Media or society - what is the new Social Media

Mr web reports that two leading US media analysts have this week announced the formation of a new non-profit institute, iFOCOS, the Institute for the Connected Society. iFOCOS aims to bring thought leaders together to better ‘understand and use the new expanding media and to create better-informed global citizens’.<br>
The goal is to drive innovation around a new definition of ‘media’ which includes traditional and new forms such as social media.

This is doomed to failure. Social media uses channels for communications but can use many channels.

The channels can be a blog, IM, email, Bulletin board, SMS etc. The key here is that using a specific medium the blogger (or other social media channel user) is at the nexus of a group of other people.

Just focusing on the 'media' part of the deal will only offer part of the solution.