Turn On, Tune In, Stream Out

I sat on a "Harnessing Collective Intelligence" at Defrag this year. Curiously it was all Boulder companies on the panel. Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit was there, David Mandell of Me.dium, Ryan Martens of Rally Software, and myself. Each company had it's own take on the subject of the session with Lijit claiming the high ground on social search as a foundation for creating a better search experience, Me.dium extolling the social virtues of co-browsing and flash mobs, and I talked about how companies could really improve their reach and understanding of their consumers. Rally represented the business end of what I discussed and talked about using technology to engage their customers.

I want to reiterate one point that I made on the panel when asked where I saw Collective Intellect being in five years. I don't think it's possible to overstate the importance of the momentum behind consumer generated media and social networking. It is revolutionary in the same way that television changed everything in the 50's. Companies will have to change the way they market to consumers. Family dynamics will change with less time in front of the television and more in front of the computer. News creation, distribution, and consumption patterns will change with more people writing the news, traditional media mining blogs for newsworthy ideas, bloggers feeding off of news and creating viral effects, and news consumers using news readers, blog aggregators, as well as more traditional news outlets to keep informed. There is a sea change at work in how we interact with one another and the entities that are important to us. This can include family, friends, lovers, vendors, and rock stars. One of my friends at work has a teenage son who comes home after school, passes by the television, and logs into MySpace to digest the day.

This is the age of Hyper-Communication. I publish what I'm doing 20 times a day between using Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, my blog, and email. I watch what dozens of friends are doing via these same media. I'm not certain of the destination but know the journey changes everything.



Turn On - Think about the way the world is changing in this new age of Hyper-Communication
Tune In - Listen to the human collective. Become involved in social media and social networking.
Stream Out - Publish Publish Publish. Become a speaking participant!