Community media exists today in its traditional formats of local TV, radio and newspapers. Almost anybody can attest to the reality that most local news and events coverage still happen through these traditional media.

Community 2.0 media, where the community itself participates in local conversation, is evolving through several specific, established online channels:

• Online newspapers provide venues for community commentary on local news

• Craigslist and Yelp provide ad hoc community bulletin boards

What’s surprising is that the above venues are the only “local” websites with significant community participation. (Try thinking of any others…)

The above means of community interaction relies on the local user to post directly onto the site. Thus, conversations are much harder to find and track in real time because the commentary remains buried inside the website, whether it’s the online newspaper or Craigslist.

The local conversation is most engaging when it is distributed

The community bulletin board should be opened up into the social media. For example, local Yelp (or Yahoo!) reviews connects with Facebook and Friendfeed:

Local conversations can also be hashtagged for distribution via Twitter and through local Twitter feed aggregation sites like Breaking SF News.com:

Conclusion: Local conversations are oriented to real time because every participant is a part of a real life community. Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and other real time social media applications will be the most efficient way to broadcast running dialogues, even conferences, within the community. Community media systems, structured like the Breaking News Network or adhoc in local Facebook groups, will evolve to capture these conversations.

Friendfeed aggregates its users’ content on 50 or so social networks and distributes the batch across the timeline. It’s the mother of social media aggregation, so the announcement of its new real time search functionality is far more comprehensive than what Twitter might offer. Now if Friendfeed can only match Twitter’s user numbers…

Users can even embed the real time search engine:

from last year’s 06/02/08 slideshow: Explaining Twitter, Friendfeed & Social Media 2.0. I just added Lifestreaming.

With the advent of Twitter and the real time web, can blogs can chronicle real time as effectively as micro-blogging tools? Last week Steve Rubel introduced his move from blogging to lifestreaming with a new lifestream site based on the Posterous platform.

For the uninitiated, the lifestream looks curiously like a blog:

Q) Cmon Steve, isn’t this “lifestream” just basically a blog?

Sort of. The site is certainly structured like a blog. However, the approach is different. It’s less formal. There will be more bits, fewer posts. What’s more, I will employ creative ways to share and engage - such as mindmaps, image galleries and short videos. In addition, this will serve as a key way I connect to you on various social networks.

The principal difference between a blog and a lifestream: to comment on a blog, a reader needs to be on the blog itself.  Commenting on a lifestream can be done from any social network where the lifestream content is distributed – Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, etc.

However, there is a real reason why individuals or companies need blogs or a central repository of content like a lifestream to give them online presence. Twitter and other micro-blogging services suffer from massive data overload (literally multimillions tweets per hour), and Twitter search can only query across a few weeks of Twitter data at most. Robert Scoble points out:

Here’s an easy search: find the original Tweet of the guy who took the picture of the plane that fell into the Hudson. I can do it on FriendFeed after a few tries, but on Twitter Search? Give me a break. Over on Google? One click, but you gotta click through a blog or a journalistic report to get there. Real time search is horrid at saving our knowledge and making it accessible. (italics mine)

Conclusion: it’s essential to have the central repository of content that micro-blogging tools can drive traffic towards.

Welcome to the Multi-Conversational Web

The new Facebook page redesign has incorporated real time friend feeds that makes Facebook more conversational like… Friendfeed or Twitter. What this means is any friends can respond instantly to conversations as they happen:

With three applications – Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed – competing for participants, applications are developing to efficiently monitor these conversations.  Twhirl and Tweetdeck, two leading Twitter clients, have integrated Friendfeed, and Facebook, respectively (see today’s Tweetdeck announcement).

Different Conversations

Last week, David Armano analyzed how each age group uses social media differently for either social purposes like making friends and lovers, or for professional purposes like career networking. This chart is self explanatory:

This certainly explains why high schoolers are predominantly on Facebook over Twitter. Applying the above chart, one can chart where each social network “plays”:

Note that Twitter is unique as the network that can attract massive follower/friend bases (many networks are over 50,000 now). It works best as a networking application by exposing users to large interstitial networks conducive to matching likeminded Twitterers together. From my experience, many of my new Twitter relationships are “discovered” through shared interests and eventually become more “intimate” by joining me in Facebook and other social networks (red arrow) . This is why Twitterers naturally gravitate towards building massive networks and why Jason Calacanis famously (at least in the social media world) offered Twitter $250,000 for placement in its “Recommended Users” list.

Twitter’s value is to attract and influence on a massive level, and opportunities that arise out of this aether can be plumbed within the more intimate confines of smaller networks like Facebook or LinkedIn.

RELATED:

Mr. Tweet‘s Ming Yeow explains it well with this slideshow: Twitter is the best “discovery” application:

Two years ago, online conversation used to reside on blogs and their commentators. The objective was to make and validate points of discussion. Now, soundbite communication – SMS, micro-blogging, “like” – distills communication down to making the point.

The speed of online communication is accelerating because, in simplest possible terms, there are now more people online to communicate with. The development of the social network has become an objective unto itself, and the most efficient way to grow the network is to have shorter but just as impactful conversations. The analogy is the Hollywood producer in the 80′s who would limit each phone call to 1 minute, if not 15 seconds in order to optimize productivity without chitchat. Dry, but effective.

Online conversations are like watching chat boxes:

(from today’s Friendfeed)

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The evolution towards small talk continues with unveiling of the Facebook Connect Comment Box:

(screenshot from Mashable article on Comment Box)

Now conversations can devolve into salutations, affirmations and “Awesome”.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like these micro-communication features because frankly, I was never garrulous to begin with. I just ignore the chaff.

At this point in the evolution of the social media, pay-to-play runs counter to any social network business model. The wildly popular Twitter will eventually have to break the barrier and declare a revenue model. In December, AdAge offered up a list of 9 ways Twitter can make money:

1. Charge for it
2. Advertising
3. Create a contextual ad engine
4. Charge for analytics
5. Enable Mobile Payments
6. Create subscription based groups
7. A Twitter Pro version
8. Merchandising
9. Sell the company

(h/t The Standard is running online betting on whether Twitter adopts a revenue model by June 30, 2009)

Here are examples/interpretations of each business model:

1) Charge for it.

Yesterday, real estate social network Active Rain announced its new $29/month fee for new members who want to post consumer-facing articles on Active Rain. The real estate industry is unique in its widespread adoption of the social media for business networking purposes, and Active Rain’s ability to connect its real estate agent members with consumers looking for a realtor makes pay-to-play an ROI proposition. $29/month may leverage one lead that can contribute $1,000s in fee income. There are active discussions on this policy at Active Rain (570 comments+) and Bloodhound Realty Blog.

I believe this is the first pay-to-play move by a large social network of 130,000+ members. It’s a courageous move that can be only assessed in hindsight based on future adoption rate.

2) 3) Advertising is being viewed too critically by the social community as a marketing relic or at worse, propaganda. Contextual ads a la Google Adwords could well work because Search.Twitter.com replicates a real time search engine.

4) Charge for analytics – Real time data mining of Twitter feeds in aggregate can create enterprise services for industries like finance and retailing that rely on instant trend analysis. Feb 14 Forbes discusses the analytics model.

5) Enable mobile payments – AdAge points to VC Nate Westheimer’s treatise that Twitter’s ubiquity on mobile devices can make it a mobile Paypal platform. The uploading of the iPhone picture of Flight #1549 in the Hudson onto Twitter application Twitpic is evidence of Twitter becoming an event-based mobile platform.

6) Create subscription based groups – Yammer, Present.ly and other enterprise Twitter platforms are developing. Twitter can watch them and replicate.

7) A Twitter Pro Version – isn’t that Friendfeed?

Merchandising – there are already a lot of characters on Twitter including the actors of Madmen. Have companies and users develop a stable of Twitter characters, brand and merchandise them.

9) Sell the company – the original strategy.

The online conversation happens everywhere on a ubiquitous cloud.

I Twittered a link to a NYTimes article:

My Twitter feed is incorporated into my FriendFeed account

Which then gets fed into my Facebook account:

Where friend Ross Rylance commented on it.

Veterans of Facebook, Friendfeed, Linkedin and Twitter know this phenomenon well. This is a simple, practical demonstration of the new personal syndication: belonging to all these major social networks / platforms expands and distributes your message. Write once, be read everywhere.

When your message is distributed, and somebody like friend Ross responds in conversation, that conversation gets distributed through Ross’s networks, and the conversation spreads. This is the essence of VIRAL.

I sometimes ruminate over new concepts for 24 hours to figure out their implications rather than jot down a quick “yowza” blog post. CNN.com and Facebook’s integrated coverage of the Obama Inaugural yesterday was striking because it was the first time I saw all my Facebook friends come to life in a unified, mostly coherent conversation.

In social network applications like Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook, conversations are siloed. I don’t feel a part of the ecosystem until somebody or I start a conversation. An event like the Inauguration lays down a contextual foundation for the conversation so everybody feels involved. It’s the reason why we go to live sporting or concert events – Facebook provided a proxy for “being there” by gathering all the people I know (at least on Facebook) in one room.

This is one of the powerful applications of Facebook Connect that will surely be used in connection with other events, live or programmed (as in movie watching), to provide the same social experience by proxy. Yes, the conversations may be boring or obnoxious, but that’s like any other cocktail party. I think this is addictive.

The Portable Graph is essentially a massive database of contacts residing in various social networks. Some social networks can be defined as either “walled” or closed, for intimate or group association, or open, for amassing a broad, popular network.

Cartoon from Office Offline

Closed networks like LinkedIn and Facebook require “two-click” friend confirmations. A salutation is sometimes protocol (I try to say hi to new Facebook acquaintances). These hurdles take time and make it harder to build networks quickly.

Open networks like Twitter and Friendfeed don’t require friend confirmation, just one click on the “follow” button. They facilitate the building of massive stranger networks united by an amalgam of relationships with the hub. This network of strangers can form the basis of a broadcast network.

Friendfeed made it hard to develop a massive network because it was so cumbersome to find friends to follow. They just made it easy by offering a tool that imports Twitter contacts also on Friendfeed. I just made Friendfeed a massive network by importing all those Twitter contacts, and will now focus on Friendfeed as a broadcast application.

Social networks once kept themselves walled to keep users inside and engaged, just like the Berlin Wall. They are now realizing that import tools that facilitate friend portability is a killer app. Facebook Connect is also a type of import tool demonstrated most strikingly today during CNN.com’s coverage of the Obama Inauguration. That’s a separate article:

Final note, 26% of my Twitter following were also on Friendfeed.

The universal log-in has been a holy grail concept since “online” became a concept. Now we have Microsoft and Yahoo’s joint effort Open ID, aggregation applications like Meebo for IM/chat clients and Friendfeed/Facebook for social media.

Frankly, any popular application login can be used as a login proxy if they partner with other sites to offer an alternative login method. Well, Facebook Connect does this. Wired says Facebookers will be able to log onto Digg, Hulu and Discovery.com with their Facebook email and password.

Here is a screenshot demonstrating the Facebook (as well as MySpace/Orkut/Hi5) login proxy at the social network aggregation site Power.com (a site with 5,000,000 members that nobody has heard of)

This is the commoditization of the logon based on a no-money win-win business model. Sites like Hulu gain new Facebookers who will socially enrich its site, and Facebook gains from the control and data mining of its members visiting other sites (which can eventually be monetized for advertising purposes).

This is a simple solution to the universal login. It took the realization that sites don’t need to “own the user registration”, just make it easier for anybody to logon to their site. The publishing metaphor is apt: online newspapers don’t need to close off their content by a paid subcription wall, open it up and make it easier for the content to be consumed.