A review of features and functional building blocks of social media

In recent years, social network sites have been revolutionised, giving rise to the new term “social media”. Social media are tools that facilitate dialogue and interaction among users using the internet. However, social media users have not yet fully understood how social media can be used because they have limited knowledge on the functionalities of its features. In particular, research indicates that users often ignore social media structures and make little effort to understand the characteristics of social media. This problem raises fundamental and important questions, including: What should users know about the application of social media in the new era of computing technology? How should they combine the features of social media with their skills and preferences in order to use social media more effectively? Knowledge of the features and functionalities of social media may help to improve users´ skills and preferences in using social media applications. In this paper, we review the features and functional building blocks of social media sites with a particular focus on its use in the marketing, education and government domains. The findings from the review enable organisations to understand the social media ecology, their consumers and their consumers´ engagement needs.