Social Media is still a young area

Social Media is a young area with early adopter uptake. So what does it mean to be an expert podcaster, an expert in blogging, or any of the other domains of peer production? Let's take a small News Relase here:

ANALYSIS

By Tom Curry

National affairs writer

MSNBC

updated 11:03 p.m. ET Jan. 19, 2008

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON — In a year in which the oft-heard slogan has been “change” it was the two battle-scarred old political pros, Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton, who emerged as winners in Saturday’s most meaningful contests, the South Carolina Republican primary and the Democrats’ Nevada caucuses.

McCain’s win was narrow but dramatic; Clinton’s was quite muddled, with Sen. Barack Obama winning 13 delegates to 12 for her.

I made these notes on one of my sractch-book blog Sunday, May 14, 2006. Social Media was a new thing to me. Today I can be looking back and do some reflections.

• Expertise comes through participation
  
• You need to participate to understand and learn more
  
• How do you and the rest feel about it?
• Listen to the crowd
  

You have to use the tools to know them and to learn more

• Blogging compared to Usenet
• What about people commenting
• Able to record a podcasts and to add them to your blogs
  
• Also to do a video and add to blogs and SM sites
  

Comparable experience from another point of view

• There are different barriers: technical, social, inter-personal, company, friends
  
• If the users are limited in their view to printing there are more barriers
  
• This is a new medium and it takes time to adapt
  

We have the right to judge

• Who are participating in the process?
• Where is the information coming from?
• What is the origin?
• You need a level of expertise to manage the technical details
  
• Produce a podcast for your blogs
  

We got a problem here

• No voice over IP for the moment
• They didn't edit the information
• When they do blogging workshops
• Will anybody read the blogs?

Where do you wanna go?

• Write a journal
• Write a business blog
• Start a corporate blog
  

At the same time they are producers

• They know how to make a record
• This social media is so new (much better known 2008 compared to 2006)
  
• There are no standards but a multitude of platforms (Google, Facebook, MySpace)
  
• We don't know what the 'need skills' are for a blogger

Videoblogging

• People coming from network television
• Technically include don't know how to hold the camera
• The skills from old media
• How to combine both

Hybrid

• I love technology
• Art director in real life
• I have a lot to contribute
• I can form and phrase things so people understand

Conversational Media

• blogging
• transfer from that
• easy accessible
• flickr
• there are so many in between them
• a whole lot of people saying this and that
• do we need to have a website?

The numbers communicating

• most blogs drop down in 3 months (I've been around for years with several blogs)
  
• it's still an astronomical number of people blogging
• how many will do it 2010?
• 2015?
  

What's in a name? Or label? How do the labels that we use or that are used by others impact mainstreaming of new media and perceptions of what blogs, podcasts, and video blogs/podcasts and other new media are about?