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.