Organizing the Social Media Universe: Big Bang and Cosmological Redshift

Not to get to enmeshed in metaphors, or science for that matter; but, one way to look at, and ORGANIZE, the emergence of new ideas like Social Media, and the technologies, processes and businesses that develop around them is to take the concept of the expanding space paradigm (or "cosmological redshift") first introduced by Hubble (of the telescope namesake) and overlay it onto today's most fascinating and popular area of dynamic business growth (and hype).
Let's use the current fascination of the world, techies, developers, newsies (and me, too!) surrounding the social media landscape (to mix my metaphors) as an example. And, let's extend our universe metaphor by adding in the theory of "cosmological red shift."
Now, I'm no astronomer, but I like the way this works when we think of emerging businesses, verticals and practices. For those unfamiliar with it (and too lazy to check out the link to its explanation, above), cosmological red shift refers (in very simplified terms) to the expansion of the universe, including all galaxies and planets in it, following the "Big Bang."
As an example of this theory, and to cite the Wikipdia explanation some more, we often find "the "raisin bread model" shown below, where one imagines a loaf of raisin bread expanding in the oven. The loaf (space) expands as a whole, but the raisins (gravitationally bound objects) do not expand; they merely grow farther away from each other.







Of course, "...unlike real cosmological matter, ...loaves of bread are bound together electromagnetically and will not continue to expand on their own after an initial tug."

What the heck does this have to do with Social business?

Okay. So, consider Social Media as the ever-expanding "rasin bread" loaf - the universe in total. Then, consider that there are raisins (galaxies) in this universe that are made up of the various tools (planets) for communication, development, marketing and transacting of social business (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Ning, Salesforce.com, Groupsite.com, Google Wave, Bing.com, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, Digg, Apple, etc.). Finally, consider that as each of these "planets" gains gravitational force (eyeballs, APIs, audience, participation, etc.), they begin to literally create satellites (moons) and even new galaxies in the form of businesses and applications  (i.e., just consider the results of developing with the Twitter API, the Apple iPhone application development business engine, or the Starbuck's community). 

As these galaxies expand further and further from each other (and as we discover new galaxies when ideas, technologies and practices collide in space), and their planets and moons grow mass, they increase their gravitational pull even as the universe, as whole, expands continually.

So, I leave you with the ever growing Social Media universe as an interesting (or not?) example of how to frame and organize your thoughts as new technologies, ideas and practices seem to come at us at the speed of light.

The big question for many will be:  How do I avoid the black holes and colossal asteroids?
ANSWER:  Read the stars and keep your rocket fueled.
P.S. One of the best visual maps of the current Social Media (Enterprise 2.0) TOOL UNIVERSE was compiled by Dion Hinchcliffe at ZDNet (someone you should definitely follow). Click here to see where I found the cool graphic map below (and to see it bigger), and to read more of the great stuff from Dion.....







~LP