The Center of Gravity is Shifting

If there was a common question that ran through all of today's social media tour interviews it was this - what's next, Steve? One of the themes I kept hitting over and over is that the blogosphere is not where all the action is going to be in the months ahead. Yes, you read that right. Don't adjust your set.

For sure the b'sphere will continue to remain the largest galaxy in the social media universe in the short term. It's a major center of gravity that pulls people toward it. However, over the last few months a number other social media galaxies have rapidly risen to prominence. Take YouTube, digg and MySpace. These are just three examples, but they are drawing huge audiences. Richard Edelman is gushing over a fourth - StupidVideos.com.

As these constellations grow, some will become larger and more influential than the blogosphere. We're already seeing early signs of this and the power brokers will shift. For example, mobile jones notes that Technorati's coverage of MySpace is sorely lacking. Technorati also does little to help us mine and track YouTube, digg, StupidVideos.com and countless other smaller galaxies of consumer generated media. They focus on blogs.

With this important shift, there is a burgeoning need for tools that help us cement all of the content that we want to track from our favorite galaxies into a unified interface. Technorati and memetrackers like memeorandum play in this space, but they better evolve if they want to keep up. Search, RSS, and social tagging will be at the heart of this next great stage of Web 2.0 growth because they are enabling technologies. That's why if you're placing bets in this space, don't bet solely on blogs. Keep your eye on the expanding universe.

Technorati Tags: Digg, Memetrackers, Technorati, Blogs, Tags, Tagging, memeorandum