The online media platforms of broadcasters and newspaper publishers have been integrating social media into their channels for some time now. Integration takes on many forms including offering space for comments, providing web widgets to share articles on the likes of Facebook, Twitter or del.icio.us. Recognising that people carry with them devices that can capture and distribute media in real-time, broadcasters and newspapers encourage people to send them information about events. Professional journalists have blogs and Twitter accounts. Indeed the inter-dependency between media and social media has evolved to the point that some say it is impossible to separate the two.

Media Futurist,Gerd Leonhard, describes the outlook for social networks and social media as an online operating system for individuals, for business and for government – for society generally. Whether you are communicating with people, looking for information or looking for other people or points of interest nearby, whether you are on the mobile web doing some purchasing or banking online, or some citizen journalism, whether your location enables information or advertisements about things of relevance to you to be pushed to your mobile device…you get the picture.

Portable identity tools such as Open ID, Facebook’s Facebook Connect and Google’s Friend Connect allow users to share and aggregate news and information from one web site to another. These developments are regarded as forerunners to technologies that enable portable identities creating (according to a Forrester analysis on the social web) shared social experiences – where socially connected people take their digital identities with them and interact with their social networks over the Web. Those shared experiences are more likely to be contextual situations where their reality is augmented and/or mixed through digital online technologies.

For people entering this space – possibly up to a third of the population over the next five years – content will not be king, nor will their voice calls be mainstays for the telecommunications industry. Content will remain important, but its placement will be contextualised and personalised. It will be relevant to and timely for individuals and their social networks. As Gerd Leonhard says, content will be embodied, packaged and curated in ways that offer value to people. That’s the rationale behind Google’s Social Search – this posting by Mahendra Pasule explains why. I like the terms used by Mahendra too, particularly social relevancy. I feel we will see that term becoming a mantra for social media value-adding strategies.

For more information on value generators see media Futurist Gerd Leonhard’s Future of Social Media presentation delivered at PICNIC ‘09 in Amsterdam back in September 2009. I found the 30 minute video to be time well spent.

The direction that social media/media is heading in is not cross-platform. The operating framework is as a social platform, a shared digital media space. The ‘community hub’ will not be a physical location as such, it will be a socially networked space, where content and services are socially relevant in terms of who and what people are connected to, and their context at the time.

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.

After noting good comments on the Web about Morgan Stanley (MS) Internet analyst, Mary Meeker’s Economy & Internet Trends presentation, I had a look at it. It’s worth a flick through. For those not so interested in financial data, can I suggest you start on slide 28. Main points of interest are:

• Mobile Internet usage is and will be bigger than most think (i.e they agree with Cisco’s forecasts).
• Telcos will face serious challenges in managing incremental traffic.
• The mobile applications development ecosystem has disrupted the walled garden carrier portals.
• Improvements in social networking and mobile computing platforms are fundamentally changing the ways people communicate with each other and ways that developers/advertisers/marketers reach consumers.
• Location information changes everything: where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go – they all change once we merge location and the Web.

Eric Schonfeld’s posting on TechCrunch is also worth a read. Worth noting in particular is that “She [Meeker] singles out the mobile industry as the one where both the most opportunity will be found and disruptions will occur over the next five years. Moreover, she suggests that the U.S. is poised to lead the transition in mobile to a Web-centric model. (I totally agree). Interestingly, she points to the introduction of the first Android phone by T-Mobile, not the launch of the iPhone, as the key inflection point for the coming era of the mobile web.”

While I agree that the mobile ecosystem in the U.S is moving to a Web-central model, I am not sure that the U.S. can claim leadership in that transition. For example, Japan is about eight years ahead of the rest of the world in mobile commerce (slide 48).  Australia is also a witnessing a similar transition to a mobile Web era, particularly in the way people communicate with each other.

Business model innovation

Ever heard of Sonos? Based in the USA, Sonos & their partners provide the means to stream or download music from around the world, as well as hooking up to your own music stored on your computer. Using peer-to-peer mesh wireless networks, you can have music distributed to multiple rooms in your house. Currently available in North America and Europe, if you have Sonos you can access over 25,000 Internet radio stations, make up your own personalised radio station through an online service (eg. Last.fm) create your own playlists and access millions of songs online through online music service provider Rhapsody. Radio broadcasters with online channels can be accessed too – the platform provides another global channel for international players such as the BBC. Users can search by title, artist or genre. An obvious attraction is in not having to buy a CD again while having access to so much more choice.

Sonos seems to be a good example of a 21st century Internet business model. Sonos has an internationalised, horizontal business model providing technology coupled with content aggregation through partnerships and distributed over the top of broadband Internet infrastructure. Rhapsody too is a horizontal business player with web services open to third party developers. The consumer gets unbelievable choice. It’s legit. Professionals get paid – in fact given the potentially large customer base, profits from Sonos plays could be very lucrative. I understand that each time a subscriber listens to a song, the copyright holder gets US 1 cent. My understanding is that Sonos (and Rhapsody) revenue is from an ad-free subscription service. At about $12 US per month the cost seems reasonable.

Now, music online has been disruptive factor in the music industry for many years, but innovative plays keep coming. I feel that video and newspaper online business models could follow with Sonos-like business models too. As an avid consumer of news and information online, I would be happy to pay a subscription to an online aggregator so that I can access news and information from any device and from anywhere I am.

Innovative strategy

Mark Scott, Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has a posting called Media after Empire on Unleashed. It’s a very good read. But what I am particularly excited about is news that the ABC is creating widgets so that people can take ABC content and share it through their own social networks. Nice. As I’ve said before, social networks are a hub for news, information and communication for many people and I see no reason why that can’t go further to provide tailored entertainment to suit the preferences of individuals and their network of friends online.

There’s a lot about the ABC’s strategic thinking and emerging transformational strategies in Mr Scott’s posting. The ABC is striving to remain of relevance. Apparently the ABC is contemplating what life would be like for them in a world where viewers have 5,000 TV channels to choose from. Although Mr Scott says he does not have a pathway through to “…a more vibrant future for old media organisations”…and he knows of no one that does…he quite rightly observed that “the paths to the future are made not found [and there are] no solutions to be found in legacy thinking”.

Mr Scott comes across as a quite cynical of the News Corp strategy to figure out ways to make hay through charging for content…while staying in control. The strategy has parallels with the fall of Rome… or at least that is Mark Scott’s view.

Here is what firstdogonmoon though of it -

Henry Jenkin’s blog of his interview with S. Craig Watkins resonated with my own passion about the role that social media is playing in restoring social capital in everyday lives. I will post a few blogs on this and related topics over the next few weeks. In future postings I’ll also be expressing my views on the role sociology has in gaining a better understanding and clarity about all of this.

The main thrust of this posting is to contrast the destructive role that TV has played in regard to social capital, with the role that social media is playing in generating social capital.

To begin with allow me to clarity what I mean when using the term ’social capital’. I’m sure there are any number of interpretations but for me what get’s my juices flowing is the quality and ease of connections that bind people and communities together. I’m referring to the ability of people to connect with others, to share things and to express themselves. The social glue that’s forged is based on mutual trust and reciprocity.

While the 20th century was an age of transformative technological and economic change and a  rise in corporate institutional power over people in developed and developing countries, it was also a time of a great winding back of the social ties that bind friends and families together. Now, there are a whole bunch of factors behind that such as suburbanisation and geo-physical division between home and work, household and family and play and civic activities; both parents in the workforce; the diaspora associated with globalisation and the relative ease and low cost of travel… and the role of the media. With the separation of home from work and shopping and so on, there have been far fewer opportunities for neighborliness, the forging of mutual trust and reciprocity that comes from regular social interaction. Social dislocation lies behind some of the feelings of distrust and loose relationships between employees and employers and in the political process and the everyday lives of people. There other factors too but that’s enough to paint the picture.

The role that media has played in the weakening of social capital has been through reducing people to passive, socially isolated consumers of content. Watkins spoke of sociologist Robert Putnam’s findings about TV watching, in particular that it “comes at the expense of nearly every social activity outside the home, resulting in the erosion of social capital”. That is not always the case of course. Major sporting events televised live are often shared with groups of people. But the isolating nature of TV that I refer to makes up the bulk of viewing time.

And so to the clarity that Watkins brings to understanding what attracts so many people to computer and mobile screens in the 21st century. A common perception among digital immigrants is that time spent with small digital screens is unsocial. Watkins found that time on digital screens is “first and foremost a social activity”.  Instead of “screen time” being a social dislocation, computing screen time is, increasingly, time to connect with others, share things and to express yourself. Time spent connecting via a mobile or social network site is time spent in expression and sharing. Time spent on mobiles and online is time spend creating, shaping and influencing content.

Watkins suggest that “…if network TV is to have a meaningful future it will have to permit its audience to not only access content across multiple platforms but also encourage audiences to shape and influence content, too”. The operative action here is being permissive.  That means letting go of control and going with the flow. Letting go of control brings new challenges to maintain the relationship…like forging mutual trust and reciprocity. TV must go social to survive. I suspect there are similar challenges for other 20th century institutions.

Interesting news item from yesterday – two girls from Adelaide who were trapped in a drain called for help by updating their status on Facebook using a mobile phone. Some say this one comes in the category “you could not make this up”‘. Others – like Don Tapscott – would probable say this comes under “digital natives think differently”.

Now, as I understand, the two girls (aged 10 & 12) opted to seek out help from their social network instead of going straight to the authorities (eg. phoning ‘000′) because they wanted to avoid getting into trouble with their parents. Still, there are some important messages here, this one from Laurel Papworth:

“Incredibly important today is understanding how social networking protects our children. There is stuff they can’t tell a parent or a teacher or the police but they can’t bottle up any more. So they tell their friends, they tell people they play online games with, they write anonymously on websites full of emo-angst and they tell forum moderators and game GMs, who understand and ‘get them’. Expect to see lots more “we should’ve seen it coming” from adults waking up to teens pushing out warnings on online communities. It keeps them safe in the absence of an understanding adult”.

From my perspective – and drawing on Don Tapscott’s knowledge of these things – the girls had trust in their social network, more trust than in dealing with authority figures. Seems to me like another indicator of the central role that social network services play in the lives of digital natives.

Looking at this from anther perspective, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo all have age restrictions that limit access to those aged 13 or 14 and above. Such policies no doubt reflect the concerns that many have about social network site risks. Thing is, the reality is different. According to a UK study reported in August 2008, age restrictions do not stop many children from participating. A spokesperson for the UK research outfit said that “Children are at the vanguard of the social networking phenomenon, using sites such as Facebook and Bebo in the same way other generations used the telephone”.  True for Australia too. The ACMA’s Click and connect: Young Australians’ use of online social media 02:Quantitative research report found that:

• the internet is a regular part of everyday lives of children and young people aged eight to 17 years
• both frequency and length of use increase with age
• young people of high school age (12 to 17) years used the internet on average 6.3 days per week for an average of 2.9 hours per day
• the use of social networking services increases dramatically between the ages of eight to 17.

Plenty of room for thought here, not only about what digital natives do now that is so different, but what implications lie ahead for institutions and social interaction.

You may recall that I’ve posted a number of times on rise of ‘new influencers’ in social media. So the seminar on The Future of Influence held last Tuesday was not to be missed. Held in San Francisco and Sydney simultaneously (linked via Skype Video) there was a lively bunch of speakers, panellists and audience interaction. I’m putting up my notes from the summit in this posting along with some info about social media and influence that came my way subsequently. I’ve also drawn on the Twitter hashtag #foi09 used for the seminar as another reference in putting this posting together.

The event used to called The Future of Media, with the name change reflecting where marketing and content business interest now lies…or perhaps should lie. Interestingly, the name change resulted in a down-shift in participation in Sydney and an uplift in San Francisco, an outcome that Ross Dawson put down to “things needing to be successful overseas before they are accepted in Australia”.   Interesting indeed. That sentiment is consistent with what Duncan Riley (editor of Inquistor) has said about Australia being about five years behind the USA in the use of social media.

Anyway, here are some messages that came out of the seminar:

• another reminder of the importance of digital media literacy: find good info online (good as in credible, accurate and believable) by looking into what others say about the author or the posting, how many people have bookmarked the item, how many people liked the posting; and for building personal learning networks online
• the community is becoming more influenced by itself than by “leaders” or top-down, push media
• moving away from push media and replacing audience measurement with measuring influence, advertisers are particularly interested in the ability to inspire action.  Advertisers need to define what behaviour they want to influence and measure that, and be actively engaged in what the community is saying in social media
• Government interest in social media is in what can be done to move their policies and ideas. Politics is providing a learning ground for the effectiveness of social media influence that will in turn influence what business does in social media([and I would add in government agencies)
• effective engagement in social media is about understanding the target community context and the people in the community, and that requires skills and abilities in sociology and psychology
• broadcasters are becoming more reliant on receiving content from social media (eg. Twitter & YouTube) and re-distributing it relative to generating and distributing their own content
• charging for online content is likely to shift more attention to social media, public media and sponsored media
• developments in the semantic web and social media content aggregation will drive moe personalisation of media (that combine/integrate professional and social content)
• tools to search with on social media include: Google Alert, Google Trends, Google Blogs, Facebook Lexicon, Tweetfeel, TwitterCounter, theDailyInfluence, SocialMention, Wotnews and Technorati.
• techniques to gauge how influential people are include the size of their social graph, follower/friends counts and activity levels and blog post comments.

Being a social media summit there has been a lot put out about the event already. Examples are from Ross Dawson, Mick Liubinskas and Xavier Vespa.

In some developments over the course of today, TechCrunch posted about identifying the most influential and connected Twitter users. The article has some more data on the amazing speed in Twitter take-up over the last few months. The Web Ecology Project published a report  called Analysing Influence on Twitter where influence on Twitter is defined as “the potential of an action of a user to initiate a further action by another user”.  Actions include retweets, replies, mentions and attributions. On the basis of new methodology applied by The Web Ecology Project, mashable is more influential than CNN, but news outlets (regardless of follower count) influence large amounts of followers to republish their content to other users.

Finally, I met a number of interesting people at the summit, including Tim Martin. Tim is the director of 2 Sticks Digital Marketing, a Melbourne-based consultancy providing advise on online community building and engagement and other things. Have a look around Two Sticks web site to get a feel for digital marketing in practice.

Government 2.0

There was a publicsphere event held in Sydney today, see #nswsphere on Twitter. I viewed Premier Rees presentation over the live video stream hosted by the NSW Parliament. Premier Rees announced a new information sharing policy initiative as part of the NSW Government’s commitment to fostering an ‘Open Government’. One particularly interesting observation from the Premier was that one of the main challenges in achieving greater openness in government is to overcome the culture of secrecy and control in government agencies. Again, interesting indeed.

A couple of recent developments prompted this posting. One was this New York Times piece on why teens are not attracted to Twitter. The other was to share with you another positive Telstra experience on Twitter that I had last week, and to share some other observations about Twitter.

I’ll start with my own experience, with a little background first. I have some history now, having signed up on Twitter as @conem just over a year ago now. In that time Twitter has grown about 10 fold from an early adopter crowd to almost being a mainstream social media service. As of this morning I am following 767 tweeple and 772 are following me.

Readers of this blog may recall I had a positive experience with @BigPondTeam some time ago. I was treated to a similar experience last week. I found an odd item on my latest Telstra bill, a charge of $2.28 for “Dial-up Internet Calls Telstra”. The thing is, we have broadband, not dial-up…I was left scratching my head. It just did not stack-up. While it was not much money, I decided not to let the matter lie. So I tweeted about it. About one hour later (6.37 pm) I had a response from @BigPondTeam agreeing with me that the charge looked odd and asking if they could help out. They surely did.

@BigPondTeam managed to find out the calls were to subscription TV operator Foxtel number to order Box Office movies. Eight calls were made between 4 am and 5 pm over the same day. In my response to @BigPondTeam I said that it was weird on two counts – we have never ordered a Box Office movie from Foxtel, and there was no one awake or at home when the calls were made! Anyway, @BigPondTeam said that was all they could do. We would need to contact Foxtel to resolve the matter they said. Still, got to be impressed with @BigPondTeam!

I tried @Foxtel but while they had some followers they had not posted any Tweets. I thought, why be on Twitter and not tweet? So I rejected that move. Then I shuddered. The next step was to make a phone call and go through the hassle of computerised directions in the hope that I could find a human to talk to. Actually, as it turned out I managed to speak to a human at Foxtel without any drama and got the matter resolved quickly. The problem with the dial-up calls put down to a software problem. A refund will be made the man said. Still, I wonder how much dosh Telstra has made overall from software-glitch dial-up calls for Foxtel movies?

Now, back to the teenager thing. There are teenagers on Twitter. Some follow me. But there is a rule of thumb when it comes to teenager communication preferences – literally. As the NYT’s piece noted, “Kristen Nagy, an 18-year-old from Sparta, N.J., sends and receives 500 text messages a day. But she never uses Twitter”.  At 500 texts a day, who would have the time to do anything else? I’ve managed 1684 tweets in 14 months and I am one of the power users.

It is common to have text-like experiences on Twitter – conversations flicking back and forth. They are often good fun. The relationship side is important. Some personal, some professional, some that are weak ties. One-to-one communication is available through a direct messaging option. But the main benefit for me in using Twitter is tapping into and contributing to the rich information stream (mostly about communications and media trends). Oh, and getting my Telstra problems sorted out. I put up comments and links about seminars I’m attending or blog posts or news items online I have read or viewed, or photos or videos just taken or viewed and so on. The thing is, so do many others that I connect to on Twitter. I can track particular topics or events by hash tags that are used (eg. #gov2au for the Government 2.0 Taskforce). The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Question and Answer show uses #qanda for real-time Twitter interaction. Nothing beats Twitter for real-time information.

I use a third party application called TweetDeck to categorise my Twitter stream into everyone I follow, mentions of me, most interesting or core groups and favourite hashtags. I have TweetDeck on my PC and on my iPhone. I have columns for links to status updates of my friends on Facebook. My tweets show up in my Facebook and FriendFeed streams, as do others I’m connected with.

Bit.ly is a service that lets you shorten, share and track your links on Twitter.  I can track how many tweeps (people with a mutual following) have clicked in the links I put up.

There are third party applications that measure Twitter influence. As Ross Dawson has said, influence on Twitter is not just a matter of how many tweeple are following you. Influence is measured by the frequency that you tweet and retweet others postings, the replies and direct messages that you send, and your use of hash tags to help others track stuff.  Influence is about your reach – how many people is it possible for you to reach, say if you take all of the connections with others you are connected to into account. Check out your Twitter influence on Twinfluence.

Here is a link to a good article in the New York Times by David Pogue  about tools for Twitter that a colleague passed on to me.

In short, I can understand why teenagers prefer text messaging. They mainly just want to interact with their mates. Whereas Twitter is about being in the information stream…and for getting excellent customer service.

Well, it seems to me that Rupert Murdoch hasn’t realised that content is no longer scarce. Content is created in many places and the marginal cost of distributing it is close to zero. According to Universal McCann’s Wave 4 report, social networks are becoming the dominant platform for content creation and content sharing. That said, I do think there is value in professionally produced content that people will be willing to pay for. Kevin Kelly has an excellent piece on eight value generators: immediacy, personalisation, interpretation, authenticity, embodiment, patronage and findability. There is plenty of incentive there to motivate people to part with some money – as long as its not complex or uncertain. There is some work to do on formulating the right mix of subscription and transaction charges.

And the question remains, how much are people willing to pay? Moreover, the same question may well apply to TV (see the Razorfish Digital Outlook Report 2009 chapter TV at a crossroads. After all, advertising revenue is moving from broadcasting to online as well, as well as the fragmentation problem from multiple channels, time shifting and so on.

I came across a video of a US panel session on newspapers & the future of media via Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist. Click on the Gerd link to view the first 10 minutes of the session, or view the full one hour session (or part thereof) on FORA.tv.

The event was hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California. All four panellists – from a newspaper, community funded reporting start-up, media aggregation start-up and academia – agreed that the traditional newspaper business model is toast but that journalism will remain a force. I’ve noted a good level of interest about trends in the newspaper sector and the future of journalism more generally. The panellists have an excellent knowledge of the media and cover some interesting emerging and potential developments. Can I recommend the full program to those of you with such an interest.

The newspaper representative said that the old newspaper model of 80% revenue from advertising and 20% from circulation is certainly dead. But he seems to think that print will be around for a while yet. Other interesting comments made by panellists were that:

• people still want content - people feel more connected to the community through access to content - it is the packaging that is changing
• there are likely to be different models to suit different audiences
• professional journalists can collaborate with citizen journalists, adding value in the process
• other forms of professional content, citizen journalism and consumer interaction are likely to focus on personalising media aggregation and sharing.

The community funded content outfit is Spot Us, an online “market place where independent reporters, community members & news organisations can come together & collaborate”. Kachingle is the start-up exploring new ways to monetise content on the basis of personal selection/preference aggregation.

Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce member Martin Stewart-Weeks has put up a really good posting on the culture shift necessary to thrive in the Web 2.0 world. Martin’s posting revealed a deep knowledge of the societal issues involved in online engagement, issues that are far more challenging than designing or selecting Web 2.0 tools.

The challenges and opportunities outlined in Martin’s posting are challenges and opportunities for citizens and lobbyists as well as for public servants and policy makers. Here is a taste of what he had to say:

“As governments and the public sector start to do the same [get value from Web 2.0], they will encounter the same challenge as others have, which is that these new tools don’t just change structures and processes, they change behaviour as well. In order to thrive in this kind of world – connected, contingent, collaborative – you have to adopt a certain set of behaviours that are similarly open, interactive and engaged. The obvious conclusion is simple, but demanding – no change without culture shift.

This is the big challenge underlying the ability for governments to make the most of this new way of working and these new tools for democratic conversation. If they want to use them to improve the design of public services, to empower citizens to use information to create new services themselves or to harness more powerful combinations of knowledge and expertise for better policy, then they have to embrace the consequent shift of culture and behaviour too.

As it turns out, this is much harder than it sounds in the public sector, although it’s true that it’s turned out to be much harder in the corporate sector too (even though they might not always admit it). As the Issues Paper points out, we’ve spent quite some time defining what it is that constitutes the requisite behaviour from a public servant, including things like impartiality, balance, fairness and the absence of partisan political advocacy.

The problem, though, is that these definitions were shaped in a world fundamentally different to the one which ‘government 2.0’ is ushering in, including especially the speed with which issues emerge and change, the level of transparency about government thinking and activity and the complexity of the ideas and inputs now clamouring not just to be heard but to be influential.

Somehow we have to find a way for public servants to be able to engage with this world on terms that are both satisfying and safe. Assuming that the twin extremes of prohibition and unfettered licence are unlikely to work, we have to set about finding some new territory somewhere along that spectrum that is fit for purpose.

I have no idea where that point on the spectrum is. My inclination is to be more permissive than not. But perhaps more useful than any single attempt to pick the new sweet spot is to encourage a process of active and energetic experimentation that will get us closer to that outcome, and more quickly, than simply sitting around talking about it.”

Martin went on to say that “For the public sector too, the rising demand for innovation in policy development, program design and delivery and organisational practice is enabled, and sometimes accelerated, by the new tools themselves. In that sense, the rapid spread of use and influence by social networking technologies, and the habits of mind and culture that they reflect and reinforce, is becoming an inescapable feature of public innovation in its own right.”

I found Martin’s description of Web 2.0 to be a good supplement the Issues Paper released by the Taskforce earlier this month. Although the paper provided a good overview of the aim and benefits of Government 2.0, there was one sticking point for me. To say that “The central theme of Web 2.0 is moving away from point to point communications and towards many to many communication and collaboration” just does not sit right with me. For a start the term ‘point to point’ is a technical one and not explained in the paper. Point to point communication is defined by some as direct communication between two end points not using the internet (such as a two-way telephone call). And by others it is used in a broadcasting sense, say like radio communication between two fixed stations. As for me, the central theme of Web 2.0 is participation & interaction. Pure and simple.