Yesterday the MB bunch had another thrilling brainstorming session at lunchtime. This time around the cuisine was pizza from The-Pizzeria, and the topic was Social Networking. As the person who called this little gathering, I wanted to get all my ideas out there in some tangible form. If your familiar with the office meeting, you know that tangents are sprinkled like land mines waiting to appear and take you off your main focus. So I showed off my master passable PowerPoint karate and made a pretty little graph. I don't like to think of it as a graph though, but instead Seamus' Social Networking Wonder Wheel. The wheel basically has every idea I could think of for Social Networking. Some of the ideas were plunked from other sites like Fannation.com, where I previously blogged about their "throwdowns" that allow two users to debate topic while other members casted votes.

In all there are about fifteen spokes on the wheel-- some ideas are more immediately feasible, and others are what I like to call "blank check" ideas. One of those idea$ was "fantasy media," where users would choose a team of media professionals and celebrities, then accumulate points based on how often they are mentioned in both MB produced and user-generate content. Unfortunately I discovered I'm not that much of a trailblazer-- after the meeting a quick Google search came up with fafarazzi.com, a site that does the same thing that was floating around in my head-- the only difference is the players were more from the Hollywood gossip circles than the "legitimate media." Still, maybe it can be improved upon by us, or even better-- maybe Mr. Alan Meckler can buy Fafarazzi for us. Call it an early Christmas present.

The majority of the other stuff on the wheel is user-generated content like groups, video, comments, etc. As my colleague and fellow Red Sox nation member Noah pointed out, some of the stuff we discussed falls closer to crowdsourcing than social networking. But essentially the overall goal (as I see it) is to create a collaboration platform, and that includes traditional tools of social networking, crowdsourcing, and stuff we probably haven't thought of yet.

That's where you come in.

In addition to my wacky social networking wheel, I also created a blank one for everyone at the meeting so they could fill in all their social networking desires. The next time we have another social networking confab, we'll see if anything new and exciting comes out.

However those are just a handful of people. That's why I'm offering a blank wheel to the MB community. I encourage everyone to print this out, and write in it in your ideas for social networking and any other kind of online collaboration tools. You can use mine as a model, or create your own from scratch. When you're done with your creation, mail it here:

Seamus Condron
mediabistro.com
494 Broadway
4th floor
New York, NY 10012

Click here to view my social networking wheel

Click here to view and print your blank wheel