Hulu recently announced that come 2010, they will be come a paid viewing option. Seems like everyone I know who watches Hulu says that will be the end of watching Hulu.

In the meantime, different free and paid systems are confusing. I have Comcast cable with On-Demand. I also have Hulu. So, if I want to watch an episode of 30 Rock, and I go to my TV, it will cost me a few bucks. But I can watch the same episodes for free on Hulu. So why would I pay Comcast when I can watch for free on Hulu, with “limited commercial interruption, sponsored by the makers of Nuvo Ring.”

Then, there are shows that are free On-Demand, but you can only watch show excerpts on Hulu (like Mad Men or Top Chef). Why can’t I watch the full episodes on Hulu if they’re free On-Demand?

The reader’s digest version:

1. My blinds were broken, I needed new ones. I went to one of those big-box home improvement stores and picked up a “shop at home” brochure for their home installs of custom blinds.
2. I called to get an appointment. The rep came to my house, measured, gave me a price, I wrote a check to pay in advance. He told me the order would take 4-6 weeks, and I would hear from the store to set up installation.
3. Two months later, I hadn’t received a call. I called the number I had. They didn’t have a record of my order, and had to research it. This was my first sign that this was going badly — I paid, my check was cashed, yet no record of my order?
4. I get a call back from a store in Atlanta (I live in Boulder, CO), telling me that they found the order, and someone from my local store would call soon to schedule an install.
5. I get a call from the store expediter a few days later telling me the installer would call me.
6. A few days later, the installer calls, we schedule a time. He doesn’t show up. I wait an hour, then leave.
7. I call back, I hear nothing. So, I bitch about it on Twitter. A friend, whose monitoring company works with this un-named retailer, connects me with the corporate communications department’s Twitter handle. We connect.
8. She finds out my issue. She looks into it. Still no call from the installer.
9. I tweet her again, she apologizes. A few days go by and the installer calls. He apparently showed up late, after I left.
10. We schedule another install.
11. The installer comes and installs the blinds.
12. A week later, one of the blinds is already off the track, one of the honeycombs is torn.
13. This time, I don’t bother to call, I go straight to Twitter. I dm the corporate communications person.
14. I tell her they are broken. She tells me they will call me.
15. Nothing, no call. A few days later, I tweet again.
16. I get a call from the wrong department. Nothing again.
17. I tweet again. She tells me that the installer has already called me. Which is funny, because I have received no call.

So you can see the trajectory of this story. The installer has now returned, and my shade wasn’t made right, so it slides off track. I need a replacement. I ask the installer to replace the damaged shade as well. Frankly, I am not sure that will happen.

So, will I get another shade? Will the installer call me back? Has Twitter customer service really done anything for me?

No, and yes. Frankly, even with companies reaching out to them to engage them in social media — and even with the critical mass now on Twitter and Facebook — we get very few questions about whether the Kutenda Online Marketing Suite includes some social media (it doesn’t).  The vast majority of the people we speak with think social media is fun (if they think of it at all), but they are looking for a way to streamline sales automation and lead generation. Social media is not streamlined, it takes a commitment, people hours and effort to see results. Its not a cure-all for connecting with customers and prospects. As far as helping a small business be more methodical and automated with marketing, social media just doesn’t cut it.

The bottom line is that the small business market has been largely left out of the Internet marketing revolution, because of the knowledge gap — the education and training needed to really do a good job at online lead generation. The people who are good at it – the consultants and search marketing firms — simply can’t afford to serve smaller businesses, because the margins suck. That’s actually one of the reasons behind Kutenda, because we want to give small businesses the tools they need to be successful with online marketing, at a price point for the SMB market.

So does small business care about social media? Certainly not as much as big business does.

Over at Kutenda, we do the occasional experimentation with The Google, so we’re constantly updating how our search marketing tools work based on our experimentation with influencing Google. We’re not trying to game the system, don’t worry. We’re just very focused on how we can make our technology work well enough so that your average person can get good results in local search.

So what does that have to do with social media and tacos? Well, in testing local search, I thought it would be simpler to keep my search terms relatively ridiculous so I can make sure that for the bizarro search terms “social media and tacos” I would be pretty close to the top in my local area.

And, if you must know, I really love tacos. Not the fake American kind with ground beef and cheese in crunchy crumbly fried tortillas. No, the real thing – with meat, cilantro and onions, green salsa and homemade soft corn tortillas. The kind of goodness you can get at a small taco stand in Longmont or Denver or Broomfield (alas, not Boulder, as far as I can tell).

Social media? That would be more of a love-hate type of thing.

Working for the first time for a company driven to help small business, I find it really interesting to take a peek back into the enterprise social media space every now and then, because that reality is so different from your average small business. Sure, you hear of success stories from small businesses successfully using Twitter – occasionally.  More often you hear about large enterprises and what they are doing in social media — and learn how labor-intensive it is.

With Twitter going mainstream, its alot harder to hear signal in all that noise. There are many more blogs now too, most of which are abandoned. I wonder, if Jeff Jarvis was blogging about his bad customer service with Dell today, how loud would the signal be? Not as loud as it was 2005, because frankly, there were a lot fewer blogs back then.  Sure, Dell was tracking what they said, even then, but the whole movement of using social media for corporate transparency was only an idea floated from The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Just look at how fast the Motrin Moms fiasco disappeared. Its barely a blip on the radar, and I am certain didn’t cause as much damage to Motrin and Jarvis did to Dell.

Jarvis was an influencer in social media and gained that stature before there were too many of them. Now, there are more. And, as most people realize, only the few gain something monetary from being Internet famous.

What does any of this have to do with small business? Alot. Most small business people don’t have experience promoting their businesses online, much less getting involved in some way with social media. And, dear social media friends, the answer for most isn’t “every business should have a blog” or “you need to get involved with Twitter.” These people are trying to figure out why they are spending $6K or more a year on a Yellow Pages ad that gets them no business (hint – no one looks at them anymore).

Frankly, for most businesses – and I know this is even the case for large businesses – if companies did a better job with search marketing, they’d waste less money, cause less frustration and get a better return on investment. This is one of the key things we are hoping to help small business discover – and they’re in a better position than the IBM’s and Dell’s of the world, because small business is more niche. They don’t have to worry as much about scaling their efforts, because they are looking to influence in a much smaller sphere. Typically, a local market.

If you want to read more about Martell Home Builders, you can read a more detailed view of what they’ve done here.

There’s also a case study on Freewheelin’ which outlines their campaign.

If you’re looking for information about different social media monitoring tools, there are a few places to look:

• Nathan Gilliatt has been tracking vendors in this space since he was a teen. But seriously, he’s got a lot of great resources here and here.
• Visit Jeremiah Owyang’s blog. He’s an analyst for Forrester, and continually updates information on this as well as other social media technologies, since that’s his coverage area. Search his archives for social media measurement.
• Visit KDPaine’s blog, which is all about measurement in social media, particularly from a PR angle.
• See this article (there are others, if you search on social media measurement) at Mashable.

If you’re interested in public-facing customer service, see what’s going on at Get Satisfaction.

To find out more about advertising on the social networks, visit Facebook’s and MySpace’s advertising opps sections.

Silverpop has an overview of their Share to Social application that Angela talked about.

Let me know if you have any other questions or comments about our presentation, and I will answer them in the comments.

There were definitely a few nuggets I pulled from the conference. David Meerman Scott made a powerful opening by showing just how dead the traditional print media is for business research. And, Tim Ferriss broke the “everyone should have a blog and a Twitter account!” rule with the true but relatively no-brainer comment that if it doesn’t drive sales (for most companies) there’s no point. Now that I’m working to help the small business market, that rings very true to me.

Here’s what I thought worked well:

• Format: Initially, I thought the short (sub-60 min) format was weird, but as the day went on, I appreciated it alot. Having a new subject, format and presenters every 30 to 40 minutes meant you really couldn’t space out and nod off. The flip side to this was that its hard to get depth in that amount of time.
• Format variety: No hour-long lectures here. There were single presenters, two-person riffs, panels, etc. Again, that format switch up kept you engaged. Also, if you did get up to make a call or put out a fire at work, you didn’t have to wait too long for a new presentation. At Kutenda, we’re going to incorporate this model into our training programs.
• Pacing: Kudos to Justin Levy for keeping everyone stay within their time limit and cueing up the next session immediately. The good thing about a short format too is even if there is an unprepared or boring speaker, they are gone before you nod off.

I believe the short format made it so that people didn’t have a lot of questions, because there wasn’t time to formulate any.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and here are the ways I think IMS can improve:

• Ban devices from speakers and panelists: I am not going to name names, but I think its rude — both to other panelists and the audience – to check your iPhone or other device while you’re in front of a crowd. I mean, if you are that busy, then perhaps you should leave the space open for another expert. Show us how smart you really are by paying attentionand being respectful to the real world around you. NOTE: This wasn’t a common occurrance, but happened enough to be irritating. Just ban it. Problem solved.
• Gender balance: With the hundreds of applications for speakers, surely there could have been more gender balance of presenters. I know that the tech start-up world is filled with (mostly white) men, but really, if you want to be a leader in the field, show some leadership by finding those smart women who have something to share. If they don’t apply, seek them out. Get out of the clubhouse, boys. NewComm Forum did a better job of the balance piece — maybe ask Jen McClure how she does it.
• Tactical: It might really help give context to new media beginners to get a start to launch look of social media initiatives. How did the strategy get formulated? Where did that lead tactically? What did you fail at? Where did you succeed?

Roger Neal from BusinessWeek.com talked about the slow transformation of BusinessWeek, and how they are moving towards digital. There’s a lot of skepticism around the future of print and traditional publications and how they can survive while competing with online content. They get lots of visitors and traffic, but the reality is that the traditional ad market is changing. How will they be able to boost their revenue when only 20% of their revenue comes from online (where most of their readers are, looking at free content)?

Jeremiah Owyang is talking about his research on the future of the social web. He says that social networks are becoming more like operating systems – like LinkedIn’s app framework. Now he’s talking about social colonization, where no matter where you go, your friends go with you (if you want). New technologies will allow any website to be social. Social networks will cut into traditional email by centralizing all activity on the open web. Traditional brand marketing will wane, and marketers will have to focus on social recommendations. Favorite quote: Registration pages should go away.

But let me be specific here. Because I live in proximity to Denver International Airport, I’ve been stuck for years with United Airlines as the main way to travel around. And frankly, even though I’ve been a Premier member, and currently have close to 200K miles racked up in their system, it is generally speaking the airline I prefer to travel on the least. Let’s face it — I, as well as many folks who live in Colorado forced for years to live with the crappy service and attitude that’s pervasive at United. Sure, there are occasional bright spots — a helpful, patient agent here, a nice or funny flight attendant there — but all in all, the worst airline. Crappy, old and dirty airplanes. No leg room, ridiculous rules and charges, and a pricing system which boggles the mind.

Here are a few of my most recent experiences — and when I say recent, I mean just within the last few weeks. In fact, I am writing this on a flight from Newark to Denver on Easter Sunday:

1. The whole family was supposed to fly east for Passover, but do to a snow storm, my teen’s competition was rescheduled for the same weekend as our trip. So, two of us had to stay home. To cancel the tickets? $150 each cancellation fee, because I am not stupid enough to purchase a refundable ticket (which costs almost twice as much as a non-refundable ticket). So, besides the $300+ roundtrip price (each) for the original tickets, I am out another $300, and shit, I better think of another reason for the two of them to fly somewhere else in the next year that costs at least that much. And oh yeah, they’ll have to fly on United.

Oh, and did I mention that on the United Airlines website, where I tried to cancel the flights, it said the tickets were refundable? It just wouldn’t let me complete the transaction because all 3 of our tickets were connected, and I only needed 2 tickets cancelled.

2. On same flight to Newark, everyone’s of course all crammed into the back of the plane because United insists on charging money to sit with a few extra inches of leg room — anywhere from $39 in advance to $65 on the day of your flight. So, someone in the back here asks if they can move to another seat after the flight takes off. Something that on any other airline I think no one would bother asking, they’d just get up and move. However, on United, they will break out their credit card charging machine to charge you IN FLIGHT to move up. Not to first class, to a seat a few rows up in econo-class.

3. The condition of United’s airplanes should be an embarrassment. Tonight, I waited to get on my delayed flight so the “cleaners” could get on the plane and clean up. I get to my seat and there’s popcorn all over it and the cushion in the seat next to me is half pulled out. I can only imagine what the bathrooms look like.

It is experiences like this that make me look into other options when I can. With two trips to San Francisco this month, I have much greater options than United, and I couldn’t be happier. When I can get a refundable fare on Southwest that’s direct and gets me there and back on a timetable that works for schedule, I’m going to choose Southwest.

Both trips are booked on Southwest — one was a comparable price to United, the next was half the price. Yes, that’s right, half. Because on Southwest, any flight on the days I’m traveling is the same price, no matter if I leave at 6am, or have a layover in Phoenix, or leave at 10am and go non-stop. United, on the other hand, charges me more based on, based on I am not sure what — this is what I mean by their bizarre pricing scheme.

Another option would be Frontier, which generally has decent coverage between Denver and SFO and has nice planes with equal legroom no matter where you sit. Their flights are generally cheaper too. And, if I could fly direct to Newark on Southwest from Denver, you can be sure that I would. I could care less about United’s mileage program, because at this point they make it hard to redeem anyway, with less mileage-available flights available on flights. I’d rather get better service, cleaner planes and pricing that was simpler.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I wonder why my experience on United stays approximately the same, and my experiences on smaller airlines is so much better. I will say this for United – they suck, but American Airlines is even worse. I just thank my lucky stars I don’t have to fly American all the time.

Now I have to close my laptop because the woman in front of me just pushed her seat back, and my knees are being crushed and the lid of my laptop is now at about 55 degrees. Did I mention that I have short legs and still have this problem?