Bleeding edge communications

Fascinating bits of news pinged on to my alerty radar today concerning communications and how it’s being used for the benefit of us all. And I was so entranced that I wanted to take time out to share these contemporary changes with you all.

I’ve long since been the biggest fan ™ of aggregating content to give people the best possible news service, when they want it.

• Google News has recently introduced a feature that lets you bring together all your Google Alerts into one ‘stream’ as Custom Content.
• Talking of streams, but bigger ones, CNet now offers a ‘river’ of content mashed from a range of interesting and factual sources. It describes it thus: The CNET River offers a different view on CNET, blending the latest blogs, photo galleries, videos, and tweets from CNET editors. We think of it as a fresh starting point. With your feedback, we plan to add more content streams and other features to the River.
• In actual fact this isn’t ‘new’ news because one of the founding fathers of the ‘river’ concept was actually an advertising company. And not a very big one at that – which just goes to show you don’t need scale to be successful. Let me reference Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I’ve tagged this as one of my mostinspirational sites with Delicious because it’s just the essence of every good thing the web has given us, all rolled up into a lovely neat package. The CP+B site combines Twitter feeds, news channels, YouTube footage and served content to create The World According to Them. Punchy, impactful, incisive webmongery at its best. And I don’t own shares.
  

I’m not even going to go into what Twitter and Facebook sharing their respective firehoses of content could unlock for us all. The grail may be holy, but it’s now accessible as well.

But knowing how the web has evolved from dishing out pages to become a real-time stream of information courtesy of social tools like Twitter, it comes as little surprise to hear from across the pond that within 5 years television and radio will be webiquitous. I just manufactured that word but I think it resonates with us all. Especially podcasting types like myself.

I declare a very firm interest in this one – and so should you. As a small business the opportunities to generate a very unique and exciting message about your company are already manifest, but the relative costs are going to fall like the Lehman Brothers.

Time indeed to be harnessed to the wonders of the world wide web.