Wresting the crop from the traditional farmer: the entrepreneurial developer in new media business models

Entrepreneurial social developers play a significant role in new media business models. Traditional media models operated within an environment where technology that enabled content production and provision, was owned and managed by the content producer. In new media models, this relationship is overturned. Entrepreneurial social developers have empowered end users by enabling them to become content producers. This has ensured that media companies are no longer the sole owners of tools that enable content production and provision. What end users have previously lacked is the skill to create a method of dissemination. During the last five years, entrepreneurial developers have acted as conduits providing end users with access to web based platforms such as Facebook, and sites that assist in the dissemination of end user content and which now also promote social networks, such as video (YouTube), photographs (Flickr), text by blog (WordPress) and micro blogs (Twitter). Entrepreneurial developers have provided platforms and web sites for user-generated content to be disseminated and possibly form part of a package of content provided by business organisations to their end users and consumers. This paper outlines some new media models that are emerging as a result of these innovative developments. It suggests that there are four models of macro integration, 'gregarious', 'friendly', 'solitary' and 'neighbourly'. The fourth model 'neighbourly' introduces FarmVille as a case study to illustrate the trend of social games like FarmVille, and how the tactics they apply to engage users can be applied in other areas.