Presenter: Ed Keating, VP, Content Division, SIIA

Survey of SIIA members

Social networking - only 20 percent don't have plans for it
Facebook ekes out LinkedIn for networking, most use "other" plaforms
Social networking: 81 percent doing to reach new audiences, 41 percent realizing that now

Open issues: Relevance, Control, Copyright/Privacy, Internal Issues, Strategy, Choosing a Platform, Technology Issues, ROI

User-Generated Content: Objectives - 93 percent expect to increase engagement and loyalty

UGC Challenges: Collection/Moderation/Review, Participation

Blogging: 65 percent see blogs having a mixed effect, 75 percent see impact as very critical or somewhat critical - "makes my I.T. staff and corporate staff very nervous"

I'll come back and review this later, Ed went through things very quickly, my first take is that the data reflects our own experiences in our research and consulting practice and in our own professional lives. Publishers are beginning to try to embrace social media with much of the same confusion, fear and skills gap that existed ten years ago when the Web first became a strong emerging factor for mainstream publishers. The difficult thing for publishers to accept is that social media takes them much further from their core editorial, marketing and technology strengths than ever before. They will continue to be relevant but with many of the gains moving towards those who were most aggressive in deploying social media technologies that enable content to reside wherever audiences want it there may be unfolding another chapter of disintermediation for publishers. Having been "Googled" for a decade they now must face being "Facebooked." But the good news is that quality content always rises to the top in time, so although publishers will be strongly challenged to keep up with social media trends they'll be an important part of its success for a long time.

Labels: Research, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008