Content industry expert launches Contentnation.com community of social media enthusiasts collaborating to tell the story of how social media is changing our work, our lives and our future.

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, 14 APRIL – Contentnation.com, an online community of social media enthusiasts focused on developing a new book on social media, was launched today at the annual Buying and Selling eContent conference in Scottsdale, Arizona by content industry expert John Blossom, President of Shore Communications, Inc., a leading consulting and research company servicing the electronic publishing industry. Mr. Blossom is the author of an upcoming book on social media to be published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. using materials developed on Contentnation.com by Mr. Blossom and its community members.

“I am pleased to announce that Contentnation.com is now online with members who are helping to build the story of social media’s impact on our work, our lives and our future,” said Mr. Blossom in his introductory remarks as a leader of a panel discussion on how social media is producing mission-critical content for today’s enterprises. “Content Nation ‘walks the talk” of today’s social media by allowing content to find its value in different contexts at different points in its development. Today you can read chapters of the book online as they develop, add comments, articles, case studies, forum discussions and bookmarks that will all contribute to both the printed book and to a building repository of expertise in social media topics.”

The book being developed on Contentnation.com, to be entitled Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes our Work, Our Lives and Our Future, focuses on the broadening impact of social media as its availability through online publishing technologies enables both individuals and major institutions such as corporations and governments to communicate more influentially without using traditional media outlets. By Mr. Blossom’s calculations based on recent market research there are now 73 million people worldwide using social media to influence others, a number approaching the population of Egypt, the world’s 15th largest nation.

“For these publishing enthusiasts their identity is changing at first unconsciously perhaps but eventually in a conscious way,” notes Mr. Blossom in the opening pages of the book. “Their birth certificates haven’t changed. Their passports haven’t changed. Yet they are ready to change how they view themselves and participate in society as surely as people who have moved to a new country decide to become citizens of that nation when their need to be a part of its culture permanently becomes an overwhelming desire or necessity. There are now millions of people worldwide who are in effect ready to declare themselves citizens of a new global nation of people who have made influencing other people through their own publishing a central and permanent part of their culture and their lives.”

“Mr. Blossom’s book offers a fresh and challenging perspective on social media that focuses on both the extraordinary impact that it has already had on our culture and how that impact has only just begun,” notes Carol Long, Executive Acquisitions for Wiley Technology Publishing. “Content Nation is capturing the scope and scale of how we need to adapt to the changes coming through social media publishing that are going to shape human society for centuries to come. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is very proud to be developing this book using Mr. Blossom’s visionary insights and the valuable contributions that he is assembling from the Contentnation.com community.”

Contentnation.com is being hosted by Near-Time, Inc., a leading provider of social media publishing technologies. The Near-Time publishing platform combines the capabilities of wikis, weblogs, forums, tagging, bookmarking, embedding content and other key social media publishing technologies with easy-to-use features and sophisticated administrative features that enable the rapid development of highly valuable social media for enterprise, ad-supported and premium online communities. “The Contentnation.com Web site is an excellent example of how our integrated social media publishing technologies can enable the rapid construction of many forms of highly valuable content,” said Reid Conrad, CEO of Near-Time, Inc. “Near-Time has worked closely with Mr. Blossom to help make the Content Nation project a success and has benefited from his insights into leading publishing technologies.”

Contentnation.com offers free membership for those would like to create content and makes the developing content of the Content Nation book available on a free basis in Web page format.

ABOUT SHORE

Shore Communications Inc. provides consulting and research services to guide executives marketing enterprise and media content products and services. Leading publishing and content technology executives engage Shore to get highly actionable strategic insights into how to succeed in today's business, scholarly and public content marketplaces from one of the content industry's most recognized and respected consulting teams. Shore’s research, commentary, private consulting and confidential advisory services provide valuable insights into the products, practices and behaviors that maximize the value of content and related technologies through all stages of its creation, organization, marketing, deployment and use. Shore has been named twice by EContent Magazine as one of the 100 companies that matter most in the content industry. Shore’s ContentBlogger weblog received the 2007 CODiE award for Best Media Blog from the Software and Information Industry Association.

For more information about Shore and report purchases, please contact John Blossom at 203.226.9488, jblossom@shore.com, or visit http://shore.com/us/resources/press/.

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