Connecting communities

May 25th, 2007 | Media, Online

Rosenblum argues the web is about creating and connecting communities. More importantly, its about connecting them with markets, and eBay and Amazon were the original social networking sites to do this. People want someone else’s junk, a book, information, and eBay, Amazon or Google connect them with the relevant market.

Now how does social networking apply to the news and media as they slowly integrate online? Everyone has a story to sell, information, news. Sure, the quality might not be ‘professional’, but the content can be more interesting than most of what you see on TV. And as opposed to what is seen on TV, the consumer decides what is popular and when they want to watch it.

An example of this is YouTube. Look at the number of views videos get there. The content and quality is often ’sub-standard’, and yet hundreds of thousands of people - even millions for the more popular clips - will watch one of these videos, email it to their friends, embed it on their web page.

Don’t underestimate how important the social networking and sharing of content will be for news and media online - even for big media. Word of mouth has always been the best advertising, because it’s free. Share your content.

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