The social media revolution (in 15 minutes)

This, together with the announcement that tweets are now Googleable, could be the start of something big. Google's biggest problem to datehas been the inability to penetrate social media. It looks like they are doing this hand-in-hand with trying to own people's individual social connections (i.e. Google Profile). Can see the commercial rationale here, but trying to build this wall around things could limit its social acceptibility and therefore use. There can't be conditions attached to search

This is what i call a web1.5 idea – i.e. basically a traditonal mass audience idea that uses social media channels for distribution. Interesting to watch – it may well be that its social components will not be sufficient to make it really work in these channels and it will become another one of those beached whales – a mass media idea washed-up on the social media coastline. But maybe not.

This could be interesting. Real-time monitoring is where it is at. It is Google's greatest weakness – Google only searches places, not spaces (conversations). The fact that an organisation with Microsoft's clout is entering the space is higly significant

Review of the implications of Twitter securing new investment. Whether Twitter is over-valued is difficult to say. It is almost certainly in-correctly valued because the money boys haven't yet worked out a way to value social media properties other than as traditional media 'real-estate' platforms. Twitter, like Facebook, is an infrastructure – a utility. It is not a web site or a content platform.

Interesting but … I get the feeling this isn't going to work because it seems to sideline the main stream of conversation. Getting the conversation to flow through a service such as this is the problem – illustrated by the fact that you have to build the channel for each organisation participating. Anyway – worth further investigation

This could be very interesting – if only because it shows how the power of the crowd could become an unavoidable overlay onto every digital place, via the use of ubiquitous infrastructures such as browsers. Even if this particular initiative doesn't work – the concept is quite scary.

Some great quotes and an intersting perspective. Marshall McLuhan in particular is worth revisiting because his perspective on the end of print culture and the global village are highly pertinent. I keep meaning to find the time to write a post on this, tied in to the notion of story-telling.

Interesting development. However, in reality this highlight's Facebook's weakness – lack of focus on what it is. Twitter is a dedicated microblogging infrastructure. Facebook is not and simply adding a way to do microblogging within Facebook does not make it such. No one is going to sign-up to Facebbok to do microblogging. A better strategy would be to make it possible to 'do' Twitter from Facebook rather than 'be' Twitter.

This has been an interesting initiative to watch. This isn't necessarily the type of content that I would recommend Ford produce (it isn't close enough to the brand or product story) – but their approach is sound, i.e. not placing restrictions on what the memebers of the Fiesta Movement can say. It is an example of how to do branded content in social media. It is interesting to note that US motor manfacturers have been at the forefront of adopting social media (GM another example) – probably as a result of the trauma they have been going through. Lets hope that others can follow their example without having to be traumatised first.

Startling figures from the newspaper Association of America. Og course it is the recession as well as the rise of social media that is driving this, but none-the-less this is quite dramatic and proves, probably conclusively, that the game is up for the newspaper industry as we know it. The US is at the forefront simply because adoption of social media is higher.

An interesting experimebnt by P&G. But ulitmately this is not the way to 'do' content in social media. P&G are doing this because it looks cost effective since they are paying only for production not distribution. However, it is still a 'one-to-many' piece of mass communication – a sponsored message, rather than content that is genuinely relevant to the brand. Pampas has no right to talk to parents about the whole of parenting, because the only bit of parenting that is relevant to Pampas is the bit dealing with the messy stuff that comes out of babies and toddlers. Unnapealing as this may seem to P&G, any content they produce should focus on this and their product – all the rest is just sponsored blah blah.

The bloggers unmasked controversy continues. The law has a big problem here. In the old world the simple act of publication had a sitgnificance and status. It certainly had a legal status. But this staus was based on the Gutenberg definition of publication – i.e. information designed for mass circulation and issued from an institutional source. This definition no longer applies now that publication is available to all. Publication is now the same as conversation – and reaching for the legal recourse that was designed for traditional publication when addressing on-line individuals is likely to prove about as effective as catching water with a sieve.