“Every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the Internet.”

This is Fred Wilson’s vision of social media and it indeed says a lot. It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. I think this vision almost cannot go wrong at all if you consider the increasing amount of participation of end users on niche web/mobile destinations. Mike disagrees with this vision somewhat but I think he’s saying the same thing after all.

It funny how the unlikeliest of users can also share information online and participate when they have a need or see a clear incentive or value. If you look at the hundreds of pregnancy and baby related forums on even the not-so-well-done 1.0 sites, you will see how users participate willingly when they want information and give back to the same community later. Same is the case with immigration forums for example. And many of these users wouldn’t be the ones who like to share their “life” online via blogs and twitters at all. But they do share when they see the value. So Fred’s vision is not too far from reality I would say. Glassdoor.com is a perfect recent example of a platform where users share information to gain access to information they value – again the most un-social users would definitely share on Glassdoor to get information back.

Funny thing is – a lot of this now called “social media” has been happening in 1.0 looking forums for a long time now. The true value, I believe, will be in services that distill all the social media information into easily understood and consumable chunks on-demand. May be someone will come up with a name for them.