As AlwaysOn Insiders know, since our founding in 2002 we’ve been committed to the free-market, merit-driven approach to media. We daresay that few other media brands have encouraged such a liberal mixture of member participation and transparency as AO, and we’re all about leveraging the “Open Web” to blow the Big Media and Big Entertainment world into millions of pieces.

And now that we have moved to our new blog publishing and community management platform, GoingOn, we can claim a completely open and up-to-date blogging environment for our members. (GoingOn is a separate spin-off of AlwaysOn, with a separate ownership structure, but all AO members should have received an e-mail to re-activate their accounts on the new platform.)

Some quick highlights of all the ways we’re opening up: AlwaysOn is no longer lurking in its own “walled garden” like dinosaurs AOL, Yahoo, and MSN. The new platform is built on open standards that combine ease-of-use and all the open media functions a modern multimedia blogging and social networking platform needs. And it’s become easy to join—and create—new networks on GoingOn, like OnHollywood, Draper’s World, and the Churchill Club.

Why did we decide to push the envelope and transition to this platform? Well, in 1994 it became clear to me that the Internet was, in the words of Jim Clark, “the real information superhighway!” What wasn’t exactly clear was what the Internet’s distinguishing characteristic would be over the long run.  AlwaysOn has seen the light, and the Internet’s true raison d’être can be summed up in two simple statistics. The first one: 62% of the content that the average member of the IM Generation reads online is produced by someone they know. Think about that for a moment (especially with your media-and-entertainment-executive hat on). The second stat: 72 million kids have joined the global MySpace community. The “to see and be seen on the Internet” genie is officially out of the bottle, and there is no turning back.

I’ve never had as much fun in the media business as in the almost four years AO has been at this (or in my preceding years at Red Herring). We have truly entered an era of media participation—this is what the kids want, and this is what they’re going to get. Even Rupert Murdoch, king of Big Media, confessed that “young readers don’t want to rely on a godlike figure from above to tell them what is important, and they certainly do not want news presented as gospel. The media world can no longer lecture, it must become a place for conversation.”

The rush to create online conversation and build visible communities is also spreading to the corporate world. Intel CEO Paul Otellini (whose time is arguably the most valuable in the corporate world) implied on AO that the best tool he has for listening to and dialoguing with Intel employees is his blog.

Bill Gates said way back in 2003 that blogging “gets away from the drawbacks of e-mail and the drawbacks of a website. Eventually, most businesses will use blogs to communicate with customers, suppliers, and employees, because it is two-way and more satisfying.” We’d argue that Jonathan Schwartz’s ascent to the CEO post at Sun was aided by how successfully he used his personal blog to cement his role as an industry thought-leader.

Ironically, just when we thought that the media business was becoming concentrated in the hands of a few conglomerates, the world is instead exploding into millions of media brands. As Michael Moe of emerging technology investment bank ThinkEquity Partners, which is launching its own interactive network, remarked, “People don’t get it—we are a media brand. So is Starbucks, and so is Apple. This is how you need to think.”

We agree. If you’re smart, you’ll jump in the game and build your own online media brand. Otherwise, you’ll run the risk that kids won’t be able to find you—and that won’t be good for business.

Tony Perkins is founder and editor of AlwaysOn.

Further Information:

-    Learn about GoingOn features and extended benefits
-    Getting Started: Create your own AlwaysOn Network
-    Sign up for  an AlwaysOn membership today!