Explain how companies and business professionals can use information and media sharing websites.

YouTube, Flickr, Yelp, and other user-generated content (UGC) sites, in which users rather than website owners contribute most or all of the content, have become serious business tools. On YouTube, for example, companies post everything from product demonstrations and TV commercials to company profiles and technical support explanations. The social aspects of these sites, including the ability to vote for, comment on, and share material, encourage enthusiasts to spread the word about the companies and products they endorse.
Media curation is when someone with expertise or interest in a particular field collects and republishes material on a particular topic. New curation tools, including Pinterest (http://pinterest.com) and Scoop.it (www.scoop.it/), make it easy to assemble attractive online magazines or portfolios on specific topics.
Community Q&A sites, on which visitors answer questions posted by other visitors, are a contemporary twist on the early ethos of computer networking, which was people helping each other. (Groups of like-minded people connected online long before the World Wide Web was even created.) Community Q&A sites include dedicated customer support communities such as those hosted on Get Satisfaction (http://getsatisfaction.com), public sites such as Quora (www.quora.com) and Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com), and member-only sites such as LinkedIn Answers (www.linkedin.com/answers). Responding to questions on Q&A sites can be a great way to build your personal brand, to demonstrate your company's commitment to customer service, and to counter misinformation about your company and its products.