TrendAlert: Power To The People ? The Rise Of Social Publishing

Author: Marc Strohlein, Chief Agility Officer

This Briefing defines social publishing as content publishing that occurs within and among networked groups without mediation from formal publishing entities. It is best exemplified by blogs (Web logs) and wikis

- two forms that represent new 'any-to-any' publication models. Both are part of a trend toward user participation in content creation that permeates much of the Information Content (IC) Industry today. The Briefing places social publishing in the context of other trends such as the open source software movement and the ongoing disintermediation in the music industry. It provides examples of business applications of blogs by publishers and other enterprises, and examines the role of shifts in human behavior in creating the new models. For commercial content vendors, it uncovers some of social publishing's business opportunities and threats. For content deploying functions, the Briefing identifies the application of social publishing models in various parts of an organization, and the ease with which they can be deployed and leveraged. For Content Software Technology (CST) vendors, the Briefing shows that less is more for content-related IT products

- the simpler and more fun a tool is, the more likely it is to catch on.