Robert Young on Social Networks

Robert Young has another guest post at GigaOM, this time on social networks being the new media.

From his post:

"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.

In many ways, the art-form of self-expression has become the “new media”, and social networks are their distribution channels.

So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of “cultural products”.

Also:
Robert Young: Future TV