Glossary
The vocabulary of social networks, messaging and online communities, defined in plain language. Each entry explains what the term means, why it matters, and how it shows up on Asyncbit — including when it doesn't.
A
- Algorithmic feed
- An algorithmic feed is a stream of posts ordered by software that predicts what each person is most likely to care about, rather than by the time the posts were published.
- Anonymous posting
- Anonymous posting means publishing content that other users see without a name, profile or any other identifying author attached.
C
- Chronological feed
- A chronological feed shows posts from the accounts you follow in the order they were published, newest first, without ranking or reordering them.
- Content moderation
- Content moderation is the process a platform or community uses to review posts, messages and accounts and act on those that break its rules — by removing content, warning people or restricting accounts.
D
- Digital badge
- A digital badge is a small visual marker on an online profile or credential that signals something a person has done, earned or been granted — reaching a milestone, completing a course or holding a role.
- Direct message
- A direct message (DM) is a private message sent from one user to another inside a social platform, visible only to the people in that conversation rather than posted publicly.
E
- Encryption at rest
- Encryption at rest means data is stored in encrypted form on disks or in databases, so anyone who obtains the stored files without the key sees scrambled data instead of readable content.
- End-to-end encryption
- End-to-end encryption (E2EE) secures messages so they are encrypted on the sender's device and can be decrypted only on the recipients' devices; the service carrying them cannot read the content.
- Engagement
- Engagement is the umbrella term for the ways people actively respond to content online — reacting, commenting, sharing, saving, voting or watching — as opposed to scrolling past.
- Ephemeral content
- Ephemeral content is posts or messages designed to disappear automatically after a set time — most often 24 hours — instead of staying on a profile indefinitely.
G
- Gamification
- Gamification is the use of game mechanics — points, levels, badges, streaks, leaderboards and challenges — in a product that is not a game, to encourage people to take part and come back.
- Group chat
- A group chat is a single conversation shared by three or more people, in which every message is delivered to all members at once.
H
- Hashtag
- A hashtag is a word or phrase prefixed with the # symbol, such as #photography, that becomes a clickable label grouping every post that uses it.
L
- Leaderboard
- A leaderboard is a ranked list that orders participants by a score, such as points earned, over a defined time window. It shows who is ahead right now and by how much.
M
- Mention
- A mention is a reference to another person inside a post, comment or message that links to their profile and usually sends them a notification. In many apps you create one by typing @ followed by a name or handle.
O
- Online community
- An online community is a group of people who interact repeatedly on the internet around something they share — an interest, a place, a goal or an identity — and who come to recognize one another over time.
P
- Peer-to-peer
- Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a network design in which devices, called peers, exchange data directly with each other instead of each talking only to a central server. Each peer can act as both client and server.
- Push notification
- A push notification is a message that an app or website sends to your device through the operating system's or browser's push service, so it can appear even when the app isn't open.
R
- Read receipt
- A read receipt is a signal in a messaging app that tells the sender their message has been opened on the recipient's device. It usually appears as a word like “Seen” or “Read”, or as a change in a tick icon.
S
- Short-form video
- Short-form video is video content, usually vertical and around a minute or shorter, designed to be watched on a phone in a continuous scrolling feed.
- Social discovery
- Social discovery is the set of features that help you find and connect with people you don't already know, based on signals such as shared interests, mutual connections, location or activity.
- Social graph
- A social graph is a model of the relationships on a platform: people or accounts are the nodes, and connections such as friendships or follows are the edges between them.
- Social network
- A social network is an online service where people create profiles, connect with one another, and share and respond to content through those connections. The term also describes the web of relationships itself, which sociologists studied long before the internet.
T
- TURN server
- A TURN (Traversal Using Relays around NAT) server is a relay on the public internet that forwards media between devices when firewalls or network address translation stop them from connecting directly. It is the last-resort path in a WebRTC call.
W
- WebRTC
- WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an open standard, built into modern browsers and available to native apps, for sending audio, video and data between devices in real time without plugins.