Social Media Content Portal

… or, are blogs dying/dead?
Click for readable diagram: Any content site that is pre-prepared content, single channel, little crossover, lecture style etc.

The problem with blogs is they aren’t collaborative. Yes of course it’s possible to have a conversation. People can leave comments on your blog – the Dine In version. Or they can comment in their own blog post, linking back to yours (Take Out or TakeAway). Or a mashup of the two, by commenting on an RSS feed about your blog. But it ain’t collaborative.

I’m speaking here specifically about Blogs. Blogs are portals for content you create

• in isolation, away from your social network
• pre-prepared, before you give it to the network you edit and check and double check
• only you can create the content and edit the content. If you give everyone access, say by allocating them EDITOR rights on a group blog, then it’s a wiki IMHO. Cos you aren’t using it like most people use it.
• The channel is one-to-many. You create the video or the photo or the snarky tirade about something that has miffed you and present it to the network fait accompli. The discussion may be two way, or even few-to-few (depends on how many readers you have and whether they will talk to each other), but the channel itself is one-to-many.

A blog is like a lecture – content prepared, questions after, one-to-many channel.

So, let’s take YouTube. Grab your camera, take a day off from the social network, head out, create a video. Come back and edit it. Load it up to YouTube. NOW it’s social media content for the social network. Sit back and wait for the comments, accolades/snarks and whatever to roll in. Podcasting for audio, Flickr for photos, Glissy for diagrams, Slideshare for powerpoint whatever. It’s all ‘blogs‘.

A wiki is collaborative – they get to edit your content. Usually adding text and pictures and video in a linear fashion, but still collaborative. Think of a wiki as a workshop, or a team meeting (not a lecture). Everyone is taking the minutes and adding bits and pieces to change the final page. You might start the content (Producer) with a “everyone put up their favorite items for discussion here” and they all edit the page. Collaboration (albeit linear) but not one-to-many. Few-to-few or few-to-many probably.

Second Life and user generated content virtual worlds are funny ones. Although many people can create a building or an art installation, mostly it’s a single person building for a group, right? Second Life let’s you offer “EDIT” rights to your content – then it’s wiki. You can allow your group to edit your island or house or whatever. Not every world does that though. In their case, it’s broadcast only becoming a YouTube for 3D content.

Of course, what’s coming is *coughs* web 3.0 or the Live web. Video that is editable. Streamed video (live, not pre-prepared) with many Producers. Look at Mogulus:

• video is streamed live so not created in isolation
• video is streamed live so not pre-prepared
• video is grabbable by anyone who wants it, to do live mashups and run multiple channels.
• Cue up ads and multiple content.

Does Mogulus have chat channels and numbers so people can Skype or telephone in? Or maybe it’s not audio/text but only video? Ustream has chat channels and so on.

See my blog post Video 3.0 not gonna repeat it here. Heh. 🙂

This is a three part series:
1. Social Media Content Portal – about the limitations of blogs and *old* social media leading to the need for more broadband to use more collaborative content.
2. Video 3.0 – Social Video, or collaborative video vs YouTube non-collaboration and how we consume media if we have more broadband
3. Consumer as ISP, Social Networks Telecommunications – How consumers using peer to peer telecommunications to create an always on, ambient, mobile social network full of collaborative content in innovative ways, including video.