It used to be there were two worlds.  Creators and Consumers.

But that paradigm is gone.  Exploded.  Today,  consumers create content,  make and share digital goods,  and are powering a shift that can be seen in the rapid growth of web properties that facilitate creation and connection.

YouTube.  Facebook.  Twitter.  The iPhone.   uStream.  Magnify.net.  Threadless. CraigsList.

And - of course -  Google.

While individually  the elements are powerful - collectively they're spellbinding.

These are companies that embrace consumer/creators.  The provide places, tools, and communities that embrace participation and contribution.  In fact what they all have in common is that they are driven by engagement.  If you don't think of Google as a natural member of the group - think again.  After all,  it is your searches and behavior that is feeding the database that Google is leveraging to deliver advertising.

We are truly standing at a moment in media history like no other.

The creation of,  sharing of,  and interaction around shared media is profound and world changing.  Here's what my Nano-Network looks like today - what about yours?

And a look under the hood, at the trends that driven this evolution,  project a future in which the shift in media is driving us toward a very different media ecosystem.  Big changes that will reach far beyond what you may think.

The changes will rock the worlds of Advertising,  Media,  Politics,  News,  Fashion,  and Commerce.  

The Statistics and trajectory tell the story.  Just look at the scale of engagement in these sites:

        My Space:  68,285,849 - Monthly Visitors
        Wikipedia.org 41,422,790 - Monthly Visitors
        YouTube.com 23,825,526 - Monthly Visitors
        facebook.com | 22,541,770 - Monthly Visitors
        photobucket.com  25,548,801 - Monthly Visitors
        craigslist.org 23,982,542 - Monthly Visitors
        flickr.com 23,643,614 - Monthly Visitors
        IMDB.com 17,703,766 - Monthly Visitors
        digg.com 16,964,445 - Monthly Visitors
        WordPress.com   6,373,166 - Monthly Visitors

And User-Generated Content isn't limited to just words and pictures,  sites like Cafe Press and Threadless are created markets around user-generated (user designed)  products and fashion.

Embracing this trend toward collaborative and communal creation of ideas,  data,  and goods has the potential to change the planet,  to speed innovation and connect distant creators and customers (etsy), create whole new ways to be conscious of waste (freecycle.com),  and new ways to tell stories (www.aliveinbaghdad.org).

This is a big change.

And from it we should expect big things.

Personal media will emerge in 2008 as the year of  Nano-Networks.

This Nano-Networks will emerge as the defining principal in the way people both contribute and consume content and digital goods.   Some of these networks will require explicit engagement and active participation (like Facebook)  while many others will function well with participants who have opted in but are mostly content consumers or purchasers of digital goods.

But Nano Networks are here to stay.

Private  and individualized concentric circles of media that are created,consumed,  and engaged among formerly passive users.  Nano Networks will create a coherent collection of concentric circles that together will create a meta-data map of who we are.  The significant change here is that content,  not commerce will be the organizing principle around the networks that connect our worlds.

In a world of Nano-Networks,  we're all connected.