Anybody writing a blog, participating on Twitter, upload to YouTube or using one of the thousands of social media applications can divide their activity into three categories:

I’m experiment with Social Median, a social news network that automatically tracks mainstream media news articles based on topic. Social Median’s Wall Street Network is tracking evolving news stories around today’s extraordinary events surrounding the Lehman bankruptcy, the BofA/Merrill deal and insurance giant AIG’s plunge.

The expectation of Social Median is to create micro-conversations around news events. It’s a cross between Friendfeed, and the comment streams that accompany news sites like MarketWatch:

Note that Marketwatch has also launched a “beta community” that enables its readers to develop an online presence on Marketwatch. This is the same functionality that SocialMedian is developing for its users; Jason, the founder of Social Median should develop a relationship with Marketwatch to port their user base into Social Median so any comments they make on Marketwatch will also be “clipped” (using SocialMedian lexicon) into SocialMedian’s news networks. My Marketwatch profile is http://community.marketwatch.com/pkitano.

Officially launched July 31, SocialMedian has attracted the usual social media participant suspects and still doesn’t have the critical mass of users to fully develop these news conversations beyond the social media and technology topics like Google Chrome. SocialMedian has the opportunity to develop a horizontal set of communities across a variety of verticals – politics, economy, celebrity, etc. – that will create conversations that complement the mainstream media sources that engage each vertical.

I’d love to see this adoption happen.

The real estate industry has been the most pragmatic in applying social media constructs – blogging and social networking – in order to develop lead generation systems for its professional practitioners. Real estate’s Active Rain continues to be the most active participatory social network devoted to a vertical. Its success spawned the recent introductions of agent blogging platforms in Web 2.0 real estate sites HomeGain and Trulia.

Although a blog is the best social media construct for the creation of personal branding and messaging, the broader professional population is challenged by the writing and time commitment demands to develop a well trafficked blog. One year ago, blogging was essentially the defacto standard for developing an online voice. With the massive adoption of micro-blogging applications like Twitter (and many others), a professional doesn’t need journalistic skills, just the  ability to type out interesting soundbites and converse as if on an IM. Finally, social media aggregation applications like Friendfeed and SocialMedian now track every participant activity – blog posts, bookmarking, Twitter feeds, etc. – and displays the activity in a time line. In essence, this is a complete record of one’s online identity and message.

New social networks will leverage the feed aggregation features that Friendfeed introduced to replicate the conversational nature of “commenting” on comments that characterizes Friendfeed. For example, a real estate brokerage site might include a stream of relevant Twitter feeds being shared by their agents (see mockup image to the left). These comments would be specific to the housing markets: new open houses, new sales data, local events, and would not include any of the “what I had for lunch” detritus. A Tweeter can parse the relevant comments to be included in the feed stream by tagging with a hashmark (#) identifier, which Twitter’s search engine can identify and incorporate into a feed. For example, Social Median participants who want to add their Twitter comment to the Social Median comment stream can add the hashtag #sm to their Tweet.

Conclusion: Feeds are nothing more than content syndication systems that can be embedded into any website and make that website an extension to any social network relevant to its message.

What makes the social media intriguing is its facility to provide instant interpretation of random ideas and acts. These acts, adhoc and experimental by nature, generate interest – controversial, amusement, alternative perspective – within a social sphere, which then extends the premise within hours. This kind of micro-media will filter the best ideas, extend them further, until they are “news”… or worth reporting by mass media. We’re all privy to the incubation of these ideas depending upon the networks we belong to or share.

Here’s the chronology of a simple idea that was proposed today by Jason Goldberg of SocialMedian:

Jason Goldberg – View full feed

posted a message on Twitter

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Ex-securities lawyer Michael Arrington then pipes in the fact that Twitter solicitations for financing is an SEC violation. Jason takes the post down, but it’s recorded at Friendfeed.
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Prompting a Micro-financing venture capital room at Friendfeed, which I join because I think the crowdsource and peer-to-peer investment model is promising.
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And finally chronicled by Mathew Ingram, tech writer at Globe & Mail -  Twitter – a Microfinancing Vehicle