State 2.0

Aggregation of social networks under a state perspective and scope can offer meaningful advantages to people who live in the state, visitors from elsewhere, tourists, national and global companies that make business in the state, state, county and city governments, and local industries in many ways:

• Low entry barriers for local communities and engagement under a state identity
• Support for digital literacy and digital inclusion, enabling isolated populations to connect with actors to voice out their ideas and needs
• Leveraging the power of online communities to offer focused communication among residents and non-residents around the state’s natural and infrastructure resources, art, culture, social problems, industries, etc.
• Leveraging network effects to capitalize collective intelligence in a cost-effective manner
• Attracting and retaining talent
• Direct feedback for advocacy on state policy, regulation, law making and specific economic priorities
• Freedom to share and reuse tacit knowledge exchanged on the network
• Decentralization of social network authority as a democratic effort under an open State 2.0 initiative 
• Open architecture of participation with intermediation processes among members
• Enhanced organization and categorization of user generated content
• Data aggregation under a state identity
• Applications and customization targeted to communities of interest and communities of practice
• Global distribution via digital marketing, promoting the state and its stakeholders 
• Increased inbound web access to participating sites and rankings
• Open environment to promote small and medium enterprise as part of local economic development initiatives
• Focus on fostering creativity and innovation
• Better knowledge representation schemes via tags, folksonomy, metadata and ontology
• Knowledge representation of the state’s social graph with relations across social communities

State 2.0 represents a good opportunity to leverage social media, leading the state to innovation in various social segments via the participation of State Government, citizens and businesses. Innovation can be further extended by making use of Web 3.0 technologies, providing benefits to participating organizations and enhancing members’ online experience.