Who is making you try that new dish on the menu that actually looks like it could get up and walk away with your wallet? In 2008, it's not likely to be your dinner partner who's exerting that mental push. In fact, it's more likely to be the new media tastemaker you visited online today.

What is a new media tastemaker?

New Media Tastemakers aren't the people who post blogs, videos, and items that inform you of the latest breaking news, or shape your opinions about life, culture, and politics. Though they are new media players without a doubt, unless they're telling you that something you're going to eat or wear is bad for one reason or another, they are not tastemakers in the current sense.

New Media Tastemakers are in fact the ones who deliver pre-digested to you the results and reviews of their research on the latest foods, trends, fashions, restaurants, designs, recipes, chefs, hot spots, and more. Their numbers are legion, and they are quickly challenging, and in many cases usurping, what was previously the exclusive domain of glossy magazines, newspaper features sections, PBS, and terrestrial television.

These areas of subject matter, and the New Media Tastemakers behind them, have now gained unprecedented reach and influence over what people buy, eat, watch, wear, and do in leisure and in life.

Furthermore, their increased influence, reach, and ability to bring new ideas and discoveries to an information-addicted audience continues to grow, even as the economy itself is slowing. Just as online video is doing to television, and blogs and Google and Craiglist are doing to newspapers, the New Media Tastemakers are doing to entire categories of the media - and cutting across all providers and consumers of the lifestyle media segment.