Social Media Convergence

It’s a mess right now. There’s no clear path, a myriad of integration tools and a lot of hype. But what is clear, is that there is a pain, a need in the market, and a goldrush in the works. It also means a paradigm shift for technologies, and tests for the agility and business fore-thought capabilities of social media players. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The longer version of 3M’s name is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, which pretty much spells out that they weren’t always in the adhesive tape business. Twitter casts a different light when viewed as a means to update other social media content.

There’s a lot of backlash against Twitter, and a lot of criticism of it’s lack of a profit model. But one thing Twitter has going for it is agility. It listens to its users, listens to the market and doesn’t have preconceived ideas of what it should be set in stone.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams gives a great TED talk on exactly this, and should be inspiration to all in terms of thinking creatively and openly at the start of a new phase on social media on the web.