open | Social Signal

Social media are often called a disruptive innovation: one that surprises markets and, often, threatens market leaders.

A few nights ago, at Vancouver's seventh Democamp (blogged wonderfully by Raul Pacheco here), I caught a glimpse of what may be the latest facet of that disruption.

It was nestled among a series of other fascinating demonstrations - including our friend Kris Krug's use of NetVibes as a personal media monitoring platform; Anahita, a Joomla-based social network platform; and BuddyPress, which turns WordPress MU into a social network. All very cool.

But the thing that really caught my attention was the upcoming service LexPublica.