Open up your mind and say, ahh...

In discussions about new media, you will often hear the division of media opportunities as Paid, Owned, and Earned media (P.O.E.M.). Over the years, I’ve studied the various categorization of media from a few perspectives, that of content creation, how social networks cater to consumption and sharing, and also how media opportunities are packaged and sold by each network. I believe media is not limited to three groups, but instead categorized into five key segments, Paid, Promoted, Owned, Shared, and Owned. To visualize the model that reflects the state of new media, I once again partnered with my good friends at JESS3. The result…The Brandsphere.

Introducing The Brandsphere

Social networks and channels present brands with a broad array of media opportunities to engage customers and those who influence them. Each channel offers a unique formula for engagement where brands become stories and people become storytellers. Using a transmedia approach, the brand story can connect with customers differently across each medium, creating a deeper, more enriching experience. Transmedia storytelling doesn’t follow the traditional rules of publishing; it caters to customers where they connect and folds them into the narrative. In any given network, brands can invest in digital assets that span five media landscapes:

1. Paid: Digital advertising, banners, adwords, overlays

2. Owned: Created assets, custom content

3. Earned: Brand-related conversations and user-generated content

4: Promoted: in-stream or social paid promotions vehicles (e.g. Twitter’s Promoted products and Facebook’s Sponsored Stories)

5. Shared: Open platforms or communities where customers co-create and collaborate with brands. (e.g. Dell’s IdeaStorm and Starbuck’s MyStarbucksIdea.)

Any combination of the five media strategies defines a new Brandsphere where organizations can capture attention, steer online experiences, spark conversations and word of mouth and help customers address challenges or create new opportunities. each media channel connects differently with people and thus requires a dedicated approach integrating tangible and intangible value. Doing so ensures a critical path for social media content: relevance, reach and resonance.

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Center (White): At the center of the Brandsphere is the brand story. Everything starts with not just defining what the brand represents, but how it comes alive in social networks. This requires definition through a social media style guide and the development of a complete persona, voice, and promise.

Ring 1 (Red): The brand story is supported by tenets the serve as the connective tissue between the brand story and the technology that creates a path to consumers.

Ring 2: The vertical gray lines (triangles) divide the media types between Paid, Promoted, Owned, Shared, and Earned. Ring 2 provides the various options available to brands within each channel.

Ring 3 (Orange): Each media type is then enlivened through various forms of activation including Engagement, Gamification, SEO, Content Marketing, and SMO.

Ring 4 (Light Green): Media types are then visualized through the various platforms consumers use to discover, consume, and share content aka the Four Screens: PC, TV, Tablet, Mobile.

Ring 5 (Green): Media objects are then pushed and socialized through promotion, syndication, and organic means.

Ring 6 (Dark Green): Objects are further distributed and also measured through 1) Clickthroughs, presence and traffic, 2) Actions, Reactions, and Transactions (A.R.T), 3) Word of Mouth, and 4) Shares.

Ring 7 (Light Blue): Content then finds a permanent home among the groups that value information based on social graphs (personal and professional relationships) and interest graphs (networks based on commonalities and shared interests).

Ring 8 (Dark Blue): Objects are analyzed, activated, and/or repurposed by the various markets intrigued by the branded story.

The results of new media programs are measured by resonance, reach, and outcomes. Those that garner traction travel from the center outward and again from the outward in and back out again.

The Brandsphere is the visualization of Social Media’s critical path, R.R.S. Thus content programs require a thoughtful approach where media tells connects information, narrative, and people through their channels of influence in ways that spark interaction and circulation.

Please go to theconversationprism.com to download a free hi-res version for printing or for use in presentations.

For continuous World Cup coverage, check out Mashable’s 2010 World Cup Hub, which will be updated throughout the games.

The New York Times has added another World Cup visualization to the mix with its “Top World Cup Players” feature that resizes players based on the amount of buzz they’ve received on Facebook during a given day.

Launched earlier today, the visualization includes a slider that lets you jump from day-to-day of the World Cup and see which players got the most buzz, as measured by the amount of status updates, wall posts and likes that mention their name. You can also sort by country, player or buzz rank.

Not surprisingly, the results correlate fairly closely to the given day’s action on the field. Today, for example, players from the Netherlands and Brazil are biggest, as they played a game this morning. The Times offers explanatory text for each day though so you can quickly figure out how the player sizes came to be. In all, it’s another fun and visual way to see what’s been happening in the World Cup.

Check out our gallery of other World Cup visualizations below:

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The Guardian has put together an application — World Cup 2010 Twitter replay — that creates high-speed replays for each World Cup match. Prepare to be amazed as you relive the entire game through Twitter animation. Action is portrayed via topic bubbles that enlarge as conversation swells on Twitter.

The Guardian set out to let people “see the roar of the crowd passing through Twitter.” They certainly succeeded on their mission.

The Live Tracker application is like an ongoing World Cup analytical dashboard with visual stimuli. The tracker bears a striking resemblance to Sprint’s Now Network site and includes blocks of World Cup trivia — think total whistle blows, number of saves, cumulative worldwide audience, goals scored and even vuvuzela noise levels — that football fans the world round will love.

This visualization may be a little heavy on Castrol promotion, but it’s hard not to get excited when presented with these interesting factoids.

CNN’s Twitter Buzz application is unbelievably simple and yet absolutely stunning. The application tracks World Cup tweets by teams, players and topics. You can check out the current flow of tweets or scroll through the past 24 hours.

Given Twitter’s recurring issues, one can except the Fail Whale to hinder the sheer awesomeness of the visualization from time to time, but CNN has created their very own amusing “Fail Ball” for you to look at during Twitter hiccups.

About a month ago, Mint Digital released a concept for an iPad app that would visualize match play by mapping ball possession on a digital football field. Just yesterday their vision became a reality when LivePitch was released as a free iPad application.

The application is designed to compliment your World Cup viewing experience as a second screen. You can watch in real-time as possession changes from player to player via the interactive football field. Stats-aholics can also dive into the Stats tab or select individual players for detailed and real-time player data on passes, goals, tackles and shots.

The Calendar World Cup 2010 turns the massive event’s schedule into a wheel of visually stimulating information. Simply move your cursor to hover over a date, city or team and you’ll get a glimpse at the associated matches.

Calendar World Cup 2010 by MARCA.com is simply a colorful way to keep track of the overwhelming schedule, but it’s also proven quite popular with over 176,000 likes on Facebook thus far.

As part of their World Cup coverage, the New York Times has created a match tracker application to supplement their Goal blog. The application boasts impressive minute-by-minute data overlaid on a soccer field so you can visualize passes, goals and shots for the duration of the game.

If you’re feeling lazy, the Overview tab will breakout game data in a nifty line graph. You can also check out player rankings for touches, passes, goals, fouls and balls won. It’s fantastic to behold and super fun for stats addicts to toy with.

If you’re total nerd for World Cup game data then Total Football 2010 for iPhone will more than satisfy your match analysis cravings. The $2.99 app is worth every penny as it presents advanced statistical analysis for head-to-head comparisons between teams or players, all with visual finesse. Stats include shots, passes and tackles with users able to look at a game in its entirety or use the slider to pinpoint a particular moment for a more focused perspective.

Given that updates are in near real-time, you can also use this app as your play-by-play cheat sheet for games that you’re not able watch on television. There’s even a ‘Player Influence” feature for identifying the players making the biggest impact in a particular match.