There are two primary types of people involved in social computing today: posters and pasters.
Posters generate original content for the Web. Many are bloggers. They write about themselves, their experiences, opinions and values. Posters may create and edit videos. Posters are also artists. They share their photography, paintings, music and other musings. (One of my favorite posters is Brooklyn’s Marie Lorenz of the Tide and Current Taxi http://www.marielorenz.com/tideandcurrenttaxi.php.) Posters are responsible for the surge in consumer generated content found all over the Web and are the lifeblood of social computing.
Pasters, on the other hand, are the people who search the Web for interesting stuff so they can share it. The first people who sent jokes and video around the Web were pasters. Today’s pasters are Web filters and repurposers — finding, cutting, pasting and mashing up content. They have websites, social networking spaces and are voracious communicators. Pasters may also be bloggers; they just aggregate and post content others have written. Think of them as reporters. Pasters may not be the lifeblood of social networking, but they are certainly the body. Pasters are the mass in the massively growing social computing phenomenon.