If you know me, you would know that I’m one of the most avid consumers of content. Then again, it is my job. One type of content that I don’t consume on a daily basis is newspapers. While I visit news sites of individual newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal of the Washington Post, I never purchase a paper and probably never will again. It simply doesn’t make sense for me. The industry is rapidly trying to devise a strategy for saving itself, and they’ve been searching for a strategy for a long time now.
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Hey, What are you doing right now?

This is what Twitter answers in a text message of 140 characters or less. This networking tool is something bloggers use to publicize writings, companies use to elicit brand promotion, and people use to network. Here are ten Twitter hacks to better understand and leverage this new social networking tool.
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What started as a Facebook app has grown into a full-fledged stand-alone service that lets you make scrapbooks (of sorts) from web content you find interesting or have created elsewhere on the web. RadWebTech has just launched Scrapplet, an alternative to services like Netvibes or even Tumblr, as it lets you collect items from across the web as well as integrated content from social networking and microblogging sites.
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I wanted to write about social media’s impact on innovation weeks ago, but got sidetracked. Herein we quote the Post: “The real problem [with the Detroit automakers] is failing to stay competitive with global rivals in the realm of advanced principles of design and manufacturing – principles that exploit global, peer-to-peer information platforms to increase the variety of smash hits a firm might produce.”

So wrote Bernard Avishai in the Washington Post on November 23rd, in “Why Detroit Can’t Keep Up”. Avishai was identified in the Post as the former technology editor of the Harvard Business Review and a former international director of intellectual capital at KPMG.
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How many of you have ever thought that Twitter was a pretty stupid tool (or still think this is the case)? And if you’ve finally come to accept Twitter as the useful branding tool that it could be, then you’ve probably gone through the following steps of Twitter Acceptance. Blogger Rohit Bhargava has finally come to love Twitter, and as a marketing and PR professional he’s also discovered all the great ways Twitter can be used for nearly every type of branding. Bhargava has even gone so far as to write the 5 Steps to Twitter Acceptance.

As if we needed additional proof that Twitter has established itself as a great tool for both entertainment and marketing purposes. Yes, Twitter is great for getting a message out to the masses that matter. And it can, in fact, be used for more than just writing updates about stuff you don’t care to blog about, as Bhargava used to do.

One of the most important take aways from Bhargava’s Steps to Twitter Acceptance is the evolution Bhargava noted, from thinking of Twitter as a fleeting update service to a powerful marketing tool that can help direct traffic and build up brands through the direct and community-driven interactions amongst Twitter users. It’s reflective of not only the evolution of Twitter users’ acceptance, but of Twitter itself. So what do you use Twitter for?

Mufin, the music search and recommendation engine that suggests music based on an algorithmic analysis of music, has launched its public beta today. Of course, the biggest point of interest is the lack of human editing when it comes to Mufin’s recommendations, setting it apart from the likes of Last.fm and Pandora. Even though many systems such as web search queries have been after the all mighty algorithm that works as well as (if not better than) a human, none have really come close to replacing the human element.

Granted, Mufin’s recommendations do work rather well. Perhaps this is because matching music can be more readily turned into a mathematical representation than say a search query for the best restaurants in Union Square. But Mufin seems to lack the human touch in its entirety. There’s no tweaking you can do for the recommendations Mufin offers, indicating how well of a match a song really is. And the social implications on Mufin’s main site are minimal, limited to a top playlist of songs that have been viewed, searched or played by others.
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While checking out of a CVS last night I overheard a girl talking to the guy behind the cash register about her iPhone. She had the first version of the phone but appeared to be extremely satisfied with it. She was telling the cashier about all of the cool things she can do with the phone. “I can rent movies just like Blockbuster right on to my phone”, she said to the cashier.

As she walked away from checking out the cashier turned to his co-worker and said, “I’m buying an iPhone.” No matter how much the phone costs, I have no doubt in my mind that he is going to now go and purchase the new iPhone within the next month or two. He’s not the only one. iPhones are sold out around the country and when I went to the mall two days ago, there were still long lines to purchase the phone!

I have some serious complaints about the phone but I think the notion of being able to easily navigate the web, interact with your friends and family and consume all of your favorite media from one device is game changing. The most significant change is that the mainstream is going to once again get access to a plethora of fresh, niche content but not just while sitting at their computer. Instead it will arrive in the palm of their hands.

Last year when Facebook opened their platform it sparked a movement. That movement continues today as MySpace, Bebo, and on Wednesday Facebook, continue to extend their platforms beyond their walled gardens. That’s only a small part of the story though. If you thought the internet was a catalyst for the development of a massive amount of niche content for consumers, I think the iPhone and future mobile platforms could spark an even greater revolution.

The new iPhone could help rapidly extend the reach of podcasts in addition to other forms of media. There is a race right now for applications to gain a significant share of the market. For instance, Pandora is now the default radio for the iPhone. Not a bad place to be. Where is Clear Channel, CBS Radio and the other large radio companies? Nowhere! The only other radio platform is Virgin Radio which launched two days after the iPhone 2.0 upgrade was released. Currently they are being trounced by Pandora though.

The rise of niche media that many web entrepreneurs are betting heavily on have been absent of one thing: a mainstream distribution channel. While there are niche T.V. shows through portal sites like Yahoo and AOL, there is now a new land grab for dominance on the relatively open iPhone platform. That land grab, in my own opinion, is bigger than any of the previous platform land grabs in the past decade.

Last year it took Mark Zuckerberg to reignite the revolution. As Kara Swisher wrote yesterday, “It’s more than a little ironic, then, that about a year ago it was the social-networking site that reinvigorated the idea of the importance of having a platform that a multitude of developers could thrive on.” She continues, “Microsoft has nourished an ecosystem of developers for its powerful Windows software platform for, like, forever. But Facebook surely made the idea bigger, looser, wilder and more exciting.”

Facebook helped to revive the idea of a platform empowering developers. Apple has taken that idea one step further by making it sexy and making it portable. Oh and by the way, it’s also social! With the close timing of the iPhone launch and f8, I think this month may just be one of the primary drivers behind the continued transformation of the social web for the next 12 months.

As each new technology pops up that promises to help me connect more efficiently with my friends, I have begun to wonder what I’m really seeking with each new product. Am I aiming to streamline my communication processes as much as possible so that I can increase the number of people I’m having it with? Am I’m simply an early adopter that wants to check out the newest shiny object?

Most likely all of these things apply to me, but what I’ve begun to notice is that I am really using all of these tools for the purpose of social discovery. Social discovery is simply one method of finding content in this limitless sea of content we call “the internet”. It is increasingly my preferred discovery method as I have found a vast network of individuals that share similar interests.

To understand social discovery I think it is more important to understand the activities that we are engaged in when using the internet. Ultimately, all internet usage is simply the transmission of media. Occasionally we transmit other information used for purchasing physical good but the discovery of those products and services involve the transmission of media.

New Media Lifecycle

Over the past few years I have become increasingly active in all phases of what I now define the “new media lifecycle”. All of these “tools” that new technology companies are creating are for the most part trying to make at least one phase of this cycle more efficient. I define the new media lifecycle as the stages through which new media typically flows. Not very complex!

To expect new media to flow in any continuous direction is ludicrous but I have found there to be three stages that new media flows through. I think determining a starting point of new media is the same as determining what came first, the chicken or the egg. As such, you could enter the new media life cycle at any point during one of the following three phases:

1. Content Creation – Audio, video, text and images are all types of content that is produced in new media. In contrast to days of old, media can now be produced by anybody, not just the large media companies.
2. Content Discovery – Discovery is probably the most important phase of the lifecycle for technology companies as they are the ones developing the tools for discovery.
3. Content Consumption – Content can be consumer in practically an infinite number of ways. The consumer is the one that chooses the medium they prefer. It can be mobile phones, computers, televisions, stereos or a number of other mediums.

One other important thing to note is that there is no requirement to be part of the content creation phase as a consumer. Soon enough content creation will be an activity that practically every consumer engages in whether they like it or not. Their activities will automatically dictate the creation of content. For now though, it is still possible to simply watch what is going on.

Social Discovery

I think social discovery is one of the most fascinating parts of the new media lifecycle because we are so early in determining the most efficient way of social discovery. Search has now been dominated by Google and while new companies attempt to attack what is increasingly becoming a monopoly, most companies have realized that the space of social discovery has yet to declare a winner.

What is social discovery exactly? Well social discovery is the usage of social tools to find relevant content. A social tool is a system which enables the sharing of content with other users. That content can be as simple as the activities users are engaged in such as “Nick just played MouseHunt on Facebook” to the modification of my social profile to the sharing of a video, image or song that I thought was good.

Some have suggested that the current battle on the social web is over the most efficient newsfeed. I think it should be framed instead as the battle over making the most efficient social discovery tool. Feeds are simply one way of displaying content. It may very well be that feeds are the most effective way of displaying that content but I think this is still up for debate.

Over the past few weeks as my digital social activity has become stretched across FriendFeed, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook and other places, I have begun to ask myself where the real value is in any of these things. The reality is that a valuable community that I feel connected to is most important. As we strive to build new technologies that help us connect more efficiently I think in the end all that matters is the community.

Email continues to be an extremely basic form of communication but what makes it so powerful is that I can access anybody via email. Even though it helps, it doesn’t really matter if your technology is the most efficient. What matters more is that your technology has a community backing it. As the early adopters chase after the latest shiny social object trying to dissect the pros and cons of each feature, I’d wait to see where the real communities form.

In my own opinion, while social discovery has yet to be monetized effectively, social discovery currently provides the greatest opportunity for breakthrough growth.

Yesterday the AP wrote about the new LinkedIn valuation:

It’s one of the richest appraisals for a Silicon Valley startup since Microsoft Corp. paid $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook Inc. late last year. That deal valued Palo Alto-based Facebook and its online hangout at $15 billion.

The Facebook financing in turn helped several other startups that promote online socializing to promote themselves.

Ning Inc. and Slide Inc. wrangled implied valuations ranging between $500 million and $560 million when investors poured more money into them earlier this year, while RockYou was valued between $200 million and $300 million in a deal completed last week.

That quote should have cost $25. Hope you enjoyed it! The new policy set forth by the Associated Press is that bloggers should pay to quote their articles. If I had a $15 for every time I was quoted I’d be doing pretty well. Unfortunately nobody would quote me at that point. That’s the same thing that will happen to the Associated Press who will be meeting with the head of the Media Bloggers Association on Thursday according to Tim Conneally of the BetaNews.

While policing for continuous misuse of content is a similar strategy used by leaders in the music industry, attacking individual bloggers one at a time will fail miserably. Then again, paraphrasing articles is just as easy and makes linking back to paraphrased articles unnecessary. Do you think the new strategy being used by the Associated press will work?

Screenshot of the AP Toll Both … Perhaps I should have paid for lifting a screenshot

Over the weekend the Drudge Retort received take down notifications from the Associated Press for republishing the title and first few sentences of a story. It has created an uproar around the blogosphere resulting in a boycott of AP content by bloggers. According to the New York Times, the Associated Press is looking to set guidelines for how their content will be used.

In the world of blogging there are not many guidelines for how content is reused. For the most part, all that is required for the republishing of content is a link to the original. Frequently blogs will republish entire pieces of content. The examples used by the Associated Press are somewhat ridiculous considering the vast amount of content that is completely stripped from their content owners on a daily basis.

If you take a look at Digg, Mixx or any other content aggregator, titles and sentences are reused from articles on a daily basis. This is pretty much a standard of practice for content aggregators. For some reason, the Drudge Report can’t do this though. The end result is that AP will not get their content linked to by bloggers from now on.

Apparently AP doesn’t want the traffic. While my sites don’t have as much influence as some of the largest blogs, I’ll go along with the boycott. Ultimately, who doesn’t want to be engaged in a mini-battle once in a while? Do you think the Associated press will review and retract their soon to be announced guidelines?