See this chart – it’s in PR 2.0 in a post from Brian Solis today I like the visualization but I have to say something – it’s amazing how many people are saying, much the same thing, in their own way ( but hardly anything new is being said – perhaps, the value is in assembling the information, maybe that’s the contribution).

See this chart – it’s in PR 2.0 in a post from Brian Solis today

I like the visualization but I have to say something – it’s amazing how many people are saying, much the same thing, in their own way (but hardly anything new is being said – perhaps, the value is in assembling the information, maybe that’s the contribution).

Which gets me back to this point – what exactly are they saying? Anything original? – No, not really.

What did Jeremiah Owyang,  Josh Bernoff, Cynthia N. Pflaum, and Emily Bowen, say about the future of the Social Web that’s much different than what we already knew?   They presented a roadmap of the next 5 years – that’s all.  Not sure that’s useful, unless the map is adopted.

Roadmaps can be useful if you build something around them, or can look at experience, what’s going on around you, and say .. this fits into the roadmap; otherwise, they have little or no value.

2010 was the year Social Ads were predicted to become profitable and widespread, that was mentioned, 14 months ago, in September 2008, ( see Social Ad Network Solutions – SocialAdSummit part 2). But, David Berkowitz takes better notes than I, he’s got it in his post, too.

” …. 2010 seems to be the agreed on time when the value of social media, in a way that can be qualified, will emerge.

The space is less than a year old, it’s really just starting, perhaps equivalent to 2004 for search and online advertising.”

That seems to correspond to the Era of Social Maturity – starting in 2007 (correct) that matures this coming year and in the next two years after – correct and quite predictable if you saw the signs coming.

The Era of Social Colonization, which started this year, according to the road map, is just the “identity cloud” or “cloud 2.0″ being fed back into websites, rather than building a zillion social networks that no one goes to.  Google Wave can be seen as part of this – but earlier gatherings that talked of identity 2.0 are really the starting point of this – Your Identity in The Cloud.

surfing the Web is no longer a lonely experience. Forrester foresees the release of new browsers and frictionless, uncomplicated technologies that allow people to truly surf the Web with friends or see what they’re doing in real-time.

Nothing new here – Identity Management was already taken care of, in a way, by Google, with it’s Friend Connect, with Facebook, with Facebook Connect, and with Open ID – but there are three different clouds – and we want, ultimately, to have one cloud – one source.   Futhermore -we should be going to web sites that pull this data in and use it creatively to heighten the experience – instead of trying to build more social networks, build less, but use the Cloud Identity, more.  But how original is that?  Really?

We knew this two years ago (nothing new here) …. and only now – is it appearing in some sort of Roadmap Forrester did before Jeremiah Owyang left Forrester to join Altimeter Group, and heavely charged for.  to be honest, I’m jealous of the success of groups like Altimeter (they’re a lot better speakers than I am), I should be raking in the money Forrester and Altermiter Group do, I have at least, as many good ideas as they do, collectively, – and I think I’m on the money – as often as they are – plus, my ideas spring from me – they don’t come to me from the outside.

I personally attend and speak to people and I “see”, “touch” insights, and data – my knowledge comes from “first hand” experience – AND – intuition.  See Identity 2.0 – taking data from silos the data talked about in in PR 2.0 post, is, alteast, 2 years old.  The only contribution is putting it in  chart and saying – this corresponds to the “era of Social Colonization”.

The era of Social Context is to start in 2010, according to the map above

In the near future, much of the content will be automated, but will still rely on the explicit express of individuals to improve the experience. As Forrester notes, “Portable IDs mean you’ll be able to flip a switch to tell Nike you’re a woman who runs 12 miles a week and immediately see the shoes that are best for you — along with input from experiences of your running buddies.

So what … that’s just the logical conclusion of feeding in all of this new Identity 2.0 capabilities with Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect and Open ID, plus whatever else springs out of Cloud 2.0 to connect them all – and provide a transport layer.   What value is this unless your a site that uses the roadmap and puts some serious bucks into developing capabilities that pull data from the Cloud?   Unless, your the big corporations Altimeter and Forrester speak to … in other words -that want to be told to start doing this now.   I could told you  that two years ago – and year ago – no one was listening.   What is the value to the average person of this knowledge … zero – because it’s up to the sites to build in the functionality – maybe, all you and I do is ask retailers to do it.   I guess, Altimeter and Forrester just gave a “green light” – go ahead and build those capabilities in sites now – people are are ready now for it – Sears, Zappos, Shoes.com, Amazon, etc  (already doing some of that), etc.  But, no real originality in this information, no real thought, no real synthesis, except for the “map“  – just a restatement, an collection of what we already knew .

And what is SRM really?  Social CRM is just of Salesforce.com with Social Media listening platforms like Radian6 added – which I already wrote about (see ‘ SalesforceServiceCloud2 and ServiceCloud (1) thoughtsand Radian6 New Enhancements plus Social CRM, WebTrends and SalesForce Intergration).

This gets to where Brian Solis comes in – he adds Social SRM vs. Social CRM -

The Social Web is distributing influence beyond the customer landscape, allocating authority amongst stakeholders, prospects, advocates, decision makers, and peers. SRM recognizes that whether someone recommended a product, purchased a product, or simply recognized it publicly, in the end, each makes an impact on behavior at varying levels.

Therefore customers are now merely part of a larger equation that also balances vendors, experts, partners, and other authorities. In the realm of SRM, influence is distributed and it is recognizes wherever and however it takes shape.

Ok, by 2015 everyone is going to be considered an Influener … right?  Isn’t that where this is going?  Companies are going to have to be aware of all of what is being said about them, everywhere, and be prepared to counter – ….. and build relationships – doesn’t sound too much different than what was being said in the last 3 years – except, now business is going to HAVE TO DO IT – they won’t have any choice.

Which gets me back to the reason I’m writing my post – if you believe in all of this stuff that Altimeter and Forrester have said, along with Brian Solis – you’ll join our DataSTORIES meetup, which has it’s first session next week. And you don’t have to come to join (but I wish you would).

Why?  Because our insights are original – and the data we come up with – might be unexpected.  We’ll try not to make it a rehash of Forrester of Altimeter or even, Web Analytics – but we’ll note them, when they’re relevant.

Here is the original: 
Future of the Social Web

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This week so many new developments in Search were announced that I waiting (and busy, anyway) for something to grab onto – some overall theme – and I’ll get to that, in a bit. First, I’ve noticed some pretty good coverage on Google’s Social Search from TheGypsy – who seemed to cover Social Search before anyone else – and another on the Future of Search – Personalization .  Meanwhile, Brian Solis blogged about a Nielsen report claimin g that Social Media makes up about 18% of the “Information Search” Market and if I had 45 minutes to listen to Eric Schmidt talk about Google’s Future in his Crystal Ball (I don’t) we’d learn Chinese is going to be the dominant language of the Internet within 5 years  and Video content will become even more important than it already is ( I guess, by-passing the issue of which language is dominant in the future, ha, ha ).  As if that weren’t enough, Google Android 2.0 is going after the GPS Market now using the new Motorola Droid and Cliq . Or, I’d learn that Google likes Power Meters and developed an application used in the United States – just  developed another application to monitor the British Power Grid (if your working with the right providers and using a supported power monitoring gadget .  Not to be outdone, if you use Google Image Search – you’ll notice it improved this week by including “similar images” – but it only works on popular terms like “ dollar bill ” or “ great pyramid “, for now – though this new feature might be more valuable for the related image terms it uncovers (such as “building blocks”, “egypt sphinx” and “ pyramid of the sun ” for the “great pyramid” – that let’s you optimize for semantic search because Google has coughed up the analogous terms.

This week so many new developments in Search were announced that I waiting (and busy, anyway) for something to grab onto – some overall theme – and I’ll get to that, in a bit.

First, I’ve noticed some pretty good coverage on Google’s Social Search from TheGypsy – who seemed to cover Social Search before anyone else – and another on the Future of Search – Personalization.  Meanwhile, Brian Solis blogged about a Nielsen report claiming that Social Media makes up about 18% of the “Information Search” Market and if I had 45 minutes to listen to Eric Schmidt talk about Google’s Future in his Crystal Ball (I don’t) we’d learn Chinese is going to be the dominant language of the Internet within 5 years  and Video content will become even more important than it already is (I guess, by-passing the issue of which language is dominant in the future, ha, ha).  As if that weren’t enough, Google Android 2.0 is going after the GPS Market now using the new Motorola Droid and Cliq.

Or, I’d learn that Google likes Power Meters and developed an application used in the United States – just  developed another application to monitor the British Power Grid (if your working with the right providers and using a supported power monitoring gadget.  Not to be outdone, if you use Google Image Search – you’ll notice it improved this week by including “similar images” – but it only works on popular terms like “dollar bill” or “great pyramid“, for now – though this new feature might be more valuable for the related image terms it uncovers (such as “building blocks”, “egypt sphinx” and “pyramid of the sun” for the “great pyramid” – that let’s you optimize for semantic search because Google has coughed up the analogous terms.

In fact, if I were optimizing pages about hemophilia to rank well in Google, I might do better in my rankings if I included terms such as “white blood cells”,  “biotechnology” and “heroin” (wha?) – turns out the analogies break down the further you go from the first page of image search results.

Then again, maybe Google is onto something … and maybe….  there is some hidden connection between hemophilia and heroin ….. or not.

But, it was Andy Beal, who reminded me  Google, very conveniently, released Google Similar Search as GazoPa, a competing service, announced their Similar Image offering yesterday.

Yep, Google’s at it again!

No sooner had GazoPa dared to enter the search arena, Google comes along and says “oh no you di’n’t” and takes its Similar Images tool out of Labs. I mean, really, there’s just no subtly when it comes to Google. Dare to enter it’s space, and within hours it’s wrestling the spotlight off any challenger.

…. As usual, Google’s version is either designed for the masses, or barebones, depending on your point of view. Really, your only option is to enter a search query, then refine it to “Find similar images.”

And … that got me to think about the Google-X Factor – the secret to Google’s Success -  out-maneuvering anyone who legitimately competed with Google.   The secret of Google’s Success is so simple, I don’t know why it never occurred to me, till now.  Well … it did cross my mind about 6 years ago, when I worked at IBM.com research lab, but I never thought through the practical implications of it….

And … No, it’s not Michael J. Fox – though I liked the movie when it first came out (and I guess, I liked Google, too, when it first started).  Maybe, it’s more like the weapon Kirk has in the “Mirror Mirror” episode of the first Star Trek series (about 33 minutes in).

The Secret of Google’s Success …. the X Factor – is Search – but not the search we use …. it’s the Search Google uses to figure out what everyone else is doing and develop competing projects.

What scientists at IBM Research suspected, 6 or 7 years ago – that queries put into Google could be used by Google to fund it’s own research, quickly vanished, but it didn’t vanish – it’s actually the source of Google’s strength – even though any search engine could have done the same thing.

I suspect, that “search query log” that Google has under lock and key – is very extensively parsed for any new information that Google can develop a foothold in – before anyone else can get ahead of them.   That would explain why Google always seems to have a project running in the background – and when some new analytics capability is released by a competitor – Google’s already anticipated it and has it’s own offering.

It makes a lot of sense that, if you had about 75% of all the information in the world, and all questions and answers passed though Google, that Google would use this information to make itself invincible – it would out anticipate any competitor – because it had better information.    Of course, there’s a lot of noise in the information collected – but there are ways to isolate important information from the garbage surrounding it.

Anyway – that was my insight – Google is data-mining it’s own query logs to figure out what to develop next, what people want, and what others are working on – mostly because Google is so used as a search engine – it’s difficult not to use it.

And, for all I know, every query that goes into Google – might be owned by Google – not the person who searches, but the Search Engine.   In other words, if you search for anything in Google, say … some great idea, and Google see’s the pattern – I bet, that’s an idea they can use – because you used their search to find the information.

Not to spook people out (though Halloween is coming up in a few days) – though  I have written a few posts like Evolution of Search Results turns Social that give some a headache.

Read the rest here: 
Google-X Factor – Secret of … Success

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I meant to write about this a couple of days ago, but didn’t get a chance, and now, I’ll post from my iPhone, just to ensure I write about and share an insight about planning websites and web presence. Looking at RFP’s, I have never seen one specifying what elements are going to be tracked (by site analytics) and how they should be tracked

I meant to write about this a couple of days ago, but didn’t get a chance, and now, I’ll post from my iPhone, just to ensure I write about and share an insight about planning websites and web presence.

Looking at RFP’s, I have never seen one specifying what elements are going to be tracked (by site analytics) and how they should be tracked.

Almost any RFP has structure and usability elements already specified, but almost no one thinks about specifying analytics tracking Requirements (or supplying such information as a response to an RFP).

Why not? Why is usability and web design, along with Branding elements (and a CMS) in a Request Proposal, but Analytics Tracking, isn’t?

Granted, who ever is building a site, isn’t going to be tracking it, since the site is being created for a customer. I understand that, but, since the web developent firm doesn’t think about tracking, and stakeholders often don’t know to, or can’t, it’s a big hole in the design process.

It’s no wonder many sites don’t get tracked well, or at all (or, just stick Google Analytics tags on a site, and call that, Analytics Enablement). I realize this analytics Enablement requirement might be an additional burden for many RFP’s, but, I think Analytics ought to be in every new website proposal.

While it’s not possible to forsee every event or state on a website or websites that should be tracked, it’s amazing that such a request (for analytics) is absent.

On the positive side, I’ve noticed SEO and Social Media Strategy / Execution, being asked for, and those things tend to be measured, or, at least, an attempt is often made to measure both.

Why not formalize the measurement process and methodology by adding it to any Website Request For Proposal – (I know this is a political issue in many organizations-analytics is typically added, like icing to a baked cake, around launch – but, that approach ought to be reexamined)?

View original here: 
Web Analytics belongs in RFP’s and Pitch Proposals

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A lot was announced, and promised to us in the last 24 hours though the practical effects will take several months to play out.  I don’t want to repeat what everyone else said – though I do need to establish the main points before offering my own thoughts about it. One of the more significant announcements came from Google yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco where  Marissa Mayer Showed Off Social Search and Social Results From  Social Networks intergrated into Google ( but, only those reachable via Google Profile) via Twitter , meanwhile Bing is pulling recent status updates from Facebook and Twitter. For one thing, these developments are an indication of the  convergences of Search and Social Media  ( noted that earlier this year , about 6 months ago) where I said: ” ….Just want to close out this post by observing how much “convergence” was taking place at Search Engine Strategies this week – Social Media, Search Engine Marketing and Web Analytics have d e-facto, merged; while the conference is called “ Search Engine Strategis ” it’s really more the intersection between Social Media, Search and Analytics -and so, who can say that Art, Social Networks and Web Analytics are also, not converging.” As information is coming to us in a combined form, skills to handle it and act on it will change, perhaps, with unintended results

A lot was announced, and promised to us in the last 24 hours though the practical effects will take several months to play out.  I don’t want to repeat what everyone else said – though I do need to establish the main points before offering my own thoughts about it.

One of the more significant announcements came from Google yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco where  Marissa Mayer Showed Off Social Search and Social Results From  Social Networks intergrated into Google (but, only those reachable via Google Profile) via Twitter, meanwhile Bing is pulling recent status updates from Facebook and Twitter.

For one thing, these developments are an indication of the  convergences of Search and Social Media  (noted that earlier this year, about 6 months ago) where I said:

” ….Just want to close out this post by observing how much “convergence” was taking place at Search Engine Strategies this week – Social Media, Search Engine Marketing and Web Analytics have d e-facto, merged; while the conference is called “Search Engine Strategis” it’s really more the intersection between Social Media, Search and Analytics -and so, who can say that Art, Social Networks and Web Analytics are also, not converging.”

As information is coming to us in a combined form, skills to handle it and act on it will change, perhaps, with unintended results. One example of unintended results, and I’m pulling this from left field, literally, is the new FCC Blogger Disclosure rules – @andrewhazen spoke  about upcoming FTP rulings at a local meetup tonight. Hazen mentioned the FCC could not monitor what everyone was saying even if they wanted to.

But that’s not exactly true, and is less true, every day.

Take Google SideWiki – Google opened up commenting about any website (as long as you have the Google Toolbar installed and updated) and people questioned weather Google could police malicious or brand damaging comments, but you hardly hear a peep about anyone complaining yet about bad comments (Google appears to be suppressing the appearance of  most of the comments or not many people are leaving comments, period) but Google would not have released the SideWiki if it didn’t have the means to police it.  Same thing with the SearchWiki, a year ago.

With the recent investment of the CIA in Visible Technology Social Monitoring tool (and Visible Technology is sponsoring the conference I’m speaking at in London next month, Monitoring Social Media 09) AND the convergence of digital information into Google, it could be means to monitor not just FTC Blogger violations, but any activity deemed significant and worthy of study.  I’m not necessarily saying this is a bad thing – perhaps, it’s beyond good or bad, it’s probably an inevitable evolution – but still … do we realize the real web will be crawled for behavior trails, due to possible threats, and those threats will erase any privacy we still have left?

In another way, the merging of real time data into search results will make them richer, but also, more variable – which will both disrupt Search Optimization, and open up new opportunities to rank quickly, drive traffic to sites via waves of fabricated news.  Chances are, Google will quickly develop counter measures, though the inclusion of real time search will open up many new holes for spammers to exploit search engines.

Contextual Search will grow richer, and be able to be targeted against waves of new information, with ad targeting capability  quickly developed – providing new ad inventory and new ways to get flooded with information we don’t want, along with nuggets of what we do want and need.

At the same time, Social Media (in that real time data from Twitter and Facebook updates) being merged into organic search results means many more search results, playing into Google Caffeine, which was just released a few months ago, to handle real time data, and display it along with more static search results in a faster way – all this pointing to the ability to quickly display and monitor results in real time.

You can even see another piece of Google’s thinking and evolution in the latest update to Google Analytics that was just released on Tuesday at the Emetrics Summit DC with  Google Analytics Now More Powerful, Flexible And Intelligent including Email Alerts on changes in your analytics data.

But Web Analytics data is just one form of data that email alerts can be made from, and the current form of Google Alerts could easily be updated to include not just mentions of a selected keyword or keyword phrase, but of pattern – any pattern – including patterns that would be interesting to the CIA or to FCC and FTC.    I’m not even saying this is a good thing or a bad thing – but it is the logical implication of where this is all going.

On the positive side, due to the melding of all the various streams of information (and Google Wave shows promise, from what I understand of it – of inter-operating on several streams of data in one operating environment – even if those streams of data were never designed to inter-operate with each other) marketing, public relations, social media and search jobs and disciplines are about to get super charged.

Social Media, which has been looked at, for the last 2-3 years, as and interesting and experimental approach to marketing and public relations – will suddenly become a cash cow – how can anyone in their right mind ignore Social Media,  now when all this new Social Media inventory is suddenly dumped into Google, along with all the new possibilities to run targeted ads against it – and Google evolves into a real time social search engine?

Steve Rubel wrote that  The Age of Social Search Dawns today, in his personal lifestream (another sign that everything is converging) – here’s what he said/wrote:

During the first fifteen of years of the Internet’s gestation, we searched the web unassisted. In the second era, we’ll do so with the curated assistance of our social networks – and be able to spot trends from friends. As we wrote in our search white paper earlier this year…

“However, on the whole, social networks are becoming a key way for people to find content that’s meaningful to them. In response, all of the major networks are building out search tools that could, conceivably, threaten Google.”

Well, Google made it clear they’re not waiting around to get beaten. This is the opening salvo of what will be an all out social search war in in the next few years. Watch this space.

Another implication of “Social Search” is that you’ll want choose your friends more carefully – or, at least, some of us will, because, to a large extent, you’ll be able to see their search results in yours, and vice versa – not exactly what your expected from search.

To some extent, that’s good for people who can produce or uncover valuable information to a community – you’ll want to be the friend to such an individual, and such individuals will be sought after, much as influential blogger are today, and rightfully so.    And as a result, blogging software will evolve to accommodate those changes, as will online newspapers, the first being the Huffington Post Social News – that is just now reinventing online news around social networks.

Finally, with everything going into the Search Engines – Search will finally eclipse, but not entirely replace, other forms of marketing, online and off, but … with the caveat that Social Search and Social Networking will have converged – and with it, comes the death of the current understanding of SEO.

Search Engine Optimization, as it is currently understood,and has been practiced, for the last 12 years, dies – as, shortly, within a year or so, no one will see the same results – personalization of search results will become the de-facto result – and Search and Social Media will merge into one discipline – where reputation management and online social monitoring will be it’s main components.

Instead of going after rankings – you’ll be going after reputations – stuff you can write about urls and segments, in locations who’ll see your listings – predicting what they will see, and how to write copy and generate new real time data to show up in Search Results becomes the new SEO.    Meanwhile, new tools will need to be developed to cataglog and rank reputation in Search.

And that’s good news for Social Media Monitoring platforms – who will naturally want to evolve to cover search.  Meanwhile, the competition will come from Google, itself, with it’s own reputation monitoring – and that reputation monitoring capability will be integrated into Google Analytics – which will, inturn, cause a shakeout  in the Social Media Monitoring platforms on one hand, and the merging of what was called Web Analytics with Social Media and Search – much as Web Analytics has now become absorbed into Data Intelligence functions, according to Eric T. Peterson

If you pay close attention to the marketing you see from Omniture, WebTrends, Unica, Coremetrics, and the other “for fee” vendors you’ve surely noticed a dramatic change recently. Nobody is talking about web analytics anymore; the entire focus has become one of systems integration, multichannel data analysis, and cross-channel analytics.

All the sudden web analytics is starting to sound like, gasp, business and customer intelligence.

Eek.

Since it’s late and since this post will be over-shadowed by the hype around Google Analytics releasing more “stuff” on Tuesday I’ll cut right to the chase: I believe that we are (finally) on the cusp of a profound revolution in web analytics and that the availability of third-generation web analytics technologies will finally get digital measurement the seat at the table we’ve been fighting to get for years.

Yes, Web Analytics will get the respect from CMO’s, finally, that we deserved all along – except, we’re not longer going to be called Web Analysts, as Web Analytics and SEO, as they were currently understood, are becoming obsolete.

And that’s what is being worked out right now, as I’m writing this.   A lot of change, a lot of convergence – some of it good, some of it, not.

But, like anything in life, the value is in what you make of it – nothing I said here, even the government’s inevitable monitoring of all the information we put out for them – is necessarily, bad.   But, then, our view of what we consider to be “freedom” and “privacy” are being transformed – almost, in real time.

Here is the original post: 
Evolution of Search Results turns Social

Popularity: 23% [?]

I was at The Brandhacker “Who ‘Owns’ Social Media Strategy” Meetup: PR or Digital Creative? There’s a good post on it here – and I just want to add my two cents on it here

I was at The Brandhacker “Who ‘Owns’ Social Media Strategy” Meetup: PR or Digital Creative?

There’s a good post on it here – and I just want to add my two cents on it here.

I don’t think Advertising, Marketing or Public Relations own Social Media – Good Teams, do.   Here’s what I mean.

The value of any company, to me, is the people who are there – when it comes to executing Social Media – it’s the team you work with, are part of, that really makes the most difference.

Original post:
BrandHackers Meetup – Who Owns “Social Media” Strategy

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