The dilemma in providing skills for social business practice

Brian Solis has exposed the folly of many businesses in assuming their analogue-age communications and marketing processes can operate in similar ways in social media. The result is that many social media endeavours are “in reality, siloed and disconnected from the rest of the organisation”. Attempts to meld Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with existing customer relationship management infrastructure results in failing “to see the human touch points to connect with the right people in the right places at the right time”. It’s an approach that betrays a lack of understanding about networked relationships, to have the “ability to engage influential consumers in a one-to-one-to-many practice to amplify intention, purpose, and value”. What’s is evidently lacking are networked literacy skills – knowing what a ‘follower’ count is worth; interpreting the significance of a tweet; knowing the value from a ‘like’ and appreciating the participation bandwidth from blog postings and comments.

An obvious problem is thinking that the skill-sets of established communications and marketing units are good enough for social media. The reality according to Brian Solis is that “social media are the gold mines of anthropology, sociology and ethnography”.  This is significant because most organisations have focused on recruiting commerce or law graduates whereas value creation in social media comes in no small way from embracing social science graduates. Understanding the relevance to business of why and how people connect with others to share things, to learn and to express themselves is emerging as a core competency along with accountancy, economics, engineering and legal systems. So there is a disjunct between the skills necessary to succeed as social businesses and the skills base to hand.

However, a much more significant problem is that most educational institutions have changed focus over the last few decades moving away from social science to churn out lots of commerce graduates in response the demands of business. There is a structural imbalance between the need to adapt and evolve as social businesses in a networked economy with the courses on offer by universities and business schools.

What a dilemma. It’s about time business groups and universities got together to address this fundamental imbalance in contemporary education.

Leveraging value from the enterprise, social networks and generalists

In working on a system to promote sharing among co-workers, Sir Tim Berners-Lee ended up inventing the World Wide Web. Twenty years later and we still have enterprises struggling along with walled-garden silos and command and control management. Skilled specialists pursue narrow interests independently from others in the organisation. Information and knowledge of potential value to “colleagues” is not shared. The dominant mental model for enterprises like that is a strident independence and win/loose culture determined to do things just by themselves. The game is all about competition. There is no room for collaboration and sharing. It is so last century.

Ironic isn’t it, especially when so much has been written about the social web. Not that there can be any doubting the power of the web to connect people, to express their views and share. In Wikipedia, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams provided many examples of firms have benefited from crowd-sourced innovative ideas.Clay Shirky has described the power of the social web to connect people and to do things together without the need for centralised organisation.

It’s nothing short of extraordinary really when so much innovation, creativity and resilience comes from openness and  integrating web-based collaboration within the workplace. The amount of shareholder value eroding by the day must be staggering.

What’s going on? It’s a clash of culture: the open nature of the web causes friction when it rubs up against the command and control nature of the enterprise, largely to do with power. So the main problem is social. Perceived reputation, status and financial reward is wrapped up in authoritarian regimes.

There are limiting social factors though. Many people are reluctant to speak out. I’ve lost count of how many people have said to me “But I can’t think of anything to say”. There are those who prefer to be led rather than to lead. Given the rapid rise of social networking sites, many people lack experience in web literacy. The sheer scale of information on the web is over-whelming. Aggregation and curation tools and techniques such as tagging, creating lists, book-marking and filtering are mastered by just a few digital literati. So it’s important to leverage from those willing to express themselves and willing to share. They are the new creators of value…although there is one other, and that’s the generalist.

Last Friday I attended the Media 2010 seminar in Sydney, Australia. The event attracted a a lot of influential industry people – a very good sign. but back to the generalist, One of the presenters was Saneel Radia, SVP at Denuo, Chicago.

Seneel used a term I’ve not heard of before – intersectional innovation. It’s where a generalist works with specialists injecting alternative perspectives from which new insights and creative design can emerge. From an enterprise perspective, the trick is to “empower generalists via accountability”. I grasped the value immediately. As a generalist working in strategic foresight I am too familiar with the dead weight barriers to innovation from specialists. Resilience comes from questioning assumptions and established patterns of behaviour. There is a lower chance of that happening within teams of specialists whose knowledge of things outside their field is limited. The value from generalists comes when pointing to related developments that are changing the paradigm.

Seems like the term ‘intersectional innovation’ was coined by Frans Johansson back in 2004 when he published The Medici Effect. Frans blogs here.  I’ve got to look into this!

Of course, it’s not all about openness and sharing. Intellectual property remains a driver of wealth. Apple did not develop the iPhone through open-source design. Google has its search engine secrets. Yet both Apple and Google create value from the open nature of the internet and the social web. There is life in the enterprise for sure!

In my view then, firms looking for resilience and new value need to blend social networks and generalists into the operations of their business.

Mobiles and Social Web over the next 10 years: five megatrends

Having gone through some 22 forecasts about mobiles and social web from 2010 to 2020, I’ve collapsed them all into five transformative trends:

1. Mobiles will be used for more things, dominating other networks

Mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops, netbooks) are not only set to come much more important for communication and broadband connectivity, there will be more content generated and distributed, more digital marketing, financial transactions, health care services and environmental monitoring over mobiles.  The cost of powerful smartphones will fall…and handheld form factors become old hat. Advertising revenues may exceed TV and the Internet by reach and by revenue.

2. Mobiles will change our reality, through augmented/mixed reality and location/person/object aware applications

New applications will be used for search, discovery, entertainment, gaming, healthcare and retail. In time, nearly every user interaction with mobiles might be location-aware. Advanced augmented reality and location-aware applications will become mainstream and core revenue earners.

3. The Social Web matures

The era of experimentation with social networks will end with users, businesses, governments and civil society embedding social networking and social media into everyday lives and business activity. User sophistication develops as filtering tools and techniques are applied and the relevancy and utility of connections improve. Collective intelligence helps to filter and respond to what is worthwhile to users. More control over what is created and done online is placed with individuals and their trusted intermediaries.  Porting data will become easier.

4. The Social Web transforms

Social networks online change the nature of work and generate new economic value and social benefits. Companies will function on social networks. Online reputation drives work and personal relationships. Most people expect social network connectivity and interaction to be real-time and available anywhere.

5. Applications re-shape the value-chain

The applications market continues to grow internationally, with more stores and more uses, within an open and innovative environment for applications development. Underlying networks and platforms provide utility access and connectivity.

Embracing the networked age

It’s December again and there’s the usual stream of forecasts for the new year.  I find many of them to be interesting, a few more than others. Goodness knows they seem to be latched onto by many people. Otherwise hide-bound by the stack of work in front of them, the new year is a time for reflection and contemplation for many. But 12-month forecasts are of limited value. What of the underlying drivers of social and economic change over the longer-term? Not so much is heard about them, even though they are so much more powerful.  So this posting is my contribution to the longer-term view, and what actions are more likely to be sustaining value over time.

Readers of this blog may well be familiar with the drivers of change that I’ll cover here. Those in businesses and in government who have adopted practices that embrace collaboration and co-creation  are already on message. So this posting is intended for others who are looking for a path forward in the networked age. So please share.

The Old Institutional Power Elites Will Adapt or Fade Away

By far the most powerful message is to those who cling on to institutional power.  I have some questions for you. Judging by your actions to date, what prospects are there for you to redress climate change and other, pressing environmental degradation? With the loss of confidence in financial markets and the efficient markets hypothesis, what policies do you have to renew economic and social well-being? Do you know the difference between innovation and competition? What faith do you have in resolving religious, cultural, social and economic divides? What do you think your legacy will be to future generations?

I raise those questions because of my concern that too many digital migrants are trapped in institutional mindsets that they find hard to break-away from. The thing is, there are too many divides, too many entrenched views held by people in inward-looking institutions, views that would otherwise be challenged by openness and transparency. For institutional power is being re-balanced with the networked power of the social web. Innovation, creativity and new forms of value now flow from networked publics formed on the social web. Not so much from stand-alone businesses.

The power of the social web is from people connecting to others, expressing themselves and sharing. Compare those things with institutional life, where the dominant features are siloed hierarchies, conformity to rules and to dominant actors, and hoarding information. Institutions tend to fence-off and shut down innovation, creativity and new perspectives.

The Rise of Digital Generations

Evidence of just how different those people born to the digital age are is very obviously in communications. Mobile phones, particularly smartphones with internet connectivity, are the dominant device used by young people for communicating with friends, for self-expression, finding, sharing or generating information, or for organising and managing activities. Digital generations seek out like-minded people and peer-groups to share stuff, to learn, and to create new things. Digital generations do things for themselves. They are far less reliant on institutions than their parents are.

In social networks online, they learn to take responsibility, and to collaborate with others, for economic, environmental and social benefits. They do not seek permission, but give themselves permission to build relationships, reputation and trust between themselves. They can do that because interacting online gives them the experience, the know-how and the power to act. Placing more trust in their own networks than with family or institutions, there is a re-balancing of power relationships in society.

Politicians, the media and brands are all finding it necessary to reach out to digital generations. They compete for their time and for their attention. Governments are finding that there are knowledgeable and informed stakeholders in the public who can and do contribute ideas and options for new policies and programs through interacting online. There is a new dawn for citizen engagement, empowered by the unprecedented ease of participation that the social web affords. That will lead to a re-balancing of power between representative democracy and more direct forms of citizen participation in decision-making.

The core competencies in interacting online are openness, transparency and collaboration. The new competitive advantages are to be found from collaborating across institutional boundaries through trusted relationships. But as I say, the scale of openness, transparency and collaboration online is unprecedented. Change has been so rapid, there are few models to guide people. So the digital generation has developed their own literacy, their own peer relationships and their own networks to operate in the networked age. They do so because of their interactions, and relationships and trust come out of interactions.

What a contrast

Oh, how different is the networked society that from the 20th century, where big business and big government dominated relatively passive consumers and passive citizens. Educated in prescribed syllabus schools, living in disconnected suburban communities, employed in specialised and meaningless work, consuming one-size fits all news and information and standardised government services, with families split by globalisation… baby boomer and Gen X lives have been controlled by others to a large degree. The old power elites controlled the generation and distribution of information; controlled the allocation of scarce resources; oversaw the degradation of ecosystems; and created artificial scarcity (such as in the supply of money and restrictions on the exchange of goods and services). Within their institutions, they ruled the day.

But that time is up.

For the enduring characteristics of social existence are in connections, self-expression and sharing. They also happen to be the underpinning values of the digital generation. Information is no longer scarce. Connectivity is no longer scarce. Bottlenecks have broken down. What was scarce is now abundant. It’s no contest folks.

Solving environmental and economic crises, resolving cultural conflicts and social divides will not be easy. But I have optimism that the networked age will find sustainable solutions.  In contrast, the old power elites just continue to show how inept their institutional frameworks are. A re-balancing is coming…are you on board?

Take action

If you and/or your organisation are inward-looking, independent and not already networked online, then get started. Experiment by reaching out to others. Learn what others are saying about you. Learn digital media literacy. Learn by doing. It’s OK. You can do it.

Sure, you will make mistakes. No one is perfect. The know-how will come to you. You will get better. You will get rewards.

So, get on to Twitter. Join Facebook, Sign-up to LinkedIn. Experiment with Ning. Create a blog. Subscribe to others’ blogs. Participate with your colleagues on Yammer. See what others are viewing on YouTube. Get on to Google Wave to see what real-time collaboration can do. Reach out. And above all, participate – get yourself engaged online.

Best wishes for 2010

Network Literacy

Howard Rheingold has put up the first video in what will hopefully be a series of talks about networked literacy. Drawing on the insights of some eminent people (David Reed, Lawrence Lessig, Manuel Castells, Duncan Watts, Yochai Benkler as well as himself) Rheingold spoke of what I feel is a very important view: that understanding how networks work – in a social and economic sense as well as technically – can influence how much freedom, wealth & participation might be experienced in the 21st century. I agree with that.

From a technical perspective, understanding the end-to-end principle is important to know why & how the architecture of the internet was designed so that content can flow from one end point to another without centralised permission or control. Understanding the social drivers behind the formation of human networks and their ability to self-organise  – drivers that go back to ancient human history – is necessary to get a feel for why the internet is such a powerful participative tool. It’s why the web has been so transformative. It’s why we now life in a networked society. Understanding the difference between individual freedoms enabled by the internet vs. institutional control is at the heart of appreciating why the 20th century power elites find the web to be so disruptive, why they now battle for control, and why others strive to maintain internet freedoms. Some see the transformative web as a threat, others see it as an opportunity. Those that achieve network literacy are more likely to see, and to grasp, the opportunities and generate new forms of value.

Understanding any of these social, economic and technical spheres individually is a challenge. Understanding them all – especially in relation to one another – is overwhelmingly the greatest challenge. It’s a challenge that exceeds the capabilities of any one discipline, department, value-chain or service/product line. It’s a challenge that Howard Rheingold appears to have grasped, and I commend him for it.

However, there are others at work on this issue beyound those that Howard is currently drawing from. A couple of weeks prior to viewing Howard’s video, I was pleased to see that danah boyd and co at the Digital Youth Project have released Hanging Out, Messing Around, And Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. They write about youth-driven peer-based learning. They say there is “an opportunity to define, in partnership with youth, the shape of online participation and expression and new networked, institutional structures of peer-based learning”.  In other words, the task is to adapt to the web – to new forms of interconnection and expression – by participating in the process. I now see that these insights are an example of network literacy in action; of seeing where the opportunities are to generate new value.

So I feel that networked literacy is a competency necessary to grasp the opportunities lying ahead. Networked literacy is a competency necessary to gain comparative advantage. But most importantly, networked literacy is necessary to know what to promote and what to safeguard against, in order to make the most of the transformative web.

Clay Shirky on the future of newspapers and accountability journalism

Professor Clay Shirky spoke recently at Harvard on internet issues facing newspapers. Click here to view the video or read the transcript. It is very interesting and fascinating stuff, covering newspapers’ shrinking ability to produce accountability journalism. The focus is on the U.S. and the public good role that commercial media – in this case advertising supported newspapers – have played in accountability journalism.

I read the transcript to learn about the role that social media is playing in this…and was not disappointed. Social media disrupts the traditional role that media has played in deciding what information is bundled with the ads. Newspaper web sites by and large have mirrored the print copy of newspapers, assuming that readers would go to the web site just as they picked up a newspaper to read. With social media, that assumption no longer holds. Instead of going to the web site, people go directly to the storey, because someone in their network Twittered about it or put it on Facebook or sent a link in an email. So the audience is being assembled not by the newspaper, but by other members of the audience. Now, that’s true for me too. I spend less time on media web sites and on RSS feeds and more time on Twitter & Facebook because of the quality of information I’m getting through my social network.

There is little doubt that social media is a disruptive force in media and in advertising. Companies born digital are taking on more social dynamics into their business model. Take Google for instance, having just released an experiment with search going social.

Professor Shirky’s presentation goes into the public good generated by the social distribution of news online. The public good comes from republication and reuse on a scale that was not feasible from just hard copy print alone.

People can share or forward commercially produced articles online very easily right now, but for how long is unclear.  If newspapers put news and information behind a pay wall, that would block republication and reuse. But then, as Shirky says, the internet enables non-commercial models for news and information production and distribution, including socially produced material. So whatever newspapers do, they will need to rebalance with these alternatives. But the uncertainty is whether the alternative models will be effective substitutes for accountability journalism. Shirky thinks a transitional problem is looming due to the rapid decline of the newspaper industry (particularly in the U.S.); and the uncertainty about the nature and length of time of the intervening period until the (or whether the) social media ecosystem has evolved to fill the gap, particularly in respect of local journalism.

The Genie is out of the bottle – and is driving convergence between computing, communications, media and devices

The subject line of this posting paraphrases the heading of a paper on telecommunications/communications recently published by Oppenheimer, US investment bank (HT: David Isenberg). To those who have not been tracking ICT and telecommunications trends for a while, David Isenberg coined the term “stupid network” in calling the transition from the ‘smart networks, dumb terminals’ Telecommunications Age, to ‘dumb networks, smart terminals’ of the Internet Age. Basically the message is that applications running over-the-top of underlying networks do not need “smarts” in the network provided by telcos. Just high bandwidth connectivity will do. This is the “dumb pipes” nightmare outcome that telecommunications vendors and network operators fear the most.

Indeed, a battle has been raging between telecommunications and computing industry interests for some years now. The telecommunications sector has a dream: “next generation networks”. Meanwhile, networked computing interest have lived their dream: the open Internet – or has Oppenheimer calls it, network-centric (NC) computing. NC is described as “….networking and sharing computer processing, storage and data, which can be accessed over the Internet using thin devices at the edge of the network” (page 25). Oppenheimer is calling the victory for NC computing. Oppenheimer summarise their analysis by saying “The migration to NC computing will…eventually lead to the break up of vertically integrated service providers along horizontal lines”. They support their case by pointing to the success of the iPhone, which in terms of its applications is separate to the cellular network.

Under a network-centric (NC) computing age, applications and smart devices have the advantage of global economies of scale. Applications and services innovation and deployment can happen much more quickly than services that are coupled to underlying network configurations. So these two forces at work – global economies of scale and rapid innovation development – are the most important dynamic that telecommunications service providers are likely to face over the next few years.

Oppenheimer point to a few examples of applications innovation in VoIP over mobile, such as Fring and Truphone. Fring makes it easy to connect to your favourite VoIP, social network or messaging application and WiFi hotspots. Truphone is a London-based but global provider of mobile VoIP – you can connect to Truphone’s social networking presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and flickr. Later this year Truphone is expected to launch a ‘Local Anywhere’ service where customers will be able to make and receive calls via a local number and at local rates wherever they are. Great for overseas travel! According to Oppenheimer, developments like that could potentially cannibalise telecommunications industry voice revenues (fixed and wireless) and text messaging revenues. Oppenheimer expect that the explosive growth in data traffic would provide some good news to network operators, but that in the longer-term carriers might be better off being transport wholesalers. Oppenheimer assume that carriers could anticipate a healthy share of applications and advertising revenues.

In other respects the NC value-chain is expected to evolve into a horizontally segmented structure with the three main layers being 1) service providers; 2) software companies; and 3) devices. Interestingly, Oppenheimer anticipate that software companies and telecommunications network providers will strive for an open mobile Internet to avoid being dominated by a monopoly operating platform.

Oppenheimer also expect carriers to continue with a strong presence in the enterprise market, providing integrated security, mission-critical execution, dedicated customer service and integration with other data systems.

Government 2.0 Taskforce is off to a great start

I was one of those who were impressed with the Australian Government’s decision to launch the Government 2.0 Taskforce (#gov2au) on 22 June 2009. The announcement came from Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Minister Tanner drew some leverage from another high quality gov2 initiative – the second PublicSphere held in Canberra on the same day.

My expectations

As someone with project leadership roles in participative consultation, can I say I’ve had many expectations. Oh yes, when it comes to drawing on multiple perspectives and values (tapping into the broad knowledge base of large groups of people, forging new awareness, better understanding, creative vision and pragmatic action) it all lies ‘out there’ in the crowd. I have known intuitively and know from experience that tapping into the wisdom of an organisation lies in cross-organisational coordination, co-operation and (when it really sings) collaboration.

The magic of Web 2.0 (interacting, sharing, innovating, creating and massive networking) makes organising the wisdom of the crowd much easier… and a much more powerful force. Potentially powerful enough to sit alongside the power institutions of the 20th century – Government and industry.

I’m also very aware that expectations among participants in public policy processes are diverse. The gov2au will be no different as is already evident in the postings and comments on the taskforce blog. Some see the taskforce as a vehicle to set government data free, others to improve e-services and e-accessibility. I too hope that the taskforce meets those expectations.

Some, including the Chair, Nicholas Gruen, see the taskforce as having a transformative role where the business of government is gone about in new ways. It’s that expectation that gets me really excited about the potential of this taskforce. For, despite the tranformative potential of Web 2.0 (and other cultural, social and economic drivers of change – it’s not all about Web 2.0) to change the way people work and how organisations function, the most fundamental change is cultural. Cultural change that embraces facilitation, transparency and shared outcomes. Change of that nature calls for the agencies of government to go about their internal and inter-agency practices in new ways.

btw, it’s great to see four of the taskforce members having already posted to the gov2au blog. The quality of comments to the postings are rich signals of the type of change I really hope the taskforce will become known for driving, more than anything else. For if the taskforce achieves that goal, all other expectations will be met over time.

Largest increase in expressing capability in history

Clay Shirky’s latest presentation is inspirational.

How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history

What is changing is that the people formally known as the audience (in broadcasting terms) or the user (in telecommunications terms) can connect to one-another to talk and ‘do media’. It’s these networks of inter-personal connections that is the driver of change.

The ‘Telecommunications Age’ was one of one-to-one communication. The ‘Broadcasting Age’ was one of ‘one-to-many’ content distribution. The ‘Networks of Inter-Personal Connections Age is ‘many-to-many’.

Those institutions that were in control are no longer. They can convene groups of networked people but cannot control them. Adapting to that change involves a mature realisation of that social phenomenon.

Radio business models, attention and hyper-influence

For some reason there was a bunch of news about radio matters yesterday, traversing the UK, USA and Australia. This was too much for me to resist. So this is a longer posting than usual, but hopefully of  interest.

Digital Britain

Firstly there is news from the Digital Britain Forum (having an online forum is at least something that Digital Britain has got right). In the latest posting, given the dominance of analogue radio over digital radio and the growth of radio content online (speech and music) a question is posed “Is there a case for broadcast Digital Radio?” It seems the Digital Britain final report to be released later this month will provide some sort of response to this question.

The comments in response to the posting make for interesting reading too. One was steadfastly a broadcast radio enthusiast (there is no viable alternative to radio for mass audience listening). Another from an internet enthusiast (people are moving to more personalised forms of entertainment). East is East and West is West, never the twain shall meet. Personally, my substitutes for radio are my iPod, early morning news on TV, digital radio on Foxtel and the Internet.

Why NPR is the future of mainstream media

The subject heading of this section is from yesterday’s Mashable . NPR (National Public Radio) is a non-commercial broadcaster in the USA. NPR seems to do a great job in sourcing and creating content for localised radio stations, helping to fill a growing local news and information void as traditional newspapers and broadcasters cut costs or exit the industry. Hyperlocal content is targeted a relatively small and discreet geographic spaces (eg. neighbourhoods, small communities). Hyperlocal news and information services could be sponsored by advertising that is highly relevant to local information users.

NPR is chasing social media. Their nprpolitics Twitter account has over 793,000 followers ranking it in the top 25 Twitter profiles. Their Facebook page has over 400,000 fans. NPR puts out podcasts, mobile phone applications and blogs and their own social network.

So NPR’s value proposition is allowing people to access content on their own terms. Of course being non-commercial seems to lend itself to being more risk-taking in terms of digital media than commercial media. Nonetheless, all media need to go where the attention is.

Comparing the Regulatory Models of Net-Radio with Traditional Radio

Andrea Baker (Monash University) has had an article with the subject as above published in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. In the introduction Baker notes that traditional radio is a linear system of mass communication that is domestic in scope, whereas net-radio (streaming over the internet) is a non-linear system of digital-networked information technologies that is international in scope. I support Baker’s emphasis on the globalised reach of net-radio as an important distinction, particularly given expectations around hyper-localism.

In terms of net-radio, Baker makes a distinction between online radio (regulated, traditional radio that have incorporated the internet into their business models) and net-only radio which webcasts exclusively over the internet and is generally unregulated. There are some interesting statistics on the net-radio reach with the USA accounting for over 42% of online radio stations in 2006. Australia hardly registers, although that is not to say Australian’s are not listening to USA-based or other international online radio. In comparison with net-only radio, well it was reported that there were about 5,000 net-only radio stations internationally by 2009 (still with the majority in the USA). That’s a significant difference to online radio.

Baker has an interesting section on regulatory pressures, including extensive reference to Australian regulation. Amongst other things there seems to be a realisation that the internet is adding substantially to competition and diversity and provides increased flexibility. Recognising the fast and unpredictable nature of change, Baker concludes by coming out in support of designing regulations that are flexible: “policies should be flexible enough to compete with new technologies and cope in the modern business environment”.

Observations

Defining and measuring ‘influence’ in the digital/networked economy has become complex. The shift from mass media to personalised media is real. The shift from one-to-many to many-to-many is real. Media has become social and there are a whole bunch of new influencers. At the same time, media creation and distribution is both hyperlocal and hyper-distributed, depending on the user context (their location, activity, connectivity & social networks) and what they are paying attention to. In other words, information is likely be targeted by geography and context in order to get user attention. Media diversity considerations may go the same way, i.e not by platform (TV, radio, newspaper – or even by mobile or some other device) but by location and context.

In my view local will continue to be important, but the influence of highly distributed groups – where geography does not matter – is also expected to rise. Distributed groups define what is of interest to them. That’s why mainstream media outfits and internet start-ups are chasing social networks.