Most of us know exactly how to set the world to rights if only people would listen to us, and I'm no exception.

Below, I posted my thoughts on newspapers in the 21st century in two Seesmic videos. As I reckon almost nobody has watched them, I present a précis here:

i) I reckon blogs/the internet in general increase people's interest in news, as being able to take part ("readers" can now take part) makes it more fun. So, media companies should see the rise of the blogosphere as an opportunity

ii) The technology used by journalists should incorporate things like bookmarking (sending links to source material which would be displayed on the website as related links) creating maps and (I didn't say this in the video) monitoring comments automatically (so we can reply to them) - and this technology should be provided by employers and integrated directly into the process of writing stories. It's no use writing blog posts saying "journalists should create Delicious accounts", it won't work.

iii) Newspapers have always been about communities - the internet provides new ways for people within communities to communicate, so why not encourage them to do it through us? Why not encourage Birmingham would-be bloggers to set up blogs on the Birmingham Post & Mail website for example, instead of on Wordpress or Blogger.com? Why not allow people to share photos of Birmingham on the Birmingham Post & Mail website - or simply get their Flickr gallery streamed onto our site? And 101 other things.

Thanks to Fiona of Subs' Standards for prompting me to write a text summary.

Suw Charman on Strange Attractor speculates that some businesses may be resisting the lure of social media because "social" has negative connotations.

A challenge facing any journalist is turning jargon into English. Jargon turns people off, quite rightly. Turning it into everyday language also forces you to try to understand what is actually being said.

So what is social media? As far as I can tell, it means websites or other internet applications which allow users to add to the content in some way, or generally do something more than passively reading it.

In other words, it's the internet. The internet has always done that.

Once, it was ICQ (one of the first instant messaging services), newsgroups (like a shared e-mail account which anyone can write to or download messages from), IRC (chatrooms) and forums (still the best way of sharing and discussing ideas for my money). And, of course, there were blogs, before people used the word blog.

One of the biggest drivers of change has been the growth of broadband, which lets you download things like videos, pictures and far more quickly than you could with the modems we used to use.

Hence, you have YouTube and a host of similar sites, iTunes - which lets anyone advertise podcasts (little radio shows) to the world, as well as selling you music - and torrents, which provide an easy way to "share files" (pirate stuff, usually).

It's all great. So why tell people who are happily using the internet, but may not know about all the good stuff out there, that they need to get into "social media"?

It's a buzzword, and someone who doesn't respond well to buzzwords is no curmudgeon. I'd call it a healthy response.

Video blogging. Should I? I've already been warned off by Clifford, and he's probably right, but the lure of playing with my new toy is too strong.

I've made a sample video - not for general consumption, but just to see what is possible. If I go ahead with this, my plan is to suggest to the Editor that I make a vid once a week or so, stick it on YouTube and simply embed it into my Birmingham Post blog (as I think putting it on YouTube would do more to draw attention to the Post website than simply using the Post's servers). He may not want to, but the first question is whether I even suggest it.

On the other hand, perhaps it is a very, very bad idea. Give your thoughts. I realise one issue is that people are probably too polite to be brutally honest (although I may be proved wrong about that!).

i) Is it a good idea? ii) If so, how should I set about doing it?

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If I actually do this, I think I'll film it in the House of Commons press bar.

Little known fact – just a couple of weeks ago, the Tory PR people were worried that the mood was changing in Gordon Brown’s favour. Not in the country at large necessarily, but among the press corps.

They believed they had detected the start of the anti-Gordon-backlash-backlash. A fashion for saying he’s not so bad after all, in other words. One example was a piece by Ben Brogan in the Daily Mail portraying him as a colossus on the world stage, and asking why he didn’t enjoy the same respect at home.

Glasgow East put paid to that, but if 150 SNP voters had stuck with Labour, perhaps the mood in the media would be very different today. Of course, David Miliband has since ensured that the leadership will be the story for the foreseeable future.

One cultural shift that has taken place on the Internet is the way people now use it to promote themselves, presenting their real identity to the world rather than a fake one. This may seem obvious to those of you that have been doing it for a while, but back in the olden days it was taken for granted that you used a wacky username to communicate. Putting your real-life details out there was seen as a very brave thing to do, as Sir Humphrey might say.

This was probably a good thing in many ways, at least for me. I don't thing it would do me much good if the people I work with (contacts as well as colleagues) could follow all my edit wars on Wikipedia, earnest discussions about geek culture or outright flaming of the America Deserved It brigade on various message boards after 9-11. I still use pseudonyms most of the time.

I guess it's not an issue with younger people who happily post photos of themselves on MySpace. But for slightly older people like me, it can be a bit of a leap. It's just not the done thing ...