9/11 Truth and Media 2.0

Let's start by talking about what media 2.0 is about. 
 
Media 2.0, or new media/Internet media, is about the fact that anyone can get involved in the media game now. Production is cheap. Distribution is cheaper.  
 
The end result of this is, of course, a world in which there is an abundance of content and a corresponding scarcity of attention.  
 
If attention is the scarce asset, its the asset of choice that all media players are aiming for. And after they get your attention, they have to be able to allocate your attention, so that they can profit via advertising, storefront services, or the creation of personalized products/services. 
 
That last part -- personalization -- is the key; we are moving closer and closer to a world in which media is personalized, and strategies geared towards personalization are well-positioned for the future. Using 9/11 Truth as an example, we will eventually be able to create a world in which 9/11 Truth documentaries are dynamically generated based on your psychological profile. In other words, a wealthy Caucasian male with two kids who lives in Venezuela and trades stocks for a living will require a different pitch than a Black female college student living alone in London. 
 
The key to the world of personalization is reconstruction. In other words, the excess of media that the Internet has allowed for now needs to be reconstructed to create personalized products.  
 
To put it more concretely, we are not far off from a world in which you fill out a form, and, based on the information you enter, a custom 9/11 Truth message will be generated. Perhaps it will show the testimony of your local congressional representatives who support the Truth movement, members of your political party, statements from people in your social network, reports from media entities you trust, evidence you are most likely to believe based on your education, etc.  
 
This in turn will enable richer forms of personalized/behavioral advertising. It will help move us from a world of CPM and CPC to a world of lead generation.  
 
9/11 Truth is ahead of most other niches regarding the move to personalization. While no rebundling application exists to allow for true personalization (rest assured, though, it is being worked upon The Ultimate Con is a documentary that exposes 9/11 Truth using ONLY clips from mainstream media. Perhaps you're a fan of hip-hop? Loose Change, known for its stylish presentation, appeals to hip-hop fans via its score and soundtrack.  
 
The Big Barrier: Property Rights 
 
So why is 9/11 Truth ahead of other niches in terms of the movement towards reconstruction -- which is a key step in the movement towards behavioral advertising and lead generation? 
 
Two words: property rights.  
 
Although the world is slowly but surely moving away from being a bunch of copyright crybabies and towards embracing syndication, there are still many economic and legal issues that need to be resolved. 911 Truth is uniquely positioned in that its members are not motivated by money; 911 filmmakers like Alex Jones and Dylan Avery release material for free and encourage making copies of it. As for legal issues, the Truth movement by and large is not particularly concerned in the property rights of mainstream media. After all, if mainstream media did their job, the Truth movement would not be needed. 
 
The economic issue will be resolved when advertising networks that favor syndication (what YouTube will most likely end up being, and FeedBurner) gain dominance, or when content publishers use their media to build and engage a community -- which in turn will allow them to learn about their audience and sell behavioral advertising.  
 
Like the Internet itself, the 9/11 Truth movement is not centralized or planned. In spite of this, there are 911 Truth groups blossoming all around the world -- quite similar to how Internet usage and publishing continues to grow, in spite of a lack of centralization.  
 
In a decentralized environment, force is not an effective means of management; the standards needed to foster teamwork cannot be imposed from the top down, but rather must be chosen by members from the bottom up. In such an environment, it is the ability to start memes that is the true measure of influence and control; memes are how influencers can get others to choose standardization. IT business guru Geoff Moore dropped some serious knowledge on this subject in a blog post where he stated [11]: 
 
As the Internet continues to work its transformation of the globe, the single most powerful force it is unleashing is memes, that class of ideas that are uniquely able to capture people’s imaginations and shape their behavior...The ability both to create and promulgate such memes and to recognize when a meme is acting upon you or one of your constituents is core to being effective in this new reality. 
 
Meme Starters = Artists & Journalists (i.e. Communicators) 
 
It is the great communicators that are influencers -- the ones who can inspire people to choose a standard. In 9/11 Truth, folks like Alex Jones can start a meme to call the military to demand the release of political prisoner Korey Rowe. Likewise, filmmakers like Dylan Avery can inspire the decentralized 9/11 Truth movement to unite in solidarity on 9/11 at Ground Zero in New York City.  
 
What's This Mean for Internet Businesses? 
 
The rise in value of social capital is the most significant implication for the business community of this new environment. New school investment ventures like YCombinator and Tech Stars are, to a large extent, social capital investment firms; venture capitalist Seth Levine, who has been involved with Tech Stars, implied this much when he stated [12]: 
 
I actually think these programs are a great deal for entrepreneurs and don't think the equity they give up has much, if anything, to do with the cash they receive. Significantly more important than money, companies in these programs get amazing access to groups of mentors – business leaders, venture capitalists, lawyers, other successful entrepreneurs – whose time and willingness to help out is worth significantly more than the $5k-$15k that is provided as a stipend in the program. The companies also get access to free office space, regular feedback on their ideas and prototypes and get to interact with other companies in a similar stage of development who share learnings, successes and failures along the way. 
 
As social capital continues to rise in value, new investment and management structures that are less encumbered by command and control financial capital-intensive structures stand to emerge as immensely disruptive forces. StartupWeekend, a project in which Internet professionals in a city gather in a weekend to brainstorm and create a company, is a prime example of this. In the spirit of viral/meme marketing, StartupWeekend has begun to spread to more and more cities across the world. I half-jokingly refer to it as Fight Club for entrepreneurs; just as Tyler Durden travelled around establishing fight clubs in cities across the United States, so too is StartupWeekend spreading its idea city by city, manifesting itself as an unleashed ideavirus.

 
If StartupWeekend can inspire talented Internet professionals to participate, it could lead to management and investment structures that are truly revolutionary, with the potential to innovate better and faster than anything we've seen before.