A new perspective on paid owned and earned media: The Brandsphere

According to Brian Solis, media are no longer limited to three groups (earned, owned and paid, as coined by Forrester or first by Nokia some years ago), but instead categorized into five key segments: Paid, Promoted, Owned, Shared, and Earned. To visualize the model that reflects this supposedly new state of media, he made a brand new infographic, that is hot on Twitter now: The Brandsphere. So…. what he added were two new landscapes: let’s see how that works out in the infographic below:
Solis writes in his description of the infographic above:

“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.”

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.)

The way I see it, Solis has made a more in-detail distinction of earned media by adding promoted as a part of paid and shared as a part of earned. At first glance, it seems a bit over the top to add these subcategories in the social media brandshpere to the “Big Three”. I’m very curious what you think!