“BULLETIN — REPORT: FAMED GOLFER TIGER WOODS SERIOUSLY INJURED AFTER CRASH NEAR FLORIDA HOME.” via Breaking News at Twitter.

45 minutes later…
“Golfer Tiger Woods was injured in a car accident near his home, Florida officials say.” via CNN

It took CNN 45 minutes to give to its viewers the same level of information about the car crash of the famous golf player. And this is only one example of how the social media are winning the battle with the traditional media.

A few days ago I came across this video of Clay Shirky, “How social media can make history” at Ted.com (it’s 17 minutes but you have to watch it if you want to understand how Social Media are changing our world these days).

We talked about Social Media before and for sure we’ll talk again in the future. Now days the user is the message. People now have the tools to broadcast their own message. They don’t want to act as pathetic receivers to what big organizations, publishers, companies or even governments are saying.

If you look back, let’s say 30 years, our only source of Information was TV, newspapers and magazines, all controlled by big organizations and the governments. Then in the 90’s Internet came as the “new media”. Everyone was amazed, the information now was flowing much faster but it was still controlled by professionals. Then the Blogs came. Now the information wasn’t controlled any more by big organizations. Theoretically everyone could start a Blog and write his opinion about everything. People had the power to talk back.

And then there was Web 2.0. If you try to find a definition about Web 2.0 you will get confused. Those days in the first years of 21st century people thought that Web 2.0 was all about Ajax that it was all about technology.  But it wasn’t. Web 2.0 was all about people. Wikipedia is a good example of a rather traditional site that brings people together as a team for a common purpose. Web 2.0 is about connecting people. And people started connecting. Tools – sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace started to become bigger and bigger. People now not only have the power to talk back but they also have the tools to find other people with similar ideas or problems, to form groups, to communicate, to talk and be heard by millions of people.

Now the information is flowing around us at amazing speed. And another interested thing is started to happening. We don’t have to go to the information any more, the information comes to us. Every time you go online, let’s say in Facebook or Twitter you probably find something new, a post that someone of your friends found interesting enough to post on his wall or tweet about it. You can act as a pathetic receiver now or maybe post an interesting link or two. You can act as a reader or as publisher of the news at the same time.

This is why the traditional media are loosing the battle. When CNN reported on its site the car crash of Tiger Woods it was already old news for the users of Twitter. For a traditional media going online is not the only answer. As more and more people are connecting and staying always online through smartphones the gap between traditional media (even if they have an online presentation) and the new social media will become bigger. Will the traditional media survive? They will have to change business model. In this social world you can’t sell information anymore simply because what you are offering is already on the Internet, it’s free, and not controlled.