Facebook specialist Eric Eldon published a compilation of statistics from around the web this week on TechCrunch that pointed towards US and Canadian market saturation this past year for Facebook. Surely Facebook represents the forward line of all social media. Academic and tech industry analyst Vivek Wadhwa posted a set of predictions for 2012 in the Washington Post last night, starting with a prediction that the period of rapid growth for social media is over. In the future it will be a feature, not a product, he argues. To startups and investors, Wadha says "It's time to jump on the next bandwagon, folks."

Wadhwa is an astute observer of long-term technology trends and is likely correct within a particular understanding of the situation. For one thing, I can't help but imagine raw user numbers still have a long, long way to go in many parts of the world just beginning to come online.

Even within the US and the rest of the West though, such conclusions require an assumption that the key metric is number of new users in total. "Instead of raw user growth," Eldon argues on Techcrunch, "the numbers to watch going forward will be around engagement."

What might that look like? I'd like to present two possibilities for major continued growth in social media.

Afterwords, Vivek Wadhwa's response.

The Instrumentation of Everyday Life

One way to understand engagement with social networks is not just time on site, but data provided as input. Mark Zuckerberg sees it this way, he argues that the amount of information people share doubles every year.

Facebook's Open Graph API allows all kinds of websites to push user activity into their Facebook newsfeeds. The roll-out of Open Graph, widely referred to as Frictionless Sharing, has just barely begun. It's already super controversial. I believe it has been implemented in a way that puts the whole kitten caboodle at risk, unfortunately.

Have you noticed how much more prominent music has become in Facebook since the introduction of the Open Graph on Spotify, Rdio and other services? Now imagine that rolling out to everything you do online. It's already begun to enter into news reading and video viewing. Facebook is sure to do it better the next time around when they roll it out to shopping again, after the Beacom debacle several years ago.

Meals eaten? Hours of sleep slept? Distances traveled? TV shows and books watched? There are many more parts of our lives that can be wired up to Facebook or other social networks.

The instrumentation of everyday life may sound frightening to many people, but so did posting photos of yourself online or using a debit card (at all) just a few years ago.

If it's done well, with privacy protections, security, user education, informed consent and delighted users - then this type of engagement with social media could represent a huge and desirable period of growth in the industry.

"Just as location-based applications became a 'feature' rather than the 'big thing,' social media will live on and become an integral part of what we do," Wadha writes. "But the party's over for investors and start-ups in this space. The big growth is behind us. Revenues from social media have not lived up to the promises, and the vast majority of those thousands of start-ups are either dying or on the ropes. It's time to jump on the next bandwagon, folks."

Given the huge growth of data input that is likely just around the corner, it makes no sense to me that investors and start-ups don't have plenty of room to make money in social still.

The Web of Things

Connected devices, many of which you might not even consider connecting to the Web today, are expected to facilitate fundamental changes in human life over the next few years.

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson, predicts that the world's nearly 5 billion mobile phone subscribers today will be surpassed by 50 billion connected non-phone devices in 10 years.

What does this have to do with social media? Quite simply, what do you think people will be doing while they ride in the driverless car that picked them up at home to take them to work? They'll be Facebooking and Tweeting, of course.

What will happen after your 50th automatic re-supply of Cap'n' Crunch? You'll win a Super Fan badge on your social media profile, I'm sure.

Blippy, the social network that publishes every debit card transaction you perform out into your social network of fellow exhibitionist friends may never take the world by fire. But Mint.com's aggregate financial data and benchmarking is much more likely to. Real-time data bout local spending sounds like social media to me.

Social media in the age of instrumentation and connected devices may be more about aggregate social activity than about the long voice blogging and Tweeting.

The intersection of people, machines and passively monitored objects (the cheapest input of all!) all combine to form an entirely new world of opportunity.

That may be the biggest opportunity yet.

As Mark Roberti, founding editor of the publication RFID Journal, wrote this Spring:

"This change - enabling computers to see and understand what is happening in the real world - is enormous. Most people have yet to grasp it, seeing RFID as a more expensive alternative to bar codes. They don't comprehend that when computers can automatically collect information regarding what is happening in the world, new insights and business strategies then become possible. And the companies that leverage these capabilities most effectively will be the big winners in the century ahead."

Cloud-scale information gathering regarding what is happening in the world we live in, leading to entirely new insights and business strategies. That sounds like social media to me.

I expect that this kind of information is going to make the number of photos we all pro-actively upload to Facebook look like a drop in the ocean. Let's hope this vision of the future gets built in a way that's equitable and pro-freedom. Those are key concerns here at the early morning, just after the dawn, of social media.

Wadhwa's reply

I was fortunate enough to catch Vivek Wadhwa on Twitter last night and sent him this post before publication. This was his response.

"I don't disagree with you. But I maintain that this segment will lose its sizzle--just like eCommerce did in the early days of the Internet. We overhyped this, invested in too many of the same startups, and portrayed this as a destination rather than a means. Facebook and to a lesser extent, Twitter will become platforms from which other, deeper, services are built. But gone are the days of the silly me too social media startups--the Twitter and Facebook clones.

"Look at 'location based services'--the insane hype that TechCrunch created around this. This has just become a feature that we take for granted and build other meaningful applications on. Social media will go the same way. It will persist and grow, but in depth and value rather than just numbers and hype.

"I expect the excitement and hype in 2012 to be in the social game companies, newfangled B2B technology plays, and cloud computing. These will be the next bubble. Soon after, we'll see the Big Data bubble. All of this is good because it spurs investment and innovation. That's the beauty of Silicon Valley--it moves from one fad to another as if nothing ever happened."

"Most of the apps out there today that are location-specific are delivering lists of content back to the user," says CEO Jason Karas. "We feel that exploring a space is not really done best through lists, that it's done through information that's organized in a spatial way. You can literally stroll around with our UI and take in the neighborhood just like you would when you're walking around."

Trover has been available on iPhone since July, and anyone can browse discoveries on a big screen at Trover.com. "The app hasn't changed much in its functionality since we launched in July," says Karas, "but we've been working like crazy getting Android online because our community is asking for it. They want to share with friends who aren't iPhone users."

Trover reports that over 100,000 users in 160 countries have downloaded the iPhone app, and its next goal is to grow to scale with Android. "It's such a social application," says Karas, "and the ability for more folks to use it is what really gets the flywheel spinning."

Social Is Just A Vector

As the iPhone app has gained traction, Trover has attracted a certain kind of user base. Karas calls them "hyperlocal influencers." These are users with very specific tastes and expertise who gain a following on Trover based around their interests.

But while following others is one way to discover things on Trover, one of the app's distinguishing features is its emphasis on the content itself rather than the users who created it. While other apps in the space like Yelp or Foursquare emphasize friends and personal achievements in order to drive participation, Trover just treats the social Web as "a vector" to help more users discover the real-world places shared on the network.

"We are a social network for sharing discoveries," Karas says, "but what we're sharing is not 'me and where I am.' What we're sharing is something that I've found."

Next Steps: Keywords, Tablets and Kitchen Tables

Karas says that keyword-based browsing is coming to Trover in the next few weeks. Currently, Trover use centers around spatial browsing, using the map interface to see whatever is around. Keyword browsing will allow users to filter for certain kinds of discoveries, like sushi or graffiti art.

After getting Trover onto all smartphones, Karas looks forward building to native tablet apps for iPad and Android. These will be more focused on the browsing aspect of Trover, "like when you're sitting in your living room or at the kitchen table," Karas says. "It will be more like the experience you see on Trover.com today where the images are sized according to their popularity."

"We think that the handset is the primary tool that you should use to go capture these discoveries," Karas says, "but why not also let people explore their neighborhood, or even another country, from the comfort of their computer?"

Download Trover for Android or iPhone today (it's free), or explore existing discoveries straight from Trover.com

Designed to reduce the need for skilled labor operating the machinery, the system would mean that farmers could do other higher-level planning work and operate the tractor all night long by itself. Presumably the whole thing is networked, collects data and will make some analytics available. Hello, Internet of Things, goodbye Old MacDonald? I'm not sure what to think of this - but large scale agriculture has probably been far enough from a city dweller's idyllic vision of farming to be creepy for a long time anyway. There's something about this video that feels especially creepy to me though.

In case you can't see it at this size, that is a John Deere in the video.

Of course all technology is about saving time and work so that greater, higher forms of work can be done. It's a beautiful thing, in many contexts. That which can be automated, networked and measured at scale can be performed more rationally, more efficiently and in standardized ways that offer a foundation for further inovations.

It's not as if farm labor done by underpaid seasonal migrants living in cramped conditions after fleeing Latin American economies crushed by CIA installed military dictators and death squads from the 50's through the 80's is necessarily anything to romanticize either.

Perhaps we should welcome our new, fully autonomous food production overlords.

In this post we tell you how to monitor the Rugby World Cup online, using a range of impressive official websites and social media accounts.

The official site is also a good place to check out video coverage of the games, with full match coverage available on past games. Note that there is a 72 hour delay in the USA, presumably due to TV rights. Although in our tests, none of the videos seemed to work in the US. So your mileage may vary. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like, in case you can't see the videos right now:

For further video content, the RWC YouTube channel offers a daily 5-6 minute news round-up. Below is the latest one at time of writing.

The RWC Facebook Page has 1.3 million 'likes' so far and is a good place to discuss the games with other fans. There are currently over 300 comments on the South Africa vs. Wales match.

Rugby fans may also want to check out the extra features in the Facebook Page menu, including separate pages for Discussions and Events.

The official Twitter account has nearly 75,000 followers at this stage. It's an active account, with helpful updates and even match scores. The official hashtag is #rwc2011. In addition, you can follow Twitter lists for teams and players.

For a flavor of the atmosphere around New Zealand as the RWC plays out, check out the official Flickr account.

There are a number of RWC mobile apps available, including for iPhone/iPad, Android phones, Blackberry and more.

Finally, if you'd like a calendar of the games for Google Calendar, Outlook and more, local rugby fan Mike Riversdale has created a few options.

Overall, the online coverage of the Rugby World Cup is comprehensive and makes excellent use of social media. Other than some issues with watching video from the U.S. and perhaps other countries, the online presence for RWC2011 is more than satisfactory.

As the founder of ReadWriteWeb and the company's only kiwi (I live and work from New Zealand), I can't resist finishing this round-up by stating: GO THE ALL BLACKS! It's about time we lifted the World Cup again, it's only been 24 years :)

That's an experience that children all over the world have had. Flat Stanley calls itself the longest-running literacy and community building program on the web. The program encourages participants to carry, mail or otherwise send a cardboard cut-out figure called Flat Stanley to faraway places and interesting circumstances. When the same Flat Stanley that was in a classroom in South Africa shows up in a photo perched on a snow bank in the United States - something magical happens in the minds of the children who sent it across the world. It's as if those faraway places become more real, now the child has a connection with the place and the prospect of making that trip themselves feels more possible. Anything that expands a person's understanding of what's possible is a good thing. Now the Flat Stanley experience is available in a new mobile app, making it easier than ever to use.

Flat Stanley is a little bit like a chain letter, a little bit like having a pen pal and a little bit like putting a folded paper boat in the river. It's simple, but it seems to touch some deep human themes.

There's something about mom or dad taking a Flat Stanley photo while away on a trip that says to a child, "I am here and I am thinking of you." Whether that same feeling gets communicated and whether a virtual Flat Stanley caries that same psychological payload as a cardboard one remains to be seen.

To send a Flat Stanley, I think, is to use a virtual object (either very thin or entirely digital) to write something on the real world. The Flat Stanley phenomenon makes that writing more accessible and appealing to children than anything else I've heard of before. The interaction between self, avatar, place, distance and other is a fascinating opportunity for young people to become more global in their understanding of the world. I think it's beautiful, and I hope the iPhone app helps many more children around the world connect with each other and enjoy the Flat Stanley experience.

United is labeling the iPad manual an "electronic flight bag" (EFB). It will completely replace paper flight manuals for all pilots by the end of this year. In addition, the pilots will use an iPad app to replace paper aeronautical navigational charts. Below we check out a short video of what United pilots will see, plus some screenshots.

Here's a quick video showing Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck in action, followed by a few screenshots to give you a flavor of the app. This is what United pilots will see on their iPads.

Though Trover is a photo-sharing app, it is organized for exploration, not just for browsing images. Don't think Instagram; Trover's roots within Seattle-based travel startup Travelpost are apparent. Trover shows what's around you to help you explore the place.

Location is the main feature, but you can also narrow down discoveries chronologically, and you can browse and follow other user profiles, too. There's a re-share button to send interesting discoveries to your followers, along with a note. There's also a 'Featured' tab that shows curated highlights.

This app is more reminiscent of Banjo than Instagram or other sites that are primarily about creating content. Trover, like, Banjo, is about exploring. Banjo pulls in social media posts from all around you and lets you browse them on a map, much as Trover does for photos. These social apps are more about connecting with the world (and people) around you than about broadcasting to the whole Web.

The app is available for iPhone users, with an Android version coming in the fall. Anyone can log in and view content on trover.com. Existing users can post Trover invitations via Facebook or Twitter.

I spoke to Suzanne Nagel, Digital Chief, U.S. Army Accessions Command, who walked me through how the Web is being used for recruitment and community. We started off by discussing a blog called Army Strong Stories, which enables people to hear authentic stories from U.S. Army soldiers.

Real Army Stories

The idea behind Army Strong Stories is to interact with the target audience and enable them to read and hear stories about Army life. Soldiers are encouraged to engage with the readers by replying to comments. The aim is to build a dialog with potential recruits, partly to disavow them of myths about Army life - for example, said Nagel, the scream-in-your-face drill sergeant so often portrayed in Hollywood movies.

Army Strong Stories features blog posts about anything related to army life. It's not necessarily career based content (see the tag cloud to the right for a list of topics). I asked Suzanne Nagel whether the bloggers write about politics. She replied that generally no, however the Army doesn't censor or filter content - other than for bad language.

Video is a relatively new part of the site, generally featuring Army staff speaking for a couple of minutes about their lives.

I've Traveled the World as a Saxophone Player; by Staff Sergeant Daniel Post

Army Strong Stories isn't the Army's main Web presence. Goarmy.com is the main recruiting website, which is used for recruiting soldiers and presenting facts about the Army.

Usage so far of Army Strong Stories has been broad, said Nagel. She noted that it's not just men 18-24 who frequent the site. Regulars include bloggers' parents and other relatives.

Army Social Media

Of course, in this day and age, it isn't all about the blog. The Army uses Facebook and Twitter a lot. It also has both an iPhone app and a mobile website, featuring the same functionality as the website. They are currently working on an iPad version and will "probably" work on an Android version in the future.

Overall, the U.S. Army is actively growing its digital efforts. In particular, and in common with many other organizations, over the past 5 years it has increasingly used social media.

The Army is working on building up its social networking presence even further: for example, buying online advertising to drive users to its Facebook Page. Also, the Army will be doing "social media events" this year, in order to drive traffic and buzz to their sites. What form these events will take hasn't been decided yet.

The goal of all the U.S. Army's sites - whether self-hosted blogs or social networks like Facebook and Twitter - is to "keep the conversation flowing."

Uncle Sam Needs You, See Our Facebook Page For More...

In general, the U.S. Army is a conservative branch of the military, remarked Suzanne Nagel, so allowing soldiers to tell their "mostly unfiltered stories" was a big step for them.

The hope is that the Army's online and social media presence will help recruiting, by showing what real Army life is like and helping people overcome the fear of joining.

I was impressed by the sophistication of the U.S. Army's web presence, although it helps that it's likely very well funded. What do you think of the U.S. Army's online activities? A good use for your taxpayer dollars?

Instead, Banjo, when launched, shows you the people around you. It's a social network based on who's present at any given location.

Banjo has three main goals. One is to connect you to your social networking friends you didn't know were nearby - for example, a friend from Facebook or Twitter, killing time at the airport, only a few gates away from you. It also wants to hep you find out what's going on nearby by providing access to status updates and tweets from everyone around you, in a radius you specify. It also provides you with a way to virtually visit other locations, even when you're far away, to see what's going on with the people there.

This last feature seems custom-built for journalists, we think. Imagine being able to provide the app with the name of a location where bombs have just been dropped, an earthquake has occurred, or a plane has just crashed. But will mainstream users simply want to peek in and see what people tweet about at Disneyland, though? We're not sure.

Still, the interesting thing about Banjo is its overall consumer-friendly approach. The app is well designed, and it attacks the combination of social and local in a very different way than some of its competitors. It's trying to go directly after the mainstream user from day one.

How it Works

The people Banjo finds don't necessarily have to have "checked in" using a location-based networking service like Gowalla, Foursquare or Facebook Places. While that helps, Banjo is designed to also pull in locations from geotagged tweets, uploaded photos, and other media from all social networking services. Wait - all? Yes, that's the plan. Patton says they have 22 services they're focused on integrating now, but the company's goal is to become a federation of all social networks, big and small, from around the world.

Although you will get more use out of Banjo if you provide it with your Facebook and Twitter info (it will then put a small icon next to the photos of your friends), it's not necessary. Upon first launch, the app is populated with the icons of all the social networking users it finds nearby. You can view this in a photo grid layout, or as a list also showcasing their status updates. Other buttons plot the users on a map and allow you to connect your own social services.

Banjo is simple to use and straightforward in its layout, design and purpose. It's location-based social networking that even the least technically savvy user could grasp.

The application is a free download on iTunes and on the Android Market. A Web-based version (HTML5) is coming soon, and the company will look into building both iPad and Android tablet apps next.

For more details on how Banjo compares with similar startups in this space, stayed tuned. A second, more in depth post is on its way.

As I sat on hold, an automated voice reminded me that there were many things I could do if I went to the organization's website instead. Alas, not in my case. The website had some forms and an FAQ, sure, but much to my chagrin, I had to call the toll-free number.

I may have a bias towards online help desks as opposed to phone-based ones; I live on the Web, not on the phone. And it may be that as we conduct more and more business and e-commerce online, the toll-free number and the customer service hotline will fade away. But how far away from an online-only - or even predominantly online - customer service world are we?

Pretty far. Most companies do still rely on the phone for customer service, even if they have a website. But there are a number of tools that are moving the help desk online - from collecting simple feedback to more complicated troubleshooting.

Forums: Forums are probably one of the oldest ways of communicating with users online, and as always, the usefulness of a forum for customer service depends on the level of activity there - from CSRs and from other users. There are several companies that offer Web services to set up public and private forums - for user feedback and inquiries - including Uservoice.

Customer Service Apps: One of the benefits of using third-party services to help manage the online help desk is the ability to tap into a number of new apps. These allow customer service reps to answer questions and fulfill support tickets while mobile. (See Klint Flinley's recent post 6 Help Desk and Customer Service Apps for the iPad.) The customer support software-as-a-service company ZenDesk offers an iPad app, for example, that gives agents the ability to manage their entire ticket workflow from the iPad by editing tickets, assigning them to different agents and tagging entries. Other companies offer remote access to users' computers, so as to help assist them directly with problems on their machines.

Social Media: Despite the buzz about social media, the vast majority of companies do not yet use social media to help with customer service efforts. But that's changing, in no small part because customers are demanding it. Gartner predicts that within five years, social media will replace phone call centers in more than 40% of the top 1,000 companies.

Clearly customer support is moving online. Having been on hold far too long, I can't wait.

Photo by atroszko

Local news aggregator Topix held a "State of Local Online Advertising" survey with some of the top U.S. advertising agencies. The survey shows that 60% of advertisers believe geo-targeted ads deliver stronger return on investment, with 33% of advertisers seeing double-digit gains. In an interview, Topix CEO Chris Tolles said advertisers and publishers do not need to be "hyperlocal" to make money in local markets.

At the ReadWriteWeb 2Way Summit last week, publisher and serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis blasted local news saying "no one gives a s**t about local."

Tolles would disagree. He sited a FCC report that recently said that there are not enough page views in local news and said that it was not local consumers who are the problem, but rather the journalists.

"An FCC report came out recently that said 'wow, there is not enough traffic to local news sites.' I think people are interested in local news and I think the people who are not interested in local news are journalists," Tolles said. "The people who do not (have an interest in) local news are journalists. They are the problem, they are not the answer. The opportunity is to change the journalists' minds about local news because there is a hierarchy of news reporting that no one talks about. Everybody wants to have the pyramid of news end at the White House. I say, invert the pyramid of news so that the highest calling is to do local news and the PTA meeting. Some guy at Gawker said once 'America needs you to cover all the news that I don't want to.'"

Tolles said this is where he fundamentally disagrees with Calacanis.

"Let me point out that our site is bigger than his site," Tolles said with a smile (he was very particular on making sure to be quoted with a smile). "I won't comment on his aspirations but to say no one cares about local? Yeah, except for the 100 billion or 150 billion dollar ad market that is out there and the fact that newspapers have been the largest way to make wealth in the media for quite a while until the dissemination of the Internet happened."

The Town As the Contextual Advertising Unit

Traffic to Topix truly comes from the local level. Tolles said that he gets "more traffic from Utica, New York than he gets from New York City" and that in some towns of 5,000 to 10,000 people he is getting upwards of 100,000 page views. The trick, Tolles says, is to start conversations around "sticky" topics, like politics. The more controversial, the better.

As such, Topix will be making a big move into the political sphere on the local level for the 2012 general elections. Advertising revenue is always on an upswing in presidential election years and Tolles is smart to take advantage of the localized aspect of that, creating political heat maps for certain types of debates across the country.

CPM Works for Topix, Will Not Work for Small Local Publishers

"What we noticed is that the localizable unit is the town," Tolles said. "We notice most of our traffic from small to medium-sized towns. In that way you don't really need to segment zip code. For instance, if you are in Colesville, Maryland ... we can get to Colesville We have a news page about them and it is contextually relevant to Colesville."

Local is a tricky market when it comes to advertising. Topix can function on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis because it can target ad inventory on a state or county level. Yet, small local publishers cannot make money on CPM because on a localized basis, there are just not enough page views (there are other revenue models, such as sponsorship and local deals).

"We use all parts of the dollar at Topix," Tolles said. "We do whatever works. There are definitely CPM issues with a small site. It is very hard to get there through a page view point. People like Groupon and Foursquare are exposing different ways to do local advertising."

From the description, the app seems somewhat basic, maybe even a little boring: share photos via Facebook, Twitter or email. But it does so with a simplicity, elegance and ease that I've often found lacking elsewhere.

Above: Sample Photogram

Even though there are social networking sharing mechanisms built in to give the app a more universal appeal, the app's target demographic is, to be sure, parents. Like me. And especially parents who need to share iPhone photos with their kids' grandparents, and everyone else who "doesn't have a Facebook yet." (Yes, despite Facebook's some 500+ million users, there are still so many who still prefer email for photo-sharing. I know, shocking.)

While the iPhone's photo gallery app makes emailing photos easy enough, the end result is just a plain email. Photogram, instead, lets you dress things up a bit with a selection of artistic themes to showcase your photos, some of which are free and some that are paid. There are "baby" and family-oriented themes, party themes, minimalist themes, outdoor themes, and many others.

But the real killer feature is the ability to create recipient groups so you can share with the same folks (e.g. "grandparents," "friends," etc.) over and over again, without having to address the emails by hand. Facebook and Twitter can be combined with email recipient groups too, so you can send our your photos everywhere in just one step. Genius.

An App for Everyone

While none of these things are new innovations, necessarily, it's the way they're put together that makes the app so great. There aren't those trendy photo filters to mess with like in Instagram and its clones, you don't have to create a "profile," add friends or find others to follow - you just pick a few photos (4 max.), add a message and share. So easy, anyone can use it. And that's the point.

Sometimes, simply making a task easier, quicker and more fun is all it takes to win me over. Now, Photogram, won't you please come to Android?

Below: Photogram of the most adorable child in the world: mine.

Disruptathon came to the Washington D.C. area on Thursday evening with eight entrepreneurs in tow to make their pitches at USA Today headquarters in McLean, Va. When it comes to disruption, the news industry was hit hard by lack of innovation and forward digital thinking. As one presenter put it: "the foundation for the news business has shifted." Take a look at the eight startups trying to change the way we consume, produce or interact with the news.

Socialize was proclaimed the winner by the crowd, which voted on special iPod Touches that were handed out to the audience and returned to tabulate the final results. Socialize provides websites with a software developer kit (SDK) intended to "quantify the interest graph." Of the eight companies that took the stage, Socialize was the company with the clearest technological vision and most potential to be integrated on a large scale within media apps. CEO Daniel R. Odio described it as "unleashing the community that is hiding in your app."

Here are the eight entrants, in my view of potential disruption:

Odio and his team have created a system that understands implicit social connections within an application. It then tries to tie together related readers through their "interest graph" based on the data it obtains from the user. From a technical perspective, Socialize was ahead of the field at Disruptathon.

I was a touch surprised to see my friends from Publish2 included in this list of entrepreneurs since they have been around for a while and have had significant traction within the news industry. Publish2 is attempting to recreate the traditional newswire by making content easily sharable among disparate media partners with incompatible content management systems. Content is shared and virtualized in the cloud and can be picked up by any partner and formatted directly for its specific CMS.

Of all the presenters, Yowie has the potential for the largest scale. It also is perhaps the one least suited to the news industry. What Yowie tries to do is bridge the "last mile" of social connections between media figures (bands, politicians, actors or in this instance. It is a video queue that can be hosted and then brings commenters face-to-face with the media subject.

Outside of Socialize, ProConIt was the darling of Disruptathon Media. It is a system designed to change how readers comment and engage with topics. A "ProCon" is an embeddable debate platform that can be used as a social evaluation tool that provides a visual of the discourse of a conversation in Pros or Cons. It has the potential to be an interesting add-on to topics presented in the media.

Whereas most of the entrepreneurs at Disruptathon were services or features that can be used by publishers, NearSay kind of IS a publisher. It provides a platform for local news that is scalable and profitable. In terms of a pure business model, it has one of the purest visions of how to tackle hyperlocal news that has been dreamt up. It provides a way to local contributors to have a voice, aggregates local data and brings local brands and merchants to the table for discussion and awareness. I cannot see NearSay being successful in small town America, but it will work very well within large cities and has 125,000 users in Manhattan.

WatchParty is an interesting platform that can give marketers, advertisers and media companies valuable analytics into how people react to television on a moment to moment basis. The interface is nothing special ... it is essentially a chat room for TV designed to bring people together to discuss and react to shows. Yet, the data that their reactions provide can be a valuable resource.

Think of CNN iReport where citizen journalists can bring send pictures and video into the news organization to be used for broadcast or on the site. OneNews is a platform that can be integrated into local news sites that do not already have their own version of iReport set up and can help mobilize contributors to the scene of breaking news.

"Hyper-topical." Stry aims to transform the newswire with in-depth topical stories. "A band of reporters in pursuit of storytelling." Its founder, Dan Oshinsky, will be a fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri to study news-centric startups and impart lessons in being an entrepreneur.

If you haven't yet heard of Dwolla, you should know that this company has no plans to be a minor player in the payments space. Its vision for a payments network is based on the idea that consumers should get to dictate how their payments network operates, not third-parties, says CEO and co-founder Ben Milne. And cash, not credit cards, is Dwolla's inroad to its planned disruption. "Cash," says Milne, "is a poorly represented market in electronic payments."

With Dwolla, the payment network is devoid of personal information - the same information that's the current source of $8.6 billion in credit card fraud annually here in the U.S. “If Visa could blow up their current payment model and start over today, would they build a network that forces consumers to expose critical financial data in order to buy a bagel?," asks Milne, in describing how Dwolla is different.

Like Facebook Connect for Payments

Instead, that personal information is held within Dwolla's walls. When a third-party chooses to integrate Dwolla into their application, a familiar-looking dialog box appears. Much like how Facebook Connect asks you if an app can access your Profile information or your Friends List, Dwolla's permission box asks you if the app can access your balance summary or your transaction details, among other things.

For example, if a service like Mint.com was going to use Dwolla, it may only need access to your transaction history. If a marketplace where you buy and sell things integrates Dwolla, it would need permission to send money.

Also like Facebook, consumers can go in later and revoke an app's access to their personal data.

Disruption: Electronic Cash, Cheaper than PayPal, Works over Facebook & Twitter

To make these cash-based payments possible, Dwolla has partnerships with The Veridian Group, a subsidiary of Veridian Credit Union, in Waterloo, Iowa, and The Members Group (TMG) another financial and credit union service organization owned by Iowa credit unions and their members. Through these organizations', which hold the funds in Dwolla's users' accounts, people can send and receive money from their own bank accounts for a flat 25-cents per transaction, regardless of the transaction amount. That's lower than PayPal's 30-cents per transaction fee. Plus, there's no additional percentage amount per transaction, even though PayPal currently charges an additional 2.9%.

For consumers, these cash-based payments can be shared with social networking friends on sites like Facebook and Twitter. To use Dwolla, you simply register for an account, add your friends from your social networks, then click over to a "Send Money" section on the Dwolla site to send a friend some cash. The friend is alerted to the transaction by way of a direct message on Twitter or Facebook wall post.

Businesses, including those operating online and brick-and-mortar retailers, wanting an alternative to PayPal can also use the service, which is now poised for integration into more applications and platforms through the new Grid API, which allows for this integration into third-party platforms. Because Dwolla uses standard Oauth technology, the number of platforms which could easily integrate its service include everything from mobile apps to banking platforms and more.

Square, Google Wallet & Others Could be Partners, Not Competition

As for other disruptive payment startups and services like Square, the credit card swiping dongle for mobile devices, Zaarly, the hot, new location-based, real-time mobile marketplace, and Google Wallet (Google's wireless mobile payment service), Dwolla doesn't see these as competition, but future partners. Dwolla could be integrated into Google's Wallet app as the "cash" option, for example. It's already in talks with Zaarly, too, with a deal expected.

And Dwolla has more up its sleeves, too. The company is working on other "unique solutions" alongside the Federal Reserve, which it won't say much about at this point, only that "they will weigh heavily on user experiences and transactions." Going forward, Dwolla also has its eye on the burgeoning couponing market, especially the local deals services which these days includes companies like Groupon, Living Social, Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Offers and others. Says Milne, Dwolla will get more involved in this market over the next year.

In the meantime, the company is focused on spreading the word about Grid as well as FiSync, a service that allows banks to offer Dwolla to their customers directly, without the need for pre-loaded Dwolla accounts held elsewhere.

Anyone interested in trying Dwolla for themselves can do so here. Businesses can learn more here.