Pirkka’s posterous

News shouldn’t be a site we force people to come to but, as Google’s Marissa Mayer said at Aspen, we have to find ways to insinuate news and its value into anyone’s – her words – hyperpersonal news stream. We shouldn’t create sites but instead create platforms that enable communities to share what they know and need to know, with journalists contributing value – reporting, editing, aggregation, curation – to their ecosystem. We should build and assume much greater engagement and define engagement not as consumption but as creation. We must value that creation (and not consider it merely a reaction to what we do).

And it is not just news, it's the direction public broadcasters have to take online. Our sites don't need to be destinations. We need to give more voice to people and allow them to take us to their hyperpersonal streams.

I belive in siteless future - maybe it will be hyperpersonal streams or something else, but I can so far just guess what the online universe will look like after sites are gone.

People no longer pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to get their media fix. We now discover the movies, music, news, books, conversation and even new friends we like through influence – the recommendations of many are driving our choices. Publishing or broadcasting itself won’t get an audience - only influencers will create viewers.

Influence and reputation is switching from the corporation to the individual, and this also applies to all of us working in media business. It's no end to branding and channels, but they're not enough.

As important as our traditional media brand label might be for many, we also need influencers building their public* differently.

I guess we're still far away from truly understanding how big the change will be. Nowadays and still during the coming years we can rely that just by broadcasting our content it will get an audience*. There's always someone fallen asleep in front their TV set.

Traditional brand might be an influencer, but the question is how can it be more personal? How can you have a discussion with brand? You can't.

We will need more than ever our people to be the influencers. They can't act like distributors, but as real people.

Media people just can't keep on hiding behind the media brand.

*I prefer public over audience as a term, but still use audience when refered traditionally.

Staff with mobile technology such as BlackBerrys work an extra 15 hours a week as they constantly check emails even when out of the office, new research found today. A survey of more than 600 employees revealed many were turning into workaholics because of the ability to receive and send messages and work online even when they were at home.

I love my work, but there are plenty of other things I love too. I have never wanted a Blackberry, and I don't read my email with my mobile. It's a choice I have made.

But I don't mind combining work and leisure. The whole sphere of social media is just that for me. What makes it so different from email is that the it is full of fun and pleasure.

I probably add at least 15 hours to working week here in social media, but here I feel like I get to be me, with moments of quirkiness inbetween serious stuff. It's not just work, but also fun, and there's nothing like that in email.

I hate email.

A short-term study of Twitter has found that 40% of the messages sent via it are "pointless babble."

Carried out by US market research firm Pear Analytics, the study aimed to produce a snapshot of what people do with the service.

Almost as prevalent as the babble were "conversational" tweets that used it as a surrogate instant messaging system.

The study found that only 8.7% of messages could be said to have "value" as they passed along news of interest.

I find it strange if someone else classifies other people's messages and stories as "pointless babble." Pear Analytics seems to be able to say that after reading total of 2 000 tweets. Wow.

Of course if you see it from a social media point of view, anything else than pieces of news and deep analysis is babble.

But if you try to think of it from a social media point of view, it's not all that clear. Sharing your lunch moment may seem totally irrelevant, even though that's exactly that kind of thing we human beings mostly share with each other.

Babble is the phatic communication that is needed to manage relationships between people, online and offline.

Just go ahead and try to avoid pointless babble, not only in Twitter but also in your daily life. It is almost impossible.

Besides, I love the pointless babble as it makes life much more fun than just sticking to the point.

The kind of command and control that we were able insist on during the Cold War cannot and does not exist in the 21st century," Ross said. "Where analyzing a very small number of resources and controlling messaging toward a very small number of media sources; point-in-fact there are millions of consumers and media outlets across multiple platforms...You've got to trust in the State Dept. professionals who are here to do their job rather than just taking instructions and sort of zombie-like motions of saying exactly that which was dictated to them from on high.

Don't try just to command and control, and trust more your professionals, says Alec Ross.

What I find intriguing that he works for US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

His role is to "blend technology with diplomacy in an attempt to help solve some of the globe's most vexing problems on health care, poverty, human rights and ethnic conflicts." Quite a job!

What does it tell about these times that the US Government wants to take this direction?