February 24, 2005



The Road To Powerful Instant Vertical Communities: Personal Media Aggregators

 

Personal Media Aggregators are the road to create instant-vertical-communities by way of becoming fulcrum points around which news, commentary, discussion, and networking opportunities around a very specific topic, brand, celebrity or writer can become a cohesive aggregating force.
sunflower_age_2_by_sxn.jpg
Photo credit: Sorin Brinzei

Somewhere at the crossroad between personalized RSS news aggregators, of which a few have appeared during 2004, and what Marc Canter defined as DLAs or Digital LifeStyle Aggregators, that this new community-enabling technology finds it place.

Differently than DLAs, PMAs are not centered around your personal life. While Marc Canter envisioned tools that would have allowed the easy recording, management and access to personal image libraries, music, clips, preferred feeds and more, PMAs are centered around a product, a service, a company, a celebrity. PMAs bring together the different communication and interaction modes we have recently started using, allowing instant vertical communities to be rapidly created around them.


As I have stretched my view of RSS, blogs, wikis and real-time communication technologies, I see these tools not merely as deluxe information carriers but rather as flywheels around which communities of interest can be created in shorter time and with greater success than before.

Imagine providing opportunity for bulletin boards, members profile creation and sharing, and all that which would enhance the opportunities for the community to bond together around multiple thematic information channels and to be able to interact with itself at different richness levels (IM, text chat, blog comments, discussion list, forum, one-to-one audio and video chat, webcasts, etc.).

In simple words, the personl media aggregator allows a constituency to integrate and distribute selected news feeds, while aso bringing together vertical blogs, discussion forums, wiki spaces, social/business networking, instant messaging, 1-to-1 voice and video chat, webcasting venue, and a "protected" P2P network for exchanging files in multiple ways. As a matter of fact the communication, exchange and community-supporting technologies that could be integrated in such a PMA could even be more.

But the potential of pushing the envelope of what RSS aggregators into cross-platform, self-contained applications (or web-based personalized mini-portals) has yet to see the light.

To facilitate the popularization of such new ideas it is always good to describe in as much detail as possible what one foresees ahead of the others, and let the blogosphere take your idea for criticism, challenge, support and refinement.

So, what would be a PMA (personal media aggregator) be like and what would it do for you that is not already possible?

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Readers' Comments    
2005-02-27 04:10:36

Dr.Mani

Robin, very interesting article. Thanks.

Two potential uses spring to my mind.

Building a PMA (or group of them) for clients would be an amazing way for businesses to gain loyalty - and keep a finger on the pulse of what their clients think about issues critical to their future.

And for people involved in multiple arenas of activity, online and off, a PMA could integrate all the networks into a single 'tool' or portal - making not just for ease and convenience of use, but also giving 'visitors' interesting insight into the other facets of one's personality and activities.

I started reading the article expecting to see a review of the tools already available to make this happen - but reading of the future potential of PMAs was a lot more exciting. Thanks again.

Dr.Mani



2005-02-25 11:57:54

Robin Good

On Feb.19th Stephen Downes wrote:

"Now I want to draw out from these descriptions two major elements that I think are probably definitive of community.

First of all, the idea that there's a network.

Now a lot of people capture that by saying people can interact, people communicate, there's a place for discussion.

But the central thing here is that there is, in some sense, a relation among the people; it's not mere proximity. But they are connected in some way.

And the second thing, and the important thing, in my mind, is semantics, the idea that these relations are about something, that the people in the community share a common interest, common values, a set of beliefs, an affinity for cats, or beekeeping.

...

...a theory of community, where a community is defined by three major components.

First, as a means of organizing input and experience.

Second, as a means of putting that experience into context. What does it mean to you here now?

And then third, and very importantly, as a means of taking what you've done, what you've remixed, what you're repurposed, and putting it out there so it can become part of someone else's meaning."

http://tinyurl.com/5sl3a



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posted by Robin Good on Thursday, February 24 2005, updated on Tuesday, March 14 2006


 

 

 

 

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