Fragmentation is the keyword when it comes to social media discussion. Apparently all nodes are diverging. Creation of content, distribution and all the way to consumption, all possible points are diverging. We all know how blogs, wikis, and twitter/sms have forever changed the content creation dynamics. Now industry is asking the inevitable “what’s next” and “where is the order here”. I have been playing with visual flow to get my arm around emerging theme here.

Also Geoff Ramsey, CEO of emarketer, has made good attempt in picking underlying social media trends. Last year when we sat down to work out the MessageDance positioning, we bet on some of the same trends highlighted by Geoff. User content is the new ad format. You will hear more about that theme in 2008.

Hoping to come back to some to these trends and analyze (and in the process clarify my own thinking) in future posts.