity of the article. The more people that read it the article, comment on it, agree with it and pass it on - the higher that article appears in the list of social media items.

A great way to see this process in action is at Digg where you can see the headlines ordered in terms of popularity by all the members.