4. Specialized Information Providers

Needless to say, such a rapid deployment model paves the way for a whole bucket of specialized information providers to form.

New media content providers like Wallstrip provide a template for how to create new media brands, leveraging all of the new content channels and distribution points that are forming online.

We are looking at something that is one part virtual water cooler and one part Years ago, I read a book called Blur, which was by the same authors who wrote Future Perfect, the first book that anticipated mass customization and what it means from a systems perspective.

Blur reduced the concept of launching new innovations to three stages: Seed, Amplify and Select. Seeds are cheap and with the right system, highly customizable, so the credo of Blur was to plant a lot of seeds.

Why? Because the game here is to embrace the fact that most seeds won’t sprout. The selection and amplification phases are where you basically re-tool the system to optimize it for the seeds that do sprout. As a result, the model facilitates rapid evolution and is Darwinian to the core.

As Marc Andreessen has noted, in any fight between a platform and a single application - no matter how useful or popular - the platform will always win. Social media platforms, in all their forms, represent one big seed valuable enough to produce a whole crop of new, highly valued, and ultimately easily-connected applications and technologies. If you’re a developer, go ahead and get involved - and let the feasting begin.

Mark Sigal is CEO of vSocial.com and a social media/online video technology expert. Check out the company’s website here. You might find their selection of unusual videos especially interesting.

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