Social Networks are the New Media

Myspace/News/Article/Robert Young
Found on: gigaom.com

No one can argue that MySpace has been the “it girl” for the past year. And the fact that she belongs to Rupert Murdoch only seems to have heightened the envy, and gotten everyone’s knickers in a twist. As a result, it seems that nearly every media company and venture capital fund on the planet is out on the dance floor stumbling over one another to see if they can identify the next breathless social networking beauty.

Yet in all this craziness, it would behoove those looking into this space to step back for a moment, take a deep breath, and realize something fundamental… social networking is a micro-phenomenon of a much larger macro-trend that the Internet has spawned since its birth… digital self-expression. And today’s social networks (along with other forms of social media, like blogging and online video-sharing) are just the tip of iceberg when it comes to the long-term potential of digital self-expression.