In the world of digital media, MediaSauce believes that six months equals six years.  New ideas and services are being introduced every day and can reach the masses relatively quickly.

Consider the many new ways introduced in the past few years that allow us to connect and engage with other people: blogs, Facebook, YouTube, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Twitter, and much more.  All of these are capturing our thoughts and reactions in a permanent record open to the rest of the world.

Over the past two weeks, I have been participating in a digital conversation through two different blogs.  The first was Atomization of Conversation at RedeyeVC and the other is at A VC entitled Web Discussions: Leaving the Instigator Out.  Both are wrestling with the same root issue: how the digitization of our conversations is fundamentally shifting how we interact and the value of those interactions.

Thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones (we just surpassed 3.3 billion mobile phone users - that’s 49% of the world’s population) and the ubiquity of the internet, you and I can quickly type up our thoughts and share with others either 1:1 or 1:many.  For those of us who swim in this digital stream on a regular basis, we can be exposed to thousands of conversational bits every day at almost real-time speed or by going back to them when we have time.

Now that more of us are producing content (blog posts, product reviews, photo uploads, etc.), we are seeking ways to stream this content to where our friends and colleagues are hanging out on the web.  Thus, the popularity of FriendFeed, which allows for people to aggregate this new content automatically into one spot.  It’s the digital stream of what’s happening in your life, as you live it, without you having to type the same information over and over.

Because our growing interconnectedness allows us to access more of each other’s thoughts and ideas, the line between us has become blurred. At this very moment, you and I share the same mental space, even though we’re far away in the physical world.   So who owns this idea?  Me?  You?  Anyone?

While I’m the one who typed it up, I pulled many different strands from an amalgamation of articles, books, conversations, and other sources my mind has connected with over the years.  I just happened to be at the nexus of that unique intersection.  

Without a doubt, this interconnectedness creates definite value - some for private benefit (profit) and some for public benefit (shared quality of life). So now that we have woven these individual streams of content into one tapestry, what’s its value and who gets paid for the value it creates?  

Judging from the lively, ongoing dialogue, it’s still open for discussion. What are your thoughts?  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 11:08 pm and is filed under blogging, change, social networks, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.