what is social media?

What is social media? Tim O'reilly has some interesting thoughts on it, and other aspects on the latest and greatest technology; as does TechCrunch. That said, it's sometimes easy to lose the forest for the trees. Perhaps social media, at it's core does something simpler.

I was reviewing the google analytics of one of my clients and noticed inbound traffic from this band's blog. They had spoken to my client, in person and carried the conversation online, linking not just to pages in the website, but embedding a video jacobG.net had produced and posted. This is  all very standard fair, something that you've seen and perhaps even done. It all led me to the thought, perhaps what's makes social media special is, it makes it easy for other people to tell your stories.