3 Things I Learned at the Mashable Media Summit

I was fortunate enough to attend the Mashable Media Summit in New York last week, which they put on in partnership with CNN. It was filled with great takeaways, cool resources and even plain old funny content (what else can you expect when the speaker roster includes representatives of The Onion, College Humor and URDB?), but here are the top 3 things I feel were most important with applications to content developers like myself, small businesses and anyone who uses social media:

1. People want content that comes to them.
Both sportscaster Len Berman and Motorola representative Christy Wyatt each voiced this message in different ways. Len was referring to the 2008 presidential election and hearing young people say they don't turn to the news anymore, but rather the news now comes to them – especially through Facebook and Twitter feeds. "There's no faster way to get the news and information than on Twitter," he said. "It's on Twitter before it's anywhere else." Keep in mind this is coming from someone who grew to fame using traditional media, but has since expanded his horizons and opened professional doors using the web as his primary voice. He adds that the instant two-way conversation is the best thing about new media.

Christy, who was hawking the platform Motoblur (successfully, I might add – every attendee received a free smartphone!), was talking about the rise of mobile web. "People don't want to go to data – they want data to come to them," she said, comparing the time-consuming, battery-draining installation process (such as mobile apps, an obvious criticism of the iPhone) to the ease of directly connecting (mobile web). With more and more people using their phones as mini computers, users want mobile-friendly websites that use push notifications – almost like a text message – rather than pull notifications reserved for your desktop computer. Again, the user doesn't have to actively seek out information – their phone (or the social connections within their phone) sends it right to their pocket.

2. Foursquare is the next big thing. (Probably.)
I've said it before, and so have my colleagues – businesses shouldn't ignore Foursquare. But even though some may blast it (Time magazine calls it "the next generation of creepy social networking"), enough early adopters – including major brands – are supporting it that Mashable and others are calling it the next Twitter. As one moderator said, "The whole experience of checking in is still foreign to people, but you can compare that to the two years Twitter spent explaining why they were tweeting."

And more than 1.5 million users are checking in, and often. But what's so refreshing about founder Dennis Crowley (as compared to the lack of privacy concerns of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg) is this quote:

People that get most concerned about privacy are not the ones that have used [Foursquare]. I'm not a fan of the passive check-in model.

This means that as "creepy" as Time considers this new social application, the founder has spoken out against what I personally consider the creepier versions of location-based social networking, those that use your GPS to track where you are and automatically check in for you. No thanks. I like Foursquare for the same reason I like the e-newsletters I receive – they're opt-in, and it's my decision to actively check in/sign up.

The Foursquare discussion gave some insight into their business model. They've gone from six employees to 25 employees in the past year. They just had their developers take two weeks off from developing new features to focus on fixing functionality problems. (Don't we wish we all had time to focus solely on fixing problems?) And though they did develop an iPhone app, they didn't develop apps for the Android or Blackberry operating systems. Instead, they spent time developing their API (essentially, the interface that programmers use to create third-party applications – like Facebook Connect or TweetDeck) in hopes that someone else would develop the apps for them. And it worked.

Of course, we're not all that lucky, having developers knocking at our doors to create applications for us. But there's more in the works for Foursquare, including the idea of rewarding frequent visitors other than the mayor, so I highly recommend checking out what Foursquare can do for your business. Need an example? Listen to what Robert Smith Hotel has done with social media – and how well it's worked.

3. Content is still king – but find your niche.
My professional title has the word "content" in it, and so does my company's logo: Custom Media, Custom Content. So it's refreshing to hear these speakers constantly say things like, "Great content is a terrible thing to waste."

That quote comes from Chris Bruzzo with Starbucks, and he had a plethora of social media success stories. But throughout this conference, no matter who was speaking, content remained at the forefront of conversation. Mashable talked about how their team posts 25+ new pieces of content per day. College Humor's CEO discussed their success with branded content. CNN covered user-generated content. Even Foursquare was called "socially filtered location content."

In fact, I found the discussion between CNN and Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore (swoon) to be probably the best out of all of the great sessions. I liked it because they didn't always see eye to eye, provoking some of the best conversations. Television content is broad and general, web content is passion-based. CNN spent two years developing an iPhone app, while Mashable instantly offered up an iPad app that has since undergone six revisions. Even as user-generated content soars, CNN says it will never rely entirely on iReporters for a story: "If we let it go to purely user-generated content, it would be the lowest-common denominator," Sanjay Gupta said.

Two of the commonly used, relatively unknown (to me) phrases I heard were "curating" and "niche verticals". Mashable does both. They curate content, rather than aggregate it – select relevant news from throughout the web while giving it their own spin. As far as their niche, social media, they don't just confine themselves to that subject; rather, they will examine it from all angles, thoroughly and purposefully. A wide range of mini-topics all spin off from the central, core subject – causing what they and others called a niche vertical.

At the end of the day, your site is only as good as your content is. If you sell apples, I don't expect you to tell me how to grow oranges. But I do expect you to tell me how to grow apples, offer apple recipes, tell me the difference between a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious, and let me know how to reach you to buy apples – or just to ask a question. As the era of social media expands, remember: It's all about making connections.

Want more? Check out Mashable's recap of the Media Summit – includes complete video of all major speakers.