Corey - you're right about the stories - see David Wilcox's social reporter post. 

I feel it's much more than this though. There's a culture change that is needed (which will come easier to some orgs than to others...). The person or persons who take on this role will also become a catalyst for change within... as well as getting the message/stories out there to exisiting communities and networks.

I agree that this is coming -- at least for some folks.

I've always been nonplussed by organizational use of (a) "viral" animations; (b) promotions in MySpace that rely entirely on people making "friends" with a campaign, a fictional character, any profile not belonging to a single flesh-and-blood human being; (c) deliberate attempts to game digg, etc.

Those tactics are just the same old "push" marketing in social-web contexts. People will develop resistance to it, and quickly.

I think a much better strategy is to pursue richer, more authentic relationships with constituents. To really open all the doors and windows and let your staff and constituents mix it up in social-web contexts -- blogs, video- and photo-sharing, etc. Empower your constituents -- let them design your t-shirts, give them tools and assignments to help advance your organization's work. Get your staff and supporters out into the social-media spaces you want to have a real presence in -- and ask them to spread the word and through their personal networks personally engage with potential supporters. Give them badges, even xml-driven widgets that feed back to the world the actions that individual user has taken and the impact those actions have had. As Kathy Sierra always says, give them an "I'm kicking serious ass" experience, where they know they've been critical to making something happen. Instead of marketing at your constituents, give them opportunities to do your marketing for you. A passionate user talking about how great their experience with your org has been has far more viral power than another lame Free Range animation.

There's nothing wrong with doing the kind of stuff people usually associate with "viral marketing," as long as it's yielding results. (Well, you could argue that this sort of marketing is degrading the social media space, but the horse is long out of the barn there.) However, that model isn't sustainable. My hope is that the sort of model I'm proposing -- which is hard as hell to pull off, I think -- will be sustainable.

-- Ian

Britt - I think that the next stage will be for these tools to be seamlessly integrated in such as way that "audiences" will not be distracted by buzzwords and will not necessarily know they are using them. I think we're seeing this already with RSS, now that the next generation of browsers are integrating feeds.

Having said that, here in the UK, I'm not even sure we're at first base. 

Steve