Web 2.0 Convergence

Have you heard of Mingleverse? It's one of the newest Media 2.0 trends.

Mingleverse Laboratories Inc. (www.mingleverse.com) is a multiple award winning start-up company providing participants with the newest form of online and mobile communications.

The National Hockey League Vancouver Canucks are one of the first organizations to use Mingleverse to create virtual meeting spots where fans can wander around and chat in 3-D sound.

Up to 50 people can can convene in virtual meeting spots and interact with a 3-D voice, audio and visual telecommunications as though they were meeting together in real life.

Mingleverse allows participants to share presentations with people in the room, show videos and share slide presentations and other content.

Along with sports teams, the idea has attracted the attention of Disney Interactive Studios who see potential for giving kids a way to met with their favorite Disney characters. Howard Donaldson, Disney's Vice President of Studio Operations said," I think it is something really unique and it represents the future of how people are going to communicate and collaborate."

The MingleRoom  service delivers the first "Immersive Social Communications Experience" with natural, human interactions through the use of immersive 3D voice, sound, graphics and video.

MingleRooms are available for everyone that wants to engage others personally from across the city or from across the world in a way that feels just as real as being there!

MingleRooms can be configured instantly to accommodate from 2 people to groups of up to 50 people simultaneously - all through a simple click of web browser and without having to leave home.

Within the first six weeks of its operations more than 10,000 mingles had been hosted at the site.

Mingles can be open to the public or they can be invitation only. Hosts can determine if they will be free or charge an admission. Mingles also chart the carbon emissions saved by the virtual meetings.

The company which is privately funded, recently received seed money from Telefilm Canada for its upcoming uVenu projects for entertainment-based mingles.

Stand by for more developments!

Who would have thought that America's biggest and in some ways most traditional administrations would be one of the first megalopolis' to have a Facebook site for its Office of Emergency Management (OEM)?

Earlier this year, Mayor Blumberg encouraged all New Yorkers to sign in at: facebook.com/NYCemergencymanagement

NYC's OEM established a Facebook site to advise New Yorkers about the importance of planning for emergencies like severe storms, heat waves, pandemics, etc.

The site provides "Tips of the Week" that encourages folks to become involved in the city's emergency programs such as Block Captains. Here's a recent T"ip of the Week:"

OEM urges business owners to back up their contact information for employees, customers, and suppliers. Plan ways to communicate with your clients so that you can continue to serve them during and after a disaster. Store important documents in waterproof containers and keep second copies in an off-site location.

This site is a real trail blazer as it shows how effectively the New Media can be used to communicate immediately with a wide arrange of audiences who might normally not get such direct information.

Lululemon Athletica, self-described as a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company, with over 115 stores in North America and Australia is embracing social networking in a big way to keep lines of communication open with potential and current employees.

Lululemon's on-line community manager, Carolyn Coles, says. "having the ability to use Twitter, Facebook, bloging, and Flikr helps to keep everyone connected at every level and really elevates internal communications."

The company encourages all of its stores to set up their own Facebook and Twitter pages. Employees can help educate each other online, share ideas, post stories and help new hires feel like they are part of the company.

Given that many retail employees are in the 18-24 age bracket, social networking is second nature to them. These people have been on Facebook and MySpace since they launched.

Social networking is also a way for employees to be seen as unique individuals in a company's eyes. Each time a person uses a blog or posts something on Facebook, they leave a footprint and establish a connection with the employer. Some say it's the way of the future, for innovators like Lululemon, its going on right now.

In these tough new economic times, retailers who don't use the New Media do so at their own peril.

Colleges and universities across the U.S. are hiring tenure track professors in mass communications with an emphasis on the new media. The Department of Journalism and Central Michigan University (CMU) recently advertised for such a position to begin in August 2010.

CMU is looking for a candidate with a distinguished professional record in new media and an MA or MFA with an emphasis in new media and university teaching experience in a mass-communications-related field. Candidates must have a demonstrated commitment to teaching introduction to new media, web design, digital media production, graphic design and other courses as appropriate to the needs of the department and the candidate's interest and expertise.

Strengths are required in news/editorial and/or advertising; ability to teach senior-level courses in new media; significant professional experience in new media is preferred for consideration in the academic track. ?

In Fayetteville, Arkansas, comments posted by an Arkansas student on Twitter while three schoolmates were being investigated for an alleged infraction has prompted a first for the athletic department. The student has been punished for violating the school's new social networking guidelines.

"This is the first time since we've had a policy on social networking that we've had a penalty associated," Athletic Director Long said. "I think prior to the policy, we had some that were borderline and could've been punished. But this is the first one that falls under our policy."

Arkansas' social networking guidelines were put in place in time for the fall semester. Every athlete on campus was required to sign and date the paperwork.

"We have the policy and students sign that they've read the policy and we explain the policy, so I think we've taken a very proactive stance," Long said. "We've educated them in advance. But do I think this will serve as a message to the rest of our 460-something student-athletes? Yes."

Like it or not, folks, the New Media is here to stay. Innovative business and government agencies will embrace it or become irrelevant in the minds of potential clients, staff and students.

What do the Roman Catholic church and the city of New York have in common? Both are using the New Media to expand their audience reach.

Let's first look at how the Roman Catholic church is making use of the New media. According to a recent statement by Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, AZ, in the Catholic News Service, America's Roman Catholic church's great communications challenge today is to "keep the interest of people who have so many places to turn."

Bishop Kicanas argued that the church should not hesitate "to engage the modern digital technologies," which "can be vehicles for communicating." Given recent advances in communications technology, Kicanas noted that people today Twitter and blog, they e-mail, use Skype, Blackberries and iPhones, and choose Facebook partners.

"Communication, while enhanced by technology, rests on the power of the message and the authenticity of the communicator," he said.
"Technology facilitates the fundamental desire" people have to communicate and engage one another.

With "effective communications" as its theme, the June 24-26 meeting of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management examined the potential of a new universe of communications for the church.

Participants included Catholic bishops, educators, leaders in business, finance and philanthropy, and priests, sisters and lay leaders.

Bishop Kicanas described himself as a blogger of sorts. The online "Monday Memo" he writes weekly to the Tucson Diocese is presented as a kind of blog on their Web site and is sent out to an e-mail readership.

"People today want to be in the know," he said. "We live in an information society, a mass media culture." There are no secrets in the Twitter, cell-phone, Internet world," Bishop Kicanas said, "It is best and right to get out with the story as it is. That alone could tell the truth."

Bishop Kicanas urged the leadership organization to "help the church at every level to acquire and become proficient in communications and information technology" and to help it "develop interactive forms of communication that engage others, especially the young." Web sites move beyond providing information to inviting user participation.

"My Catholic Voice" is an Internet and wireless service primarily for young people between 18 and 35, Kicanas said, "It employs "the best Internet technologies and social networking capabilities" to share Catholic faith via what is called "Web 2.0."

Secondly, it's interesting to see how a metropolis like New York City NYC)is adapting to the New Media in it's commitment to reach out to new audiences.

Recently, the NYC Office of Emergency Management (OEM) announced its foray into the social media world with help from Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer Christopher Kelly and NYC News Channel 11's Larry Hoff.

NYC's Office of Emergency Management have established a Facebook site to be the official source for information about emergency events and important City services. Citizens can sign up to receive emergency notifications through phone calls, emails, or text messages.

NYC's Office of Emergency Management are sending out tips like these:

"During the summer, New York City can be as much as 10 degrees hotter than surrounding areas. OEM reminds New Yorkers to beat the heat this summer by staying out of the sun during its peak hours, 11 AM to 4 PM. If you have to be in the sun, wear sunscreen and a hat to protect your face and head."

"All New York City public schools will be open Monday, June 8. However, OEM continues to remind New Yorkers of habits to reduce the spread of influenza and other germs."

"Opening fire hydrants is a common way to cool off during New York City's sweltering summers, but hydrants without spray caps waste 1,000 gallons of water per minute and can lower water pressure throughout the system. Firefighters need high water pressure to fight fires. OEM reminds New Yorkers to ask for the right tools when using hydrants to stay cool. Contact your local firehouse to obtain a spray cap, or call
311

Another innovative use of Facebook, is to encourage New Yorkers to join the Citizen Corps Council on-line and partner with OEM to make New York City a safer and stronger city, and to join a Community Emergency Response Team in your neighborhood.

The also offer a "Tip of the Week" such as:

"Insure So You Can Rest Assured." Homeowners insurance does not cover property damage caused by flooding. The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program offers flood insurance at a low cost to homeowners and businesses in participating communities. Get prepared by finding insurance that works for you."

Instead of wringing their hands and crying the blues about information overload, these two traditional organizations are using non-traditional methods to expand their audience reach.  Welcome to Web 2.0

Political dissent in Iran in the aftermath of the national election has spread not only to the streets of Tehran, but also online, where protesters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and observers of the election have battled to get news out of the country for three days.

Cell phone service was restored Sunday June 13th after it had been down since Saturday, but Iranians could still not send text messages from their mobile phones. Government filters have also cracked down on opposition party websites and social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as mobile text messaging services.

Satellite Internet connections have also been disrupted. But that hasn't prevented bloggers and activists reporting from Iran by using proxy servers to get around the censors in a game of cat and mouse.

Citizenlab, which runs out of the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies, is one of many groups making software available that allows citizens in Iran to sign on to a server that gives them secure access to web pages anywhere, bypassing government restrictions.

The software, PsiPhon, has been made available for Twitter users, as the social messaging tool has taken centre stage as a source of news from Iran since Saturday.

One of the more active posters of messages on Twitter, someone in Iran named persiankiwi, has attracted over 10,000 followers, with over 2,000 added in less  than a week "We are going offline to get a phone free for calling out. we are also moving location -- too long here -- is dangerous," the poster wrote at about 10:30 p.m. local time (2:00 p.m. ET), followed by a post an hour and a half later: "3 of our group missing from afternoon -- we have no news from them."

Twitter users in Iran have shared pictures from street protests, passed on information about which cities are affected by Internet and mobile phone outages and planned rallies and further protests.

There are also reports of distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) being launched on Iran government websites, though it's not clear what effect they are having.

The website of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad displayed a message reading "The maximum number of users reached, Server is too busy, please try again later," but there are reports that Internet access across the country is sporadic.

As one person with the Twitter name azarnoush reports from Shiraz, Iran: "Internet is at the lowest possible speed."

Despite these attempts at censorship, the world is getting citizen perspectives on the Iranian protest movement.

Photo by Shahram Sharif. CC Attribution 2.0 Generic

Celebrities, media personalities and athletes are increasingly being misrepresented in the world of social media.

Tony La Russa, manager of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, is suing the Twitter, claiming that an unauthorized page using his name damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress.

The Philadelphia Daily News recently published comments from Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Asante Samuel's Twitter feed, only to find that his words were being tweeted by an imposter.

Media personality Keith Olbermann also was a victim of Twitter fraud, and CNN recently acquired the rights to CNNbrk (CNN Breaking News), the largest Twitter account on record with 959,011 followers. The account was being administered by James Cox, who is not affiliated with the news station.

This all comes at a time of fierce competition between CNN and Ashton Kutcher to have the first Twitter account with 1 million followers. At the moment, the well known actor has about 941,749 followers and singer Britney Spears is in third place with 926,862 followers.

According to two media experts at Temple University, we should expect more social network fraud, something that local governments should be alert to as they move to embrace these new media tools to communicate with citizens.

Professor Susan Jacobson of Temple's School of Communications and Theater compares Twitter fraud to what happened in the early days of the Internet when regular people would rush to buy domain names (i.e., www.madonna.com) and then sell them to celebrities for millions of dollars.

Although she questions why the Daily News' journalists didn't check their sources, Jacobson notes in a press release: "We are still in the early stages of social media. These situations are bound to continue to happen until laws are enacted that prevent people from misrepresenting themselves. If social media follows the same model as the web, we will continue to see misrepresentations of celebrities on social media sites."

Frank Farley, another Temple expert on risk-taking adds that people would do something like this for two reasons: malicious or near criminal misrepresentation, or just to have fun by carrying out a prank.

"We shouldn't be surprised by this; I'm frankly surprised we haven't seen more of it. Through social media, we have created the capacity or opportunities for people to take such actions. It's the old 'If you build it they will come,'" said Farley.

Image from Jeroen Mirck. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

It's interesting that one of America's most traditional organizations, the armed forces is one of the leaders is using the new media.

Go to a military base after-hours on any given workday, scores of young soldiers plug into a world that would have earlier generations scratching their heads.

They Tweet on Twitter.com and flit from Facebook to Flickr to YouTube. They are, as the late comedian George Carlin once put it, up-linking, downloading, cutting-edge multi-taskers who can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.

And they're fueling a revolution in how the Pentagon connects with troops and the public.

From the front lines of Iraq, where Army Gen. Ray Odierno posts daily updates to his Facebook page, to Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, AZ, which posts video greetings to deployed troops, America's military is infiltrating the world of online social networking.

"With our younger soldiers, especially, once they're off the Army clock, they're attached to some form of electronic device," said Tanja Linton, a spokeswoman for Fort Huachuca, Arizona and its military intelligence school, about 75 miles southeast of Tucson.

"They've got their cell phones, their iPods, their laptops; they're texting, Tweeting, surfing -- and sometimes they are doing it all at the same time."

Odierno, the commander in charge of military efforts in Iraq, has close to 4,000 "fans" on his page at Facebook.com.

His site proclaims, among other things, that the four-star general is a fan of Motown, classic rock and country music, and that his favorite films include "Animal House" and "Sleepless in Seattle."

Stories referenced on the general's site range from a report on efforts to revive Iraq's air force to an article about an overseas jazz festival that featured Iraqi and American musicians.

The U.S. Army launched its own Facebook page April 16 and has more than 17,000 fans so far.

"It puts a human face on the Army that you might not otherwise see," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, head of the service's new online and special media division.

The move to social media has been somewhat unsettling at the Pentagon, with its tradition of top-down authority, he said.

In cyberspace, where anyone can post feedback anonymously, the musings of military supporters can appear alongside those of anti-war critics.

"This is a culture shift for us," Arata said. "When people exchange thoughts, it's not always rosy. That's something we as a culture have to get over."

There also have been technological snags. Many of the social media sites the military is embracing aren't accessible on military computers, due to concerns about network security.

Solutions are being sought, Arata said. In some cases, staffers have had to work around the issue by having one office computer that isn't connected to military networks.

Locally, Fort Huachuca is using Facebook, YouTube and TroopTube -- the Pentagon's version of YouTube -- for many forms of outreach.

Last Christmas, for example, the fort's public affairs office arranged for local Army families to post online video greetings to deployed soldiers.

Bonnie Sanders, 32, a mother of two, said she was grateful that the new technology allowed her to connect with her husband, Staff Sgt. Roland Sanders, a member of the fort's 11th Signal Brigade who recently returned from a 15-month stint overseas.

"It was emotional. It choked me up," she said of the experience. "It felt good knowing that he would know we were thinking of him."

Fort Huachuca also posts footage from its "Fort Report" cable TV show on YouTube and TroopTube. The video segments include informational clips on cultural and sporting events, health alerts and other aspects of Army life.

In Tucson, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base has not yet taken the plunge into new media, said 1st Lt. Mary Pekas, a base spokeswoman.

Staffers there are still awaiting instructions from Air Force headquarters on how to proceed, she said.

The general public isn't flocking to Pentagon-sponsored sites yet, judging by numbers. Last year, for example, a video clip showing decrepit Army barracks at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, posted on YouTube by an outraged parent, drew nearly half-a-million viewers. The Army's official YouTube clips typically draw fewer than 5,000 viewers.

The push to social networking is a smart move on the military's part, said Sean Aday, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who recently spent time in Afghanistan teaching government leaders there how to deal with the press.

Much of what the Pentagon posts online is akin to advertising that aims to create a good impression, Aday said. Viewers drawn to such sites most likely already have a positive opinion of the military, he added.

The wider public may be more inclined to take the Pentagon's pronouncements with a grain of salt and to rely more on independent news reporting for information about the military, he said.

"Who is reading the general's Twitter page? It's probably someone who is predisposed to thinking that the general is right about things. It's sort of like preaching to the choir," Aday said.

"From a public-relations standpoint, maintaining that kind of support makes a lot of sense," he said. "You want to keep the choir singing your tune."

When the mid-term elections were starting, the big money was on Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama was seen as fighting an uphill battle; Clinton was raising immense sums of money and lining up powerful supporters. She had a seasoned team of consultants skilled at manipulating the media. Most pundits predicted the Clintons would be back in the White House.

Then along came an unknown 25-year-old called Chris Hughes. He grew up in Hickory, North Carolina, the only child of parents of modest means. Because of his intuitive curiosity and new media acumen, Hughes helped create one of the most targeted and successful start-ups in modern history - Barack Obama's run for presidency.

Hughes' intellect was not his only major asset. He also had the uncanny ability of being in the right place at the right time. What forces saw Hughes become a rising star in the Democratic Party? First and foremost was his chance meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, a then 19-year-old fellow Harvard student who was had created a little known online campus network called Facebook.

Hughes saw a phenomenal opportunity to test some of his social media theories about on-line behavior. Known as the "Empath" amongst his fellow scholars, Hughes became the official Facebook proponent for the Obama team.

In the fall of 2006, with midterm elections approaching, Facebook offered political candidates the opportunity to set up mini-profile to appeal to non-traditional voters. Opportunity struck again, when the freshman senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, known for his community organizing skills, came calling and Hughes accepted the invitation.

As director of on-line organizing, Hughes' technical savvy gave the Obama team an amazing head start in the campaign. Hitting the ground running, Hughes became a "miner" of human behavior data that he salted into online systems, creating an historic campaign that was able to access the most robust set of Web-based social-networking tools ever used in a political campaign history.

This community-based system enabled and energized citizens to turn themselves into online activists; long before a single Obama field staffer was able to interact with potential voters face-to-face.

"Technology has always been used as a net to capture people in a campaign or cause, but not to organize," says Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. "Chris Hughes saw what was possible before anyone else." Hughes built something the candidate said he wanted but didn't yet know was possible: a virtual mechanism for scaling and supporting community action. Then that community turned around and elected his boss president.

Hughes seized on the new Internet media to guide Obama's course into waters that were new to the candidate, but more importantly were under utilized by the Clinton and John McCain campaigns.

Hughes' key web tool was My.BarackObama.com, or MyBO for short, an intuitive and fun-to-use networking Internet site that allowed Obama supporters to create groups, plan events, raise funds, download tools, and connect with one another -- not unlike a more focused, activist Facebook.

MyBO also let the campaign reach its most passionate supporters cheaply and effectively. By the time the campaign was over, volunteers had created more than 3.2 million Facebook profiles on the site, planned 200,000 offline events, formed 35,000 groups, posted 400,000 blogs, generated 14.5 million television viewing hours on YouTube and raised $30 million on 70,000 personal fund-raising pages.

MyBarackObama.com site was the catalyst that helped turn the election tide in Obama's favor. Raising more than $500 million through average donations of under $100, in addition to mobilizing new voters, it was the major tipping point for Obama's victory.

Chris Hughes' king-making efforts paid off royally. Now, what does a king-maker do after his king ascends to the highest office in the land? In Hughes' case, he closed one chapter and opened another. On March 18, 2008, General Catalyst Partners announced that Hughes had chosen to join their venture capital team as entrepreneur-in-residence. The Cambridge, MA firm's mission is to create a new generation of digital media and social-networking start-ups and open a hi-tech corridor in the north east similar to that found in the Silicon Valley. Hughes will play a pivotal role in their success.

Who knows what the future might bring for this unlikely kingmaker. Perhaps he will be called back into service in 2016. Where will social networking be in seven years?

Photo of Chris Hughes by Steve Rhodes. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

The British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) is using the New Media to help get out it's Old Media messages.

The BBC's new mobile homepage launched in March with the results of months of work on customization that will bring the service in line with the main BBC site, bbc.co.uk.

Users can chose to shrink or expand sections according to their interest across the BBC's news, sport, entertainment and business coverage, and i-Player for radio and TV, schedule information and weather forecasts also accessible.

The site is optimized for most commonly used mobile handsets and smart-phones, but also for the range of different networks that provide differing signal quality; the challenge was to produce a error-free i-Player service even on the slowest network.

Customization options include location, which means the site will automatically show weather and news for the user's local area.

Richard Titus, BBC future media controller for audio & music and mobile, said the BBC mobile site has seen growth of 30 % in the past two quarters and shows no sign of slowing down.

"Part of the BBC's public purpose is to encourage digital curiosity and media literacy, and those are important themes," he said. "But we have to recognize that everyone has their adoption curve."

He said the BBC's mobile site does historically tend to be used more by older males and by under 25s, but that  this redesign was "a real opportunity to deepen engagement".

"It was the same with the web ten years ago - guys in their late 30s and younger users with disposable incomes. But as the technology has progressed it has brought people with it and we're now seeing exponential growth of mobile, especially smart-phones."

"People my age are very focused on the privacy aspects but for a 19 or 20 year old, everything they do is an open book."

BBC recognizes that if they want to survive in the age of Media 2.0, they better use this New Media to their advantage.

The recent demise of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, after a 150 years of publishing was a shock to the old media. Two west coast papers the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are potentially facing the same fate.

We know that the new media - the Huffington Post for example - chuckle with glee at such events, bragging that as the new media, they saw this coming and are leading the way to a promised land of citizen journalism with unlimited free information at the click of a mouse.

Let's stop and consider the merits of this claim. Most newspapers today are becoming the 'new media' as they develop their blog capacity, send journalist out to cover stories with video cameras to capture stories and upload them to their newspaper websites. Newspapers across the country are buying radio and TV air time to advertise their websites as the "go to" place for up-to-date i-news.

Newspaper journalists and columnists now write 'new media' blogs, in addition to their 'old media' stories because blogs are seen by their editors as powerful tools to obtain news content, as it is developing, to help them stay ahead of the curve.

Some folks feel the 'old media' provides more accurate information and a degree of accountability to their editors, publishers and shareholders. The 'New 2.0 Media' are accountable to no one but themselves.

This may indicate that consumers are not so much concerned with the medium as they are with the content. If 'old media' can provide current information in the 'new media' format, they may be on the road to survival.

What you get from trained journalists, over amateur bloggers, is assurance of quality and accountability.

Arguments can be made by bloggers about individuals citizens having the resources to generate the quantity and quality of news to which citizens are accustomed. 'Old news' is hard to gather and is expensive. Journalists are empowered to write without fear because their employers defend their right to do so. Bloggers do not have these same protections.

There have been some interesting developments recently in the world of Media 2.0.

According to a recent article in the Huffington Post - a Media 2.0 vehicle in itself - Social Media Week (SMY) NY is a great example of this process in action. The idea, born of a group of friends in the digital media space went from concept to implementation in just 3 weeks, under the leadership of one man, Toby Daniels. Daniels, 32, had just left a high profile job at MintDigital, an online digital platform and was looking to reinvent himself as a digital strategist.

His first step was to convene an executive committee consisting of academics, business leaders, media thinkers and others he knew.

This Advisory Panel then created a mission statement everyone could buy-in to: "SMW aims to create an open and inclusive environment offering a series of free events, including workshops and panel discussions, and a platform for individuals, group and companies to organize their own activities."

Thirdly, Daniels suggested that their events would get far more press as part of a self-organized Social Media Week strategy than if done as stand alone events by the individual panel members.

Finally, he enlisted Tumblr to build the website. With all of the week's events listed in one place, a unified vision for SMW and how it might benefit the social media community began to emerge - all this in less than a month.

Along a similar vein, Tactical Marketing Inc., based out of Las Vegas announced the launch of New Media Minutes - a weblog and weekly podcast by longtime blogger, Emmy-award-winning broadcast journalist and Las Vegas News anchor Dave Courvoisier; and internet marketing veteran, Joe Perez on new media today at www.newmediaminutes.com.

New Media Minutes intends to give audience sixty second breaking reviews on new media and the newest technologies that are extremely newsworthy but not necessarily making the headlines. They run on a newly launched social networking-based direct sales platform called Vi-Net. Vi-Net is an industry first in direct selling through a seamlessly integrated proprietary social network in the health and wellness space.

They want to give you all the news you need in 60 seconds.

What impact is this type social media news having on the traditional media as they undermine traditional media business models?

Take a look at what is happening to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's major daily. Yesterday, the Chronicle's parent company, Hearst Newspapers, announced that unless they secure major concessions from its unions (read: layoffs and salary cuts), it will have to close the paper altogether.

Google, a Media 2.0 leader, has played no small role in redefining how people read the news. And last week, one of its most prominent executives launched a side project to see if he can save local reporting from the lethal dynamics that threaten papers like the Chronicle.

When Tim Armstrong isn't busy running Google's North and South American advertising arm, he's behind the Polar Capital Group, which has just funded Patch, a new company, dedicated to providing online local reporting in small towns that newspapers can no longer afford to cover. So far, the company has set up one reporter in each of three New Jersey suburbs: South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn. Patch is based out of New York, where former Time Out New York editor-in-chief Brian Farnham will try out the new model.

Like New Media Minutes, the site will weave short stories about city government, traffic, and local businesses with photos and video, trying to keep local officials accountable in an era when the media are retrenching and scrambling to stay alive.

These trends mark some of the new trails being blazed each day by Media 2.0 innovators.