a profile without awkwardness: a social media reference

Pro100Status

An independent reference about social media profiles. Not affiliated with the former website on this domain or with any social network; we do not publish collections of other people's statuses or quotes.

Glossary

Glossary of terms

Social media is full of words everyone uses but few can explain. We have gathered the most useful terms and described them without jargon, so you know what is meant in settings, help pages and conversations with teenagers.

Once you know what "visibility" and "tag" mean, the settings stop feeling like a maze.

— Editor's note

How this section works: terms are explained in plain words and in the sense they are most often used on social media. The same thing may be called differently in different apps.

Profile

Profile
Your personal page on a social network: name, photo, information about yourself and posts.
Profile picture
The main photo or image of your profile, shown next to each of your messages.
Status
A short line under your name where people write about their mood, what they are doing or what matters right now.
Bio
A field with a short description of a person: what they do, what they like, how to get in touch.
Feed
The stream of posts from friends and accounts you follow that you see on the app's main screen.
Post
Any publication on a page: text, photo, video or a share of someone else's material.
Follower
A person who sees your public posts in their feed without necessarily being your friend.

Privacy

Visibility
A setting that determines who can see your page or an individual post.
Private profile
A page whose content is visible only to people you have approved.
Tag
A link to your profile on someone else's photo or in someone else's post.
Location tag
An indication of the place where a photo was taken or a post was written.
Digital footprint
Everything that can be found about a person online: their posts, comments, photos and mentions by other people.
Two-factor authentication
A second step to confirm a login, such as a code sent to your phone, in addition to your password.

Communication

DMs
Short for direct messages: private messages seen only by the people in the conversation.
Group chat
A conversation between many people at once: a class, a building's residents, a work team.
Thread
A chain of replies under a single message or comment.
Moderation
Reviewing and removing messages that break the rules of a community or page.
Blocking
Stopping a particular person from messaging you and seeing your page.
Fake
A counterfeit page created in someone else's name or with someone else's photos.
  • Settings

    Settings found in almost every social network: profile visibility, close friends list, photo tags, login history, two-step login and archive.

  • Security

    The risks of a public profile: location tags, photos of documents, quizzes with personal questions, reused passwords, suspicious links.

  • Guides

    Step-by-step guides: how to write a status, choose a photo, set visibility, clean up old posts and agree on family rules. The article catalogue is here too.

  • Questions

    Answers about this reference, about your status and profile, and about children and family rules on social media.

  • Comparisons

    Public or private profile, plus which topics suit a status and what risk each of them carries.

Sources

  • Social networks' privacy help pages
  • Federal Law No. 152-FZ on Personal Data (Russia)

Legal information is summarised in general terms from the official texts of the laws as of the preparation date. Social network settings and laws change over time, so check the help pages of the services themselves and the current versions of the laws.