While there has been a nearly infinite amount of talk about Web 2.0—like the rise of social networks, the emergence of new models of mediated online social interaction (like Twitter and Facebook)—the bedrock of social media seems relatively unchanged. Blogs are still pretty much stuck in a Web 1.0 timewarp, limited to the now-tired model of chronological posts with embedded comments and a variety of widgets in the margins that hint at new forms of sociality (like MyBlogLog, Sphere, Technorati, or live chat). The rapid adoption of RSS readers suggested that even in the Web 1.0 days, people were dissatisfied with the the difficulties related to experiencing blogs as they are natively published. Now, the rise of Web 2.0 and its significantly accelerated notions of social interaction represent a challenge to the basic principles of so-called “social media.” Why are blogs so conservative in their form and function? Is there something inherent in the model, or is it the specific players—Blogger, Six Apart, and Wordpress—who have fallen into an unintentional entente, where all have tacitly agreed not to innovate in the social direction? Meanwhile, we see a trend where faster-paced tools (like Friendfeed, Alert Thingy, and Twitter) seem to be spiriting away the most social aspect of blogs, the discussion in the comments. If this goes on, will blogs become an antisocial wasteland, basically reduced to being a publishing platform? While new commenting systems like Disqus and Intense Debate attempt to bridge this commenting gap, we are also seeing the arrival of video-based systems like Seesmic, that seem to offer a higher modality of immediacy and simplicity. Can this hybridized pastiche of different tools actually meet the growing needs of users for a richer social experience related to finding and sharing media? Is there a new sort of model of social media that will likely emerge in the near term?

Presentation files: Better Media Plumbing for the Social Web Presentation.ppt