Social media is important, but its impact pales beside that of fragmentation

Which will have a bigger impact on us as communications professionals -- the growth of social media such as blogs, or rapidly increasing audience fragmentation?

I believe strongly that it will be fragmentation -- what I referred to recently as the proliferation of "mini-streams," versus the concept of a single mainstream. Earlier this week, I saw it called "slivercasting," which is a term I like.

There's no doubt that consumer generated media is important, and its influence will grow. But it's critical to keep in mind that the interest in "creating" will always be limited to a segment of the population. That's easy to forget when your whole world revolves around blogging.

Most people -- like the folks I mentioned here who live in the real world versus the online one -- will be happy being media consumers, versus media creators. And that holds true even among the younger generation.

Those consumers already have so many options that it is difficult to reach them, and it will only get worse. And a good deal of the media they consume will continue to be professionally produced -- television shows, magazines, newsletters, e-mail, websites, games, etc.

The challenge for us will be building and maintaining communities of like-minded individuals who relate around a common interest -- and fusing social and professional media together to feed those interests.

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