I had done a little "chalk talk" a few weeks ago as I explained to a colleague my perspective of how the landscape for social media appears to have changed/continues to change over the years. I had been meaning to clean up the imagery I had drawn on a whiteboard; I wanted to get it in a format that I could post here hoping some of you might feel compelled to comment. I'm happy to finally have gotten around to that today.
My hope is to get some of your feedback so I can change, as needed, the metaphor below for a presentation stack I'm putting together.
As with most things on this site--I'll make the modified version available here under a creative commons license. So feel free to download and re-use as your needs arise. (Click the image below to enlarge.)
(Click to Enlarge)
Emergent Trends in The Social Media Landscape by Mel Aclaro is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
What's It All Mean?
During my chalk talk we discussed how social media dynamics seems to have evolved from "trend pairs" where, on the near end, content went from single-entity creation and eventually evolved to content which was created by many users. (i.e., Host-generated content --> User-generated content.)
Online Publishing/Information Filtering. In similar "trend-pairing", the ease with which content was able to be published gave rise to information overload and the emergent need for filtering through the use of such tools and activities as RSS, keyword searches, tags and content rating.
Tethered / Multi-Point Access to Information. My point here was the observation of flexibility in accessing information we create. It used to be we were "tethered" to input "stations" like desktops, laptops or even browser menus (in the case of bookmarked URLs) where information was stored in a manner that was co-located with the input device. This has evolved to server-based storage where input devices were endowed with the ability to access and even synchronize content from/across different access points. Examples might include Google Apps, social bookmarking and bookmark synchronization plug-ins like Foxmark's very cool plug-in for synchronizing bookmarks across platforms.
Mass Advertising / Community. Here we discussed the changing landscape of marketing tactics. Specifically, how it's undergoing a change from one that "shouts" to consumers about why they should buy our company's products and services to one that engages a community in dialog, listening and subsequent consumption of services by having earned community respect.
Single-point development / Collaborative development. The discussion behind this was rooted in recognizing the emerging capabilities of some development projects to be jointly created by a team or even a community of individuals. Certainly the use of wikis and Google Apps stand as shining examples for text- or document-based development, but add now too, the potential for collaborative media development with emerging applications such as what Kaltura.com is developing for video.
Mass Production / Mass Customization. As we get to the far end of the diagram, we discussed trends shifting, too, from the idea of Mass Production of content to that which is Mass Customized. Two quick examples of this are the customizations enabled by Amazon.com's "suggested books" features and the capabilities of the music genome-based application offered by Pandora.com. In both of these applications is an engine that "learns" your preferences and subsequently refines the filter by which it presents you with new book titles or music.
Search / Information Agents. The far end of the diagram leaves room for "the rest of the story." Web 3.0? The jury's obviously still out on that one. I'd love to hear your thoughts about that.
My initial sense, though, is that it'll probably evolve from "social search" and mass customizable content to the idea of information software agents that deliver content and services based on our preferences and browsing patterns.
If you have thoughts about the information above, I'd love to hear 'em in the comments. Thanks again for stopping by to read and share.
