The quick rise of the prosumer is exerting great force on the social networks and platforms that depend on these users. As prosumers are empowered and generate more value their options broaden, allowing them to control more of their web and market environment through their participation.
The output power of individuals is increasing rapidly largely due to evolving web, information and other technologies. At the same time it's getting much easier to capture and generate digital content that can then return value through the web.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg observes that of late people are sharing roughly 2x more digital data about themselves every year. With better, cheaper video, audio, graphics, machinima, and search capabilities arriving regularly, this new content is steadily growing richer.
As the web market evolves, more value is returned to users through better ad pairing/serving, payment through links, personally relevant structure (i.e. social networks) and access to other data. Ultimately, prosumers (consumers that create content) gravitate toward services that give them the most and best rewards for their time and attention spent.
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Biological history has much to teach us about our web economy. In particular, we can glean a great deal from the well-established patterns of punctuated equilibrium (the idea that growth and death come in spurts, which is very similar to many technology and social diffusion cycles) and evo-devo biology (a new theory of life in which Darwinian evolution acts in concert with 
structured development to optimize organisms AND biological systems for survival).
Just as the sudden death of the dinosaurs permitted small warm-blooded mammals to vary and scale during the subsequent ice age, so too is the swift death of old media models creating the ideal conditions for nascent software and social media models. Though this sort of cycle is nothing new, it is illuminating to apply it to the current economic situation in which printed newspapers are dying, open source IT is winning marketshare, and increasingly more people are sharing their information online.
When considering the near-term future and the year ahead, we can be reasonably certain that the dire economic conditions will serve as a breeding ground for new advantageous innovations. It was no accident that we experienced a spurt of great literature during the Great Depression as brains were freed up and exposed to an extreme environment. And now it's no accident that were vacillating from commercial enterpise to "programming subculture", as Kevin Kelleher at GigaOm puts it.
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MySpace and the Wall Street Journal are running a promotion that will send one MySpace user to the influential World Economic Forum Davos Conference as a "citizen journalist". Though the contest may seem like a novelty at this point in web history, it does mark one small step toward more official respresentation for the prosumer and web networks of the near-future.
Selected by an all-star panel of judges based on their compelling and heartfelt video submissions, the 5 finalists are all women with clear and well-stated messages for our world leaders. Each has garnered a community feedback score of between 72% and 88%, which means that they pass the public likability test. I am particularly struck by how well-rounded and inspiring the candidates come across.
Expecting a steady increase in prosumer behavior, proliferation of web-based economic clans and the growth of value generated by such, I imagine that contests such as this one will expand in coming years as participants in different social nodes gradually begin to demand more rights.
Already, the Chris DeWolfes (MySpace), Mark Zuckerbergs (Facebook), and Philip Rosedales (Second Life) of the world are regularly invited to speak at big events about the sizable online nations they lead. But how long will it take before web-based prosumers unionize and demand representation to the external world?
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