How is social media not a bubble?

The "real" or what used to be to sometimes called "bricks and morter" media - the news and magazine media who charge handsomely for advertising and pay well for quality content is being continuously pronounced "dead by social media". And then they go on about how social media will one day make money, but until then being content with dribbles of aggregating income for any old content (quality not being the issue).

In the serious matter of news reporting, online newspapers typically do one of two things:

a) try to sell newspapers by presenting a boiled down version of the printed news
or
b) try to sell advertising by harnessing a huge audience

or, if Rupert Murdoch has his way:

c) charging for content

At least c) drives the online media toward quality.

Aggregation of content means representing the same things thorough the filter of online networks to score points (or dollars, on google adsense) is what this (blogging) media seems to be about. For this writer, it is simply a way to write and get hundreds (or if successful a few million) readers. From there the sky is the limit.

A bit like the investment in the property bubble, or the sharemarket bubble or the dot.com boom/bust - the proliferation of "media media media" for its own sake continually dilates the audience. The differenced is, that what I write today can work tomorrow. What I publish in a newspaper is designed to expire tomorrow (or soon enough). The same can be observed with comment aggregation mechanisms (facebook, twitter, et al). What is published today becomes dead seaweed fairly quickly. And the most severe degredadation of content is the social marketers - these creatures demand you find out from them "how to gain 50,000 followers" using the same method they used? The age of media competition is not dead, and if I happen to find out how to gain 50,000 genuine followers, it is merely an illusion to say that I benefit by telling these 50,000 people how to compete. It is a co-operative ideal, and one that is bound to come undone when you consider the mathematics.

The concept that you "own your network" - that when an "important person" tweets or blogs, then their 50,000 followers will go crazy is just fiction. That 100 of them may be watching and relay your wisdom is the goal. Respect your network if the one you have is genuine.

There is wisdom in vertical markets. They do not have to be hierachial to succeed, however. Content may be "king" (what a silly metaphor, but it is one that stuck), but the king has to wear interesting clothes or eventually the signal to noise ratio does nothing for it.

The real trick (in my opinion) is to create something worth reading, which is why this writer needs an editor instead of a stream of irrelevance as comments or votes or whatever. In the end, if you do not care how popular you are, but prepare fascinating, dramatic and mouth watering content then your network will transmit it. If they are interested.

But if all you do is inform others how you tricked 50,000 people into registering interest with a non-existent free gift (the infamous give away ebook and selling webpages that go on and on scrolling for hours of fun persuasion) and expect to make millions, you are inflating a bubble that will not work as well as compelling, interesting or even valuable content.