I think we in journalism were really late to social networks. We had a built-in network already in terms of our readers, and we didn’t capitalize on that.
We’re becoming slaves to our social networks – and that’s not a bad thing. You like your favorite networks, so do you friends, and pretty soon you have market winners.
Now an audience of more than 1 billion people is only a click away from every voice online, and remarkable stories and content can gain flash audiences as people share via social networks, blogs and e-mail. This radically equalizes the power relationship between, say, a blogger and a multibillion dollar corporation.
Social networks didn’t exist when I started. Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist. It was all about MySpace when I first got in the game.
New content online no longer requires new stories or information, just new ways of linking things to other things. Or as the social networks might put it to you, ‘Jane is now friends with Tom.’ The connection has been made; the picture is getting more complete.
I find very few folks are watching their Facebook feed, some are watching their Twitter feed, and all of them are watching their email box. So, while social networks are nice, email is still the killer application.
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