Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Social media use the "wisdom of crowds" to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies such as blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), and Flickr (photo sharing). (see WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media)

Some people consider today’s social media such as blogs and discussion fora, as the digital reflection of everyman’s day to day conversation, be it at the hairdresser, a birthday party, over a cup of coffee or at the bar. Assuming this is the case then knowing what people say and getting a grip on this, must be every politician’s and policy maker’s dream.

This is precisely what Buzztrend aims to do. Measuring what people say. Using the proven Attentio technology (used in commercial environments), Buzztrend continuously measures blogs and fora on politicians, political parties, policy makers and political topics.