Years ago (2003 actually) I wrote an article about atomization and virtualization. I penned it because I sensed the web was moving in the direction of smaller and smaller information objects. In fact, MyST services were designed based on this influence - we wanted to make sure that MyST was capable of storing the smallest of information resources. Why? Because the idea of smaller (and smaller) information objects is necessary if the universe of objects is expected to rise dramatically and you hope to be able to find stuff in a continually expanding pile of stuff. Indeed, we designed MyST to make it possible to find a needle in a big pile of needles. The fact that MyST is able to create pretty good findability in Google and other search engines is a by-product of this design.

We achieved the goal for small object capture and management; a good example is a Link Property in a blog post. It's an object that contains only a title, summary, and URL. It can be displayed and manipulated separate and apart from the post it is contained within. It can also be transformed into an RSS feed item even though it may have been intended as a link inside a blog post or a content page. Another example of smallness is Topic Cloud - each topic is a single term, yet (unlike tags and tag clouds), a topic is an object with attributes that create relationships with other small (and large) objects. This is the same capability that makes it possible for MyST to automatically create relationships to other posts (such as this one) without any human effort. This is a unique aspect of the MyST Platform - one that few people know exists and an attribute of the MyST Platform that is very powerful.

The Synaptic Web is about the evolution of the Internet from document delivery platform, to a platform for communication ("Web 2.0") and now towards something much more profound: a dynamic web of adaptive organic and implicit connections whereby real-time information flows give structure and meaning to previously unconnected sets of data.

Here are a few signs that the Synaptic Web is emerging:

• Widgets - lightweight components of functionality that connect numerous information sources and sites.
• Social Networks - the connections between the people and the objects they share is emerging as the most important aspect of the network.
• Social Profiles - unified real-time streams of all that you are, and all that you do.
• Smart Phones - the connectedness dashboard with apps and services that provide comprehensive views and authoring into your streams.
• Open Datastores - pervasive access to data (real-time and legacy) provides opportunities to overlay connected values with visualization technologies (e.g., Google Maps mashups).
• Advanced Filtering - more than search; persistent filtering based on explicit and derived patterns.

These emerging forces are at work today and will grow in power and availability in the coming months and years. Evolving your information architecture to take advantage of the synaptic web will require adoption and embrace of services that expect your information be available as agile objects - preferably highly granular objects that can be used individually or collectively for other unanticipated purposes. To make it easier for your organization to transition toward the synaptic web, your information must be available as discrete, concise objects. Various flavors of XML provide assistance in achieving this requirement. Indeed, 100% of MyST-based content is stored as XML - MyST-ML. It can be filtered with our powerful Filter Patterns; it can be easily transformed to other formats, and it can be integrated into other systems.

The MyST Platform was precisely designed with the anticipation of the synaptic web.

But how do you prepare your business for new emerging shifts in web and information services. What are the practical steps that are necessary to transition from a document-centric web to a real-time, communications web and eventually to a smarter, synaptic-centric web? Since you use MyST, you have a head start; your information is already atomized to a large extent and you have numerous gateways to build new uses for your content. But are you leveraging your content adequately? Here are some guideposts that may help.

• Consider using MyST-ML and RSS to integrate your social media objects into your website, product sales landing pages, and your online pressroom pages. Consider the impact of simple promotional efforts to explicitly offer your RSS feeds to industry portals popular with your customer demographic.
• Build custom social media widgets. MyST has started this process for you - as a premium services MyST customer, you'll find a custom (branded widget) at WidgetBox. You can take this to the next level to created widgets that interoperate with Facebook and other social media sites. Utilizing your MyST content in a social media widget will expand your visibility, brand, and eventually, your synaptic web footprint.
• Spend some time imagining how your wide array of information resources could help your customers understand your team or your products better. This is fundamentally a communication problem, but you have many resources that combined and mixed might provide higher customer communication performance. A good example - for each press release you display, consider blending related blog articles into the display. This is possible through topic tags, widget technologies, and RSS. Another example - blend your Topic Cloud content with your website search engine. Topic Cloud is available as MyST-ML; indexing topics should be possible depending on your chosen site search technology.

It's the alchemy of information that will transform user experiences - ponder the wildest possibilities and you'll likely find something that will resonate with your customers while making you more competitive.

I’ve written many times that social media isn’t free – there are non-trivial costs and they need to be considered in an overall plan and media strategy.

I enjoy the social media ROI debate and I've developed a few fun questions that set the stage for a deeper understanding of measuring social media activities.

• I assume you carry business cards; do you calculate the ROI of that expense? Do you toil away trying to accurately pinpoint the opportunity cost of not carrying cards? Probably not, but if you tried, the ROI formula would likely require a significant mathematical equation.
  
• Everyone blogs and they probably do so all the time; they just don’t realize it. The last time you answered an email inquiry about your business or products, you probably invested a non-trivial part of your workday creating a response that was compelling, demonstrable of your expertise, and largely a representation of your business acumen. Indeed, your response was much like the message I am presently writing – many email messages are simply blog posts intended for one person. This activity -- a common occurrence (by the millions) in every business, every day – is an act of social media engagement, yet no one stops to calculate the ROI.
  
• What is the opportunity-cost of not answering the phone when it rings? Intuitively we know (from experience) that when the business line rings, it’s probably related to business and if we ignore it, we do so at a perilous cost. In free-market societies the cultural expectation is that businesses must always answer the phone, but that’s not why we do it; we do it because it's a known fact that it's generally good for business. We don’t calculate the ROI for answering the phone because it’s a foregone conclusion that profits are likely adversely affected by not answering the phone.
  
• Do you calculate the cost of *not* having a cell phone, or an email address, or a website? If you lacked any one of these tools, your competitors would probably eat you alive. Engaging with prospects, partners, and customers at a social level, is a known business driver; online or not, it's a wise business choice just as using a ballpoint pen is a wise choice compared to not having a pen at all.

We don’t [typically] ponder the idea of calculating ROI on these activities because we know (intuitively, hopefully not from experience) that failing to engage in these activities is bad for business. In similar fashion, there are many things on this planet that I needn't put in my mouth to understand how distasteful they are. Sometimes, good business decisions are based largely on intuition.

I contend that social media investments are not much different than these examples; failure to engage in social *anything*, online or otherwise, has definitive consequences that are clear and generally easy to understand, especially when a competitor emerges who socially engages the target audience more effectively.