With all the discussion on what social media is, what it’s future will be like, who will control it, I often feel we fail to see the forest for the trees.

I see it as too diverse of a phenomenon to pin down with one easy definition. Its applications go far beyond the neat capsules that can be used to pick a particular department or function that should “own” it. Social media is creating, empowering, and accompanying a paradigm shift in the way we use all media.

Are we fully there yet? Of course not. These are only the early stages, part of an evolutionary process that often comes step by step. But those steps are happening and happening and soon we’ll look back and be amazed how far we’ve traveled. Then before we know it again, we’ll be stepping again and look back again and we’ll be amazed how much we’ve come from that first time we looked back.

Yes, organizations are going to have to harness social media in ways that they can benefit from, to reach ROI. This means trying to create some sort of structure for it without “siloizing” it. Very difficult indeed.

I’ve tried to lay out what I see social media as. Not from a specific definitional standpoint, but from a several miles up point of view.

Interested in your feedback… Read more…

On Monday, CBS Television Stations announced the launch of what I think will be a great step in the direction of web based mainstream and citizen generated news. They are launching the CBS Local Ad Network in which local stations will syndicate new content to local bloggers and social media sites. This news will be delivered via news widgets that will link to video and text news of the local stations.

IN exchange for hosting the widgets, the bloggers will receive a share of the local ad dollars that are sold by the station.

How is it a win-win-win-win situation?

The will extend the CBS news media brand both on a national and local level by integrating news content with local blogger with a following. While it takes some of the focus off the broadcast model, it could potentially easily be made up via web usage. The network will seem innovative while the local affiliate could develop deeper ties to the local community. Bloggers and social networkds could increase their visibility and bring in more traffic. Advertisers will get greater exposure.

I like the idea.

A web-based news aggregation strategy is simple if the solution is Drupal, the solution I chose for both my personal and corporate websites. There may be other super-easy solutions you may want to chose, but the solutions here are simple in Drupal. There are two of them: News Aggregator and Leech, one built-in module and the other a simple download; one offers a simple news aggregation solution, the other able to completely clone the content of one or more remote sites. Seriously. Read more…

I am amazed by Bronwen, my Twitter friend, who founded PerthNorg. She is teaching me what a Norg is and I want to help her pimp her very important and wonderful meme, Norg… Here is the sort answer as to what a Norg is, “norg is short for news organization. But not the corporate, MSM news organizations we have come to know — this is a new organization run by the people. It’s putting all the new media theories into practice.”

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