Recently I’ve become increasingly aware of – and irritated by – the fact that there is so much emphasis placed on the “media” part of social media, or the “commerce” part of social commerce.

Google “what is social media?” and you’ll get a host of links explaining the various web and mobile based tools used for communication, collaboration, multimedia and entertainment. What you’ll see very little of is information that describes the way these tools are fundamentally enabling or altering the way we collaborate and co-create online. Rather than modifying the way we interact, in my view the best implementations of social media as a concept are those which allow us to behave and interact online the way we do in the real world.

In the past, the web as a complicated network of independent sites that served the lonely traveler. Today, it’s become a place for us to connect, find, share, collaborate and learn alongside and with our friends, family, colleagues or even strangers. More than ever before, the web is no longer lonely. Still, I think most miss the point… that it’s about people first, and technology second.

One guy who does get it is Michael Brito, social media strategist at Intel. Check out this clip:

Wonderful in its simplicity, this is social media at its best and embodies the core sentiment of social: it’s about psychology, sociology and human behavior. Oh… and there’s also some technology involved.

What do you think?