The more mature the social media platform the harder it is to mine social capital. At the maturity of a given platform it is as difficult to become famous as is in old media. The only opportunities present emerging subgroups but that’s also very difficult. Therefore; there will be a new generation of social media platforms to accommodate the demand for social capital mining.Â
The work rewarded by the next gen social will not be on a content creation side as there already is oversupply of content. The most valuable work will be related to content curation. Making sense of the information and media might be a hallmark of the new era on the internet.Â
Why should this be more valuable? I imagine this would yield a more fluid internet - content will become even more liquid and is meaningfully linked, flexed and remixed. When there is an abundance of content it’s the sense-making that generates most value.Â
In The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly states that ‘growth comes from remixing’. He interprets Paul Romer writes that ‘at the most basic level, an economy grows when whenever people take resources and rearrange them in a way that makes them more valuable’.
Kelly concludes that ‘in 30 years the most important cultural works and the most powerful mediums will be those that have been remixed the most’.
Remixing is a discoverability layer. Why would you become a podcaster if you can become a Bitcaster? Why tweet if you can clip a ‘bit’?