The currencies of social media:

As search, bookmarking and messaging sites become more efficient at finding the actual source of information people who exhibit traits below will begin to see a bigger reward or their efforts. At present, many sites make a living off of linking to the people who actually built the icons, menus, e-books and themes that we are all downloading. This is largely due to the relatively slow speed with which Google identifies and promotes what is recently posted. As a result, sites like Smashingmagazine get loads of traffic and they guy who builds menus or themes gets a trickle. That is, the people who cut and paste make money and the people who do all the work get nothing. Sound familiar? This is changing and Smashing, for one, knows it. This can be seen by observing the increase in the number of guest posts that have the tutorial, menu or theme hosted at their site. As this continues, Other assets besides linking will emerge:

• Intelligence – A display of intelligence demonstrates the ability to add value to a community. Such people can produce content and applications that attract people who are interested in seeing the direction that things will take.




• Insight – The ability to look deep inside what is pulsing through the information streams and synthesize new ideas from it. This makes ones content valuable and memorable. A person who displays this trait with regularity gains a loyal following.




• Humor – Everyone like a joke, many people are checking social media sites at work and could use a good pick me up. To always be about work can make Jane a dull girl.




• Knowledge – In the social media space it seems that 90% of the commentary is, speculation and observation. There is very little knowledge to be had. This is partly because the science, if you can call it that, is still young. Unfortunately, other areas suffer from a lot of content rehash and it is not uncommon for 10 blogs plus Digg, Delicious and Reddit to all be pointing to the same page that actually contains the actual information. If you want authority, show some experience and what you have learned.




• Prescience – If you have insight, knowledge and intelligence you should be making some attempts to predict the future. Engadget, technorati and the rest are highly trafficked sites with well-funded design but if you look under the hood, many times you’ll find an author with little more or even less experience than you have. Sites that can show a willingness to estimate what the future holds and can do so creatively and insightfully don’t have to be right. The read is reward in itself and contains it’s own intrinsic value.




• Brevity – No one knows how many web pages there are now. Most of us stopped counting at ‘too many’. Because of this, if you can make your point in one sentence rather than one paragraph, then do so.




• Creativity – The good ideas have to come from somewhere. Revolutions and new ideas are not simply a matter of peeling away the layers of an onion. Creativity requires a synthesis of disciplines that many ‘me too’ blogs and sites are unwilling to venture forward with because they are too concerned with traffic and monetization models.

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