From a grimly professional point of view, though, I found it fascinating that during the earthquake, the immediate response of some people was to grab a video camera and start filming, before posting the footage to YouTube or other social media sites.

There was a time that most sensible people would run away, while the journalists would be the only ones running towards the disaster with cameras rolling. Yet now recording seems second nature. Perhaps you could go as far as to say citizen journalism as a phrase should be discarded if that’s one of the first instincts. All of us on social media are becoming citizen journalists.

What hasn’t changed, fundamentally, though, is the way the narrative is told. Social media makes it clearer in the initial phase, through the use of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, but once the often shocking initial footage clears and the basic facts are in place, then the storytellers, the journalists, thread the whole thing together (for better or for worse). As Richard Sambrook Tweeted, the need for foreign correspondents is still there.

This isn’t to say the sources aren’t different or more immediate, especially in the case of Twitter. And social media is also becoming, naturally, the quickest way to reach friends, families and loved ones.

Do users of social media, as Mashable asks, have a responsibility with what they post during times of disaster and crisis? Perhaps this isn’t the first thing on their mind in a situation like Japan or Libya. Although it’s also very easy for rumours and misinformation to spread like wildfire via Twitter. Again, this is where fact checkers are never a bad thing to have.

One final tangental thought. A friend remarked that there appear to be more disasters and the like occurring around the world today. I wonder if it’s more than these worldwide disasters were always there, always happened, but we didn’t hear about them, or at least didn’t hear about them so quickly.

Twenty-four hour global news had already made the world small. Social media has made it even smaller, so we’re now more aware of bad things happening quicker, to put it crudely. And, oddly, you can almost see the same news values an editor might pick, being played out on a more global scale. Bad things attract more attention, generally because they’re so unusual.

Doesn’t mean they’re not heartbreaking though. Thousands of lives lost are still thousands of lives lost, whether we hear about them within five hours, fives days, or five weeks of the event.

I posted a detailed explanation on TFT as to why we were hanging up our microphones, but the basic and overriding reason was a lack of time.

It’s also, if I’m honest, the reason why this place looks a little neglected. I could use Tumblr or Posterous (both great platforms, I hasten to add) but I quite like to take my time to explain and think about issues. And much as I love Twitter, it doesn’t allow for much in-depth analysis or nuance in 140 characters.

It’s something I’ve touched on before but it’s one of the reasons I can see for a shift in attitudes to blogging among bloggers themselves.

If you’re young, a student or unemployed or retired then blogging is relatively easy to keep up. Similarly if the blog has some relation to the job then it’s no problem.

And when blogging was relatively new, it was a mixture of the enthusiasts, who could work blogging into a job, and those who had more time on their hands who led the charge.

Now many of those who led the charge are busier or have made a reasonably good fist of trying to monetise their blog.

Certainly those who blogged for fun – and are probably still leading proponents of blogging – have less time or work on a blog that pays. It’s become more professional, that’s for sure.

So where does this leave the professional amateur, the person who takes pride in their blog but holds down a day job and possibly a relationship, maybe with kids too? There’s only so many evenings you can stay up until the wee hours blogging merrily away.

Increasingly, I suspect, those early waves of professional amateurs have either got a career out of it or got out, bar for the occasional update on a semi-dormant blog (hey, I never said I wasn’t using myself as a case study).

And although the idea of bloggers still very much prevails as the single person hammering the keyboard in the bedroom, blogs are now major players in the content and media marketplace.

It’s why AOL’s acquisition of the Huffington Post and Techcrunch didn’t surprise me – although it’s not as if either of these were low profile hard-up bloggers trying to make ends meet.

But they general idea that more traditional media or Internet companies will be buying up or taking over the smaller blogs is one I’ve been predicting for several years now. Blogging 2.0, if you want to call it that, is smarter and more professional. The first age of the professional amateur is, in my mind, largely over.

But this isn’t a blogging is dead post, as the medium isn’t – far from it. Blogging wouldn’t be getting more professional and commercial if it didn’t have something going for it.

And while an older, busier generation of amateurs reluctantly hang up their keyboard to spend more time on their career and family, a new generation arrives and, if anything, this bunch have the potential to be even more exciting.

Obviously you’ll get natural churn and new bloggers entering the field each year as a new generation discovers blogging. That goes without saying.

But this generation – through circumstances beyond their control – find themselves living through a very deep and damaging recession where jobs are scarce. And that means more time on their hands.

There will undoubtedly be some very smart, unemployed young bloggers out there. Bloggers and those with general web skills who have a lot of time on their hands – and are willing to innovate and play by different rules, both for blogging and the web in general.

And that’s not only exciting, to me it means blogging isn’t going anywhere just yet.

Social media is a multi-faceted beast. It can be used to break stories, promote campaigns and brands, deal with reputation management, drive sales, and nurture and develop an enthusiastic community of fans and followers.

Just looking at this list it’s clear that there’s a whole host of potential stakeholders all of whom could legitimately lay claim to be the right people to drive this strategy forward.

Marketing will certainly be happy to push the message or the brand but may not be the right people to respond to a crisis or issues that might arrive.

PR, meanwhile, will be perfect for this and would seem to be the most natural fit but, although you have some excellent social PRs, may not be the most naturally inclined to nurture or build a community, while the community person may not necessarily be the right person to completely get across the message on the occasions that are required, or deal with social issues out of the community.

Then there’s the analytics, something that those on the media side of things are generally less inclined towards. Then there’s always the temptation for some companies to give it to “the web guy” or the most enthusiastic member of the team. But if they’re doing this on top of their normal work and don’t get the support from the rest of the organisation then this negates any savyness they bring to the table.

I realise this is a somewhat simplistic overview of the whole area – some companies have very evolved social practices and are happy to work in the grey areas – but it still shows the dilemmas and issues ownership of social projects.

It’s why, increasingly, I strongly believe that any company, organisation or group that has genuine aspirations of working successfully in a social space should be employing somebody whose brief is solely social media and is comfortable with all these disciplines (and, in fairness, a lot of companies are moving in this direction).

Ideally this person will have some form of media background or knowledge – they’d need to be able to communicate with the PR and marketing sides, and also comfortable writing and commissioning blog posts. They’d also have the time to integrate with a community, appreciate the sensitivities and, if they’re really good, use this to feed back and potentially help their employers produce something cool and well-received.

The other aspect of this is the social person being happy to delegate social responsibility elsewhere in the organisation. One of the temptations for social media is to give it all to one person.

But if you’re going to have one person overseeing social media then they will need to facilitate and delegate. There will inevitably be co-workers who are better placed to run Twitter feeds or answer questions on this topic, and, most importantly provide guidance.

I’ve worked in plenty of places and heard tales from elsewhere where social strategy and cool ideas were held up because several different departments wanted to make a land-grab for the social media rights and this internal jostling often ended up slowing the whole process down.

And, as we all know, social media isn’t exactly an area that’s inclined to hang around.

It’s all to easy to have assorted departments squabbling over who should take charge of social media. Instead, treat is as a separate discipline and hopefully you’ll see the benefits.

Since Tuesday, Twitter – and Quora – has exploded with hype, counter-hype, naysayers and people somewhere in-between trying to work out if this is the next big thing in social media.

There’s a few interesting points to be made around the bubbles around these services, which I’ll come to in a bit, but to answer the Quora question, my initial thoughts are probably not, but it’s an interesting and potentially very useful site that could gain a reasonable amount of traction.

Taking out the obvious self-publicising answers that appear on the site, the quality of the answers is very high and in-depth and there’s a very knowledgeable crowd on there.

There’s also potential for mainstream media and other companies to use it. For journalism, it seems like an excellent place to gauge opinion and reaction that’s likely to be more considered than, say, Twitter, as well as cultivating potential contacts.

You can also see how this could be useful for specific radio or even TV shows, while it offers good opportunities for brands to enhance their profile if they’re willing to engage with this community.

But – and I could be very wrong here – the strengths of Quora is also probably the reason why it probably won’t go mainstream in the way that Twitter did (and Gigacom also has a few potential pitfalls as well).

Firstly, the more users Quora gets, the greater the potential for the quality of the questions and answers to go down. The voting element adds a safeguard of kind, but if, say, you see the sort of mass adoption in the style of Twitter, then the user base changes.

Secondly, would a mainstream audience necessarily want to become regular Quora users? If there’s a lot of specialist knowledge there, will it discourage the average Twitter user from regular usage, if they just want to socialise?

Unsurprisingly, Quora is also very to-heavy with marketing, technology, PR, media and social media queries, which may put others off. The quality of answers is usually strong, and fascinating, for these topics, but stray away and the level of answers is somewhat hit and miss. Will this put off people who don’t specialise in these areas?

I’ve asked two questions – and followed several others. One was on SEO, which had short, sharp, snappy, useful replies. The other was a question on managerial sackings in football, which I’d hoped would attract a couple of thoughtful responses.

So far, I’ve had no responses and a quick look through the other questions asked around football aren’t exactly on a par with those in the social media section. That said, the growing food community on Quora is quite useful and interesting.

Perhaps the area, or social media site, that Quora could impact on the most is LinkedIn. The type of discussions are very similar to a lot of the groups I’m a member of and opening it up to a wider audience taps into even more expertise than individual LinkedIn groups can offer.

As with anything social media related, if the site, app or whatever is to break through into the mainstream it needs to reach out beyond the early adopters and those who rush to praise it off the back of this – normally the social media and tech community – without alienating those who have vocally supported it.

It’s why I’m not rushing to hail it as the future of social media or the next big thing from this area, although the amount of use and the ease with which the new users are embracing the service suggests this isn’t a flash in the pan. How far it can go is another question.

And this leads neatly onto a finishing tangent, which Quora neatly highlights. The big mainstream social media sites that are breaking through are few and far between now, despite everybody looking for them. But those, llike Qoura, that appeal to an informed niche will pick up a lot of traction.

Several years ago, I remember musing to colleagues that niche would be the next big thing. In hindsight, I was probably a bit too early but there’s no reason to reverse that prediction. The problem with networks or sites that appeal to a nice audience are they will never become as big or as sexy as Facebook or Twitter, but they have the potential for decent growth and even a business model.

Other than niche, the other obvious areas for exploding in 2011 are mobile apps and social TV. In the former, smartphone usage is becoming more ubiquitous (about half the people on my bus today had an iPhone). All it needs now is a social mobile app that changes the game completely. Foursquare isn’t quite it, though.

With the latter, you only have to tune into Twitter and Facebook during any TV show with a decent amount of viewers to see how important social media is as a backchannel. With Google and Apple moving into the TV market and a generation comfortable with social media as part of their everyday life coming into more disposable income, the potential for growth in this area is huge. When somebody makes the right product, that is.

Now, having said that, expect me to be shown up as the ignoramus I am as all these predictions turn out to be gubbins by December.

Additional: Vicky Chowney mirrors my thoughts on Quora in a much quicker, cleaner and more intelligent way.

So, yes, I’m sat here still not sure who to vote for. Tomorrow should be interesting, historic even. I can’t wait for the drama and the coverage, although I’m less than sure about 98% of the politicians involved.

It’s been a fascinating election to watch, especially from an online perspective, although I’m somewhat glad I took a holiday in the middle of it all and totally switched off from the entire campaign. Fun as it can be, I can totally understand why Adam Tinworth, and others, have retreated from Twitter for some of the election period. It can get a bit much, really.

Politics is tribal, yes. It also invokes passion. That I also understand. But it’s somewhat unedifying to see people who are already elected representatives or are aiming to become an elected representative – and especially party-supporting people – close up and angry on social sites. This Tweet from Conservative blogger, Iain Dale, being a case in point (although, in fairness to Dale, he did apologise and he’s not deleted the offending Tweet).

Call me an idealist, but given these people are meant to be aiming to change the world for the better and represent our interests, it’d be nice if one or two could rise above the mud-slinging. Really, all it comes across is that these people want power above political convictions (I’m probably doing quite a few a disservice here though). And I’d rather back somebody who is entering politics because of convictions as opposed to a fanatical desire to see their party returned to or achieving power.

It’s not just Dale, who is meant to be one of the online stars of politics, who has forgotten what social media is about. I’ve seen plenty of people, especially on Twitter, who sell themselves as social media experts and, by and large, fall into that category, forget themselves.

Brands should listen and engage is a regular message from social media land. Which is why it’s rather depressing to see certain people shout down and talk at others for having their party’s policies questioned. It’s worse than some of the rather low-brow football banter on the site. Much as I dislike Plymouth Argyle, I wouldn’t go as far as some social media people have gone with politics.

And still the politics rumbles on, the 24 News Channels do their best to make The Thick Of It look like a factual documentary and all the political parties come out with policies with so many holes in them you could drive the entire US marine corps though.

This all probably sounds a bit gloomy and, yes, it’s easy to be disillusioned with British politics. If there was a ‘None of the above’ option on the ballot paper, as they used to have in my old Students’ Union elections, I’d place my cross there without hesitation.

But, having worked reporting two general elections and numerous local elections, 2010 feels like people actually care about the outcome. I haven’t felt the country (at least in my personal sphere) be this engaged with the election.

I’ve had long conversations with strangers on the bus about the election, the result, their hopes and fears. That wouldn’t have happened at the last two elections.

And, for the first time in ages, it’s never been easier to connect with your MPs and other local politicians via social media and hold them to account. Anything that brings the public closer to their elected representatives can only be a good thing. Twitter and Facebook have made this possible.

But the most entertaining aspect has been the humour on social media, aimed at all parties. At least once a day I’ve laughed at something irreverent posted on Twitter or Facebook. It’s made it entertaining. Politics is suddenly fun to discuss.

And it’ll sure as hell be fun to watch tomorrow as the TV coverage gets bigger and probably more bizarre and the results fly in.

That said, it’s now quarter past midnight on election day.

I still have absolutely no idea who I’m going to vote for.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve morphed from Riggs into Murtaugh.

It’s not that I didn’t want to go to Twestival tonight. I even had a ticket and had every intention of going. But it clashed with podcast recording night, and we were running a bit late, and the studios were across the other side of London, and I had lots to do and didn’t want to be tired at work, and home is back the other side of town, and so on and so on. And so the sensible, but boring, decision was taken to head home rather than party into the night.

(And in many respects I’m rather gutted I didn’t make it. The Twestival team have done a fantastic job from turning it into a small one-off in a bar near Trafalgar Square into a global phenomenon. I’m always slightly humbled whenever I see what they’ve achieved).

Gone are the days where I’d run across London, make three social media parties in a night, and still come in bright and cheerful the next morning.

But it’s also interesting as I don’t think I’m the only one. When it comes to partying or cracking on and doing something, the latter is often the default setting.

Perhaps its because social media has been around for long enough that it’s no longer new, it’s not a phenomenon, any people have stopped going “Ooh, isn’t this cool,” and moved towards “Right, how can we use this better.” Or, put more crudely, “How can I make money from this?” [1]

It’s not that in social media that people have now met all the useful people. But we’ve got a better idea of who we need to contact and how to get hold of them. And while partying was, you know, fun, websites don’t just built themselves, and Twitter doesn’t update itself, and money doesn’t just magically appear in your bank account, and willyalookatthateverybodysdoingsocialmediathesedaysholyshitwebetterupourgame.

And the thing is, we generally get it now. Not all of it. That implies there’s no more to get. But now social media is more commonplace and even if not everybody in any given is immersed in social media, they know it’s important and they’re prepared to create new jobs for people to show them how to do social media and these people have stopped going “Well, there’s a lot to learn<’ and instead are saying “It’s not that hard. Look, I’ll show you. And, actually, we can do something VERY cool with this.”

So, yes, doing things. That’s what we’re largely doing now. Burying ourselves in work – and this isn’t necessary dull, because a lot of it is putting the VERY cool things into practice rather than just talking about them. There’s less of a need to jump around and drink lots and generally tell people how cool the projects are you’re doing. We know. We’re probably working on something similar.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t party from time to time, right? And every last person at Twestival well deserves every drop of beer drunk tonight because they’re all contributing to something amazing and making a huge difference to people’s lives in places where debates over Foursquare are, frankly, insignificant. And this wouldn’t have been possible without social media.

And tomorrow we’ll get our heads down to working again, either with hangovers or tinges of regret about not being able to make it. And we’ll enjoy it.

I’m getting old. I’m also working hard with VERY cool things. And while I’m careering slowly towards not being able to name the majority of artists in the Top 40, I’m still loving every minute of it. Social media isn’t the future any more, it’s part of the future, and I’m bloody glad I’m part of that part.

PS The podcast tonight was so much fun, I’d happily have missed most things to record it. It’ll be up at the usual places tomorrow and should be sounding fantastic.

[1] Not that I necessary subscribe to the latter viewpoint. It may surprise people, but I make precisely zero from the podcast. It’s currently done solely for the love of podcasting and football.

Darika also asked me if I’d be able to contribute and, er, well last week didn’t happen mainly because I was excessively busy and also because it’s so hard to add anything to her excellent pieces.

One thing to briefly say, though, is while social media has moved on, and PR and brands are more willing to engage, general attitudes are still stuck in the past a little. If these attitudes can change, then we could see a real shift in thinking. But it requires organisations and senior people to face up to this and make a conscious effort.

The two biggest social media attitude problems, and they’re not mutually exclusive and can frequently be found it the same office, is that social media is an area of specialised PR that only need concern a few digital people, and that it’s quick, cheap, and easy. Often the first assumption informs actions on the second.

First off, social media may have been specialised once upon a time, while those of us beavered away understanding niche bloggers and communities, but it’s no longer part a different world.

Social media planning should be built into the start of any good campaign. If you insist on separating out digital from regular PR (and I personally think the lines are blurred enough for the distinction to be nearly meaningless) then for heavens sake, include the digital team from the start, rather than realising you’d quite like to do something on Twitter a few weeks beforehand. If nothing else, you’ll get a greater sense of what’s realistic.

And therein follows the second part. Any campaign that has poor social media planning often seems to throw things together late in the day. I still get “Can we push this out to bloggers” a week before hand, as do, anecdotally, many others, it seems.

Darika says she no longer takes short-term pitching to blogger projects, and you can understand why. These are the ones that are cobbled together at last minute, often with ludicrous targets and expectations, and invariably require so much work around them with so little return that they’re more trouble than it’s worth.

If you’re building a strategy around bloggers – and it’s also worth asking ‘what is a blogger’, given that so many mainstream outlets are just as likely to stick it on their blog as in the paper – then these things take time, money and no small amount of effort. You would throw together a major plan for print media the week beforehand. Why do the same with bloggers?

None of this is rocket science. And none of these need be done at the expense of other media coverage (another traditional mis-assumption). It requires the same thought and discipline as any other campaign.

It’s nothing that can’t be fixed but, as Darika says, we have a long way to go.

This is a rather roundabout way of saying make an effort to seek it out and watch it if it’s passed you by as well. It’s an excellent and illuminating exploration of how the internet has changed our world. It’s especially good if you’re new to social media and want an overview that doesn’t assume knowledge or patronise. Absolutely fascinating and probably one of the few non-sport related programmes I’ll be making an effort to watch.

I also suspect some of the themes in the second programme are ones I’ll touch on when I finally get around to writing my Peru / social media post.

(Yes, I know it’s generated a lot of buzz online. I’ve missed it, ok. I’ve been busy with other things, and when that happens, TV tends to take a back seat)

So, just because a well run Twitter-based campaign worked well for one company, it doesn’t mean that it’ll work for another. And, crucially, it definitely doesn’t mean that you can repeat it again a few months later for the original company. Everything is different.

Here’s an example from my own work. On ITV.com, we’ve started running live chats around various shows and Q&As with producers and the talent (Dancing On Ice is the one currently running on Sundays). We’ve done this for various shows and events for several months now, and not one show is exactly the same.

After initial successes with football and I’m A Celebrity, it would have been tempting to say: “That works, let’s roll it out.” But we’d have done so at the peril of alienating our communities. Whereas one group would treat the chat in a knockabout way, another was deadly serious, whereas a third disliked us doing something we’d happily done with no problems in other chats.

These lessons can be applied to anywhere in the social media sphere. It’s all to easy to fall into a basic, easy way of doing things that achieves decent results but ignores the community. But by listening to that community and tuning into their likes and dislikes and individual quirks, you have a chance not just to cater to their needs, but to listen, learn and improve across the board.

It’s a principle that good online journalism adopts as well. The better you know your audience, the better you’ll be able to serve them (even if this involves taking a contrary position to stir up a bit of debate in the comments).

Taking big conversations and great ideas and listening to them at much smaller levels may not seem like a priority, but it’s not hard to do, and the benefits far outweigh the time you’ll put into it (which really isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things).

First impressions… yes, well.

On one hand, I like it. There’s a lot of potential there. In term of work collaboration it could be very useful indeed – kind of inbetween a wiki and email. Certainly for small group based projects with plenty of distance between them there’s a lot a potential. I think Chris and I can both see it working with the twofootedtackle podcast as well.

On the other hand: what the hell do you actually do with it. About 75% of my Waves are currently conversations with other people as we try to figure it all out. I’m also not a fan of the lack of an ‘undo delete’ option (unless I’ve just not found one).

At this stage it’s a bit pointless jumping on the naysayers bandwagon or the sliced bread enthusiasts bandwagon. With the fanfare of the announcement and launch, it was always going to be a tad underwhelming (especially as it can’t actually slice bread). But that doesn’t mean it’s pointless or rubbish. We just probably haven’t found the best usage for it.

Not that I necessarily think it’ll have the same impact as Twitter, but there were similar comments around Twitter when that first started to enter the public consciousness (although it’s worth noting that Twitter is one hell of a lot easier to master than Wave). Twitter, and indeed Facebook, are now quite different beasts from when they first started out.

Wave, I suspect, will be the same. There’s probably some incredibly clever usage of Wave that will be developed a year or so down the line that will make users wonder how they ever lived without it. Or it may die on its arse. But the former’s probably more likely.

Interestingly, there’s a couple of people in my Wave contacts who have very little to do with social media. The industries they work in (mostly the financial sector) may just find more of a use for it. Just because the early adopter / social media sector have  jumped on it, doesn’t mean it’s the sector to get the best usage out of it.

Me, the best thing I can see with it so far is sharing and altering recipes and food pictures. That’s been kind of fun. Live Wave cookalong anybody?

Anyway, if any readers of this blog (all 7.5 of you) want to add me on Wave I can be found at garyllewellynandrews [at] googlewave [dot] com.

Right, back to the silence.