Many within business circles, including franchising, initially believe social media is only LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and have a difficult time grasping the many other forms of social media that are alive and well. Certainly, very valuable resources when integrated with each other and then integrated with (and within) traditional marketing. The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia.com that includes links to various Wikipedia pages relating to the many different forms of social media.

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Examples of social media software applications include^{[citation needed]}:

Communication

• Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine, Xanga
• Micro-blogging / Presence applications: FMyLife, Jaiku, Plurk, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Yammer
• Social networking: Bebo, BigTent, Elgg, Facebook, Geni.com, Hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Skyrock, Qzone, Vkontakte, RenRen, Kaixin, ASmallWorld, studivz, Xing, RunAlong.se
• Social network aggregation: NutshellMail, FriendFeed,
• Events: Upcoming, Eventful, Meetup.com

Collaboration

• Wikis: Wikipedia, PBworks, Wetpaint
• Social bookmarking (or social tagging)^[3]: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike
• Social news: Digg, Mixx, Reddit, NowPublic

Multimedia

• Photography and art sharing: deviantArt, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Zooomr
• Video sharing: YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, sevenload
• Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam, Skype
• Music and audio sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter, ShareTheMusic
• Presentation sharing: slideshare, scribd

Reviews and opinions

• Product reviews: epinions.com, MouthShut.com
• Business reviews: Customer Lobby, yelp.com
• Community Q&A: Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, Askville, Google Answers

Entertainment

• Media and entertainment platforms: Cisco Eos
• Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online, Forterra
• Game sharing: Miniclip, Kongregate

Other

• Information aggregators: Netvibes, Twine (website)
• Social media monitoring:^{[clarification needed]} Sysomos Heartbeat
• Social media analytics: Sysomos MAP