Defining Social Media

The Shift in Responsibility

I had an Ah-ha moment this morning, writing about the dangers of "knee-jerk blogging." It was the recognition of what may well be the most fundamental shift in social media: where once the writer bore responsibility for reporting "truth," now that task is left to the reader.

You can read the entire post here.

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Discussing Social Media

This post is in lieu of Powerpoint to introduce the Defining Social Media panel at BlogOn tomorrow with Dan Gillmor, James Currier, Reid Hoffman, Michael Sikillian and Jim Spohrer.

How We Got Here

The Internet has always facilitated conversations and augmented relationships. When a critical mass of participation is gained, cooperation ensues and simple tools have complex results. The earliest innovators in this adoption lifecycle were geeks and hackers. Put enough of them together and you get a new mode of production to disrupt the software industry and enable a new phase of growth -- open source.

What we are witnessing is segments of early providers and early adopters form previously unrepresented networks and apply participatory technologies to disrupt industries. Earlier adoption segments include software, media, advertising, entertainment, politics, dating, recruiting, consumer electronics, sales, management, the list goes on. All these segments are information intensive and rely on relationships. And as Doc says, its a revolution in demand-based supply:

Social media are another example of the demand side supplying itself. We're seeing this with open source software, with new standards like RSS, and with the new media we call blogs. We're even seeing it in movies such as Outfoxed, and with Internet radio (in spite of destructive fear-based regulation). None of these things came from the Big Boys. They came from you and me and the rest of us here.

Landscape

There is little point in defining Social Software, Social Media (a term coined by the BlogOn organizers), Search, Computing or Networking, except that new language parallels innovation. Here's my way of mapping the space, feel free to modify and make your own.

Social Software, a term coined by Clay Shirky, is the design of systems that supports groups with an underlying value proposition of building social capital...

A rather long post continues at Many-to-Many...

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