Social Media Now: Widgets, TV and Money

Bits and pieces this morning from the world of social media….At Mashable Pete Cashmore tells us about the launch of Spinlets, a service that offers an API to allow users to widgetize social websites. The service is the first product from a company called urSpin. Cashmore cites a number of already launched or soon to launch competitors like Webwag, which offers service it calls widgets on demand.

I am increasingly convinced that the future of social media is a decentralized one. The, dare I say it, Web 3.0 cosmology won’t revolve around fixed hubs like MySpace and Facebook but around user created hubs built on white label private networking platforms like Ning or mutated version of current Ajax homepage platforms like Netvibes.  In that universe widgets will be the new platform for web services and its worth watching all the companies who make widgets, support widget making, track widgets, and collect metadata from widgets that have been distributed

Will Google sue? Yesterday Broadcasting & Cable reported  that the CW network is working on a show with the working title of Viewser that will be built around user content posted to the Web at large. The user-generated or semi-pro content model for TV hardly radical or new. Shows like America’s Funniest Home Videos have long been built around user generated content. From American Idol to the Arthur Godfrey show, amateur hour talent contests have been a mainstay of traditional media programming. And of course MTV’s The Real World predates the Netscape IPO by nearly three years. According to B&C producers are considering ways to make Viewser interactive. But  successes for interactive television remain few and far between (I vote for the NFL’s instant replay rule as interactive TVs only real success, at least other than home shopping TV). TV networks and producers can build entertaining programming around user-generated content. But also long as they are locked into the traditional television platform they can’t turn user TV into true social media in which contribution, participation and tagging are the entertainment, not the content.

From the Duh Department….Steve Rubel commented yesterday on a Market Watch story that said that Rocketboom, the pioneering vlog, is looking at new revenue models—including possible paid programming–because, as it turns out, TV advertisers prefer mega audiences to niche ones. So much for all the buzz last year about Rocketboom’s stratospheric CPMs. We all know niche TV can survive with small audiences, but even low rated cable talk shows like Larry King’s or Nancy Grace’s reach four times as many people as Rocketboom, which reaches 200,000 according to Market Watch. The problem for properties like Rocketboom, as well as for almost all podcasts, is that the compete in areas where traditional media already does a good job. Rocketboom is a general interest, traditional-TV style property that is merely distributed differently. Its producers have to convince advertisers not to spend elsewhere but to spend on Rocketboom instead. In that scenario size matters. If you want to make it with ad-supported media that reaches small audiences you better serve a high value audience (billionaires or people with specialty interests) with critical information that audience members can’t get elsewhere.

What’s disturbing about the Rocketboom story is the lack of innovation in business models it reveals. Its the same old, same old: If you can’t make it selling ads then try to charge for content or you sell services (the Rocketboom team is making corporate videos and doing client work for John Edwards). If you want to sell advertising in niche properties you need to assemble a network of niche properties. User generated and semi pro media continues to dismantle the programming paradigms and distribution networks of traditional media without creating new business models to support the alternative.

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