SpectatorBytes

The growing number of social tools that have emerged over the past few years (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Wordpress, and Twitter among others) are contributing to the emergence of new type of users which I call “social leaders.” After all, in a world where we are increasingly “following” our friends, acquaintances, colleagues and celebrities, the “social leaders” are those from whom we are most interested in listening or simply those who tend to consistently “broadcast” or share information with us and their community.

The recent popularity battle between Ashton Kutcher and CNN on Twitter made this phenomenon evident. As of today, two million people are following Ashton Kutchner on Twitter. However, this is not just about celebrities. TV news people increasingly market their Facebook pages. Musicians constant promote their MySpace pages. Sports analysts promote their YouTube channels. Industry specialists blog and Tweet.

This phenomenon is not necessarily new. As communication tools have become easier to use over the past few years, these social leaders find it easier to build and maintain continuous relationships with their audiences. Social leaders can easily share their videos, daily musings, photos, thoughts on issues of interest, etc. Social networking tools have created a new class of users or, as I should say, broadcasters.

Today, the social leaders on the Web are similar to those in our “real” lives. They are our most gregarious friends, most extroverted colleagues or marketing-savvy celebrities. However, as these social tools evolve, I expect that new types of social leaders will be created and the overall numbers of social leaders will multiply. We have already seen leading gamers grow in popularity, good content curators sprout everywhere, new industry thought leaders expand their followings and “dorm-room” stars break through.

The implication of the emergence of online social leaders is that we will increasingly rely on them to help us sift through the abundance of “stuff” on the Web. They will increasingly play the role of curators of content and information for their communities. They will play the role of information editors across multiple dimensions of our lives. The amount of information available on the Web is overwhelming and so far most tools have proven inadequate to help mainstream users discover content and information on the Web that is of interest to them. Portals (Yahoo, AOL) and aggregators (Drudge Report and HuffPo) are still the most popular tools. RSS readers, while useful, have apparently failed to lure the masses.

Typical users need better forms to package information for them. Social tools have helped fill that gap. The next-gen tools such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Tweetdeck, and Twine are heading in the right direction. I expect these tools to continue to evolve and further enable “social leaders,” so that we, the happy followers, can more easily and efficiently discover and consume new content and information.