The Future of the Social Web is here today and we’re learning that engagement is not a matter of if or when, but to what extent, how and what value can we deliver and derive from it. The Social Web is much more than a window into information and interaction, it is a completely transformative medium that is changing how we forge relationships, interact with one another, and distribute and discover information. In many ways, the online social revolution is reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution.

Access to free and expansive media platforms and distribution channels has democratized influence and shifted the power of authority from those who previously controlled the media to those who disseminate it.

Attention has become a precious commodity as it becomes increasingly elusive and diverted. The competition for attention is only intensifying as those who benefit from your awareness venture to attract it when and where it is focused.

According to a 2007 story in the New York Times, market research firm Yankelovich estimated that a person living in an average city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. The numbers vary depending on the source, with estimates soaring as high as 9,000 estimated impressions daily. I can only surmise that with the proliferation of socialized media, that we are also directly and indirectly exposed to messages and brands as a result of conversations transpiring within our social graph.

Source: Shutterstock

As consumers, we are starting to fathom that our attention is valuable. We are also experiencing a powerful form of validation and significance as we embrace social media to extend our networks of relevance and influence. There is a great sense of individual empowerment that exudes as a result of this realization.

The battle for attention begins where your attention is focused. For some, it’s the Facebook News Feed. For others, it’s Twitter or desktop social applications such as TweetDeck or Seesmic. These platforms are fueling an emerging category that symbolizes the Attention Dashboard, channels where information finds you, filtered and qualified by those in your social graph.

Forrester Research observed the substantial growth of social technologies in 2009, observing that four in five US online adults use social media and participate in social networks.

In a published report, The Broad Reach of Social Technologies, Sean Corcoran, Nate Elliott, Josh Bernoff, Cynthia Pflaum, and Emily Bowen documented that the most rapid growth of social adoption occurred among consumers 35 and older while young people continued to march toward a universal adoption of social applications.

The report includes an updated version of Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder, which graphs the social technology adoption of consumers and how they specifically embrace social media.

Almost one-quarter of US online adults are Creators, people who write blogs, upload original audio or video, or post stories online. Easy-to-use blogging tools encouraged some less tech-savvy adults to create social content this year, but the majority of consumers are still consuming, not creating, content.

Half of online adults now belong to social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, a 46% growth rate year-over-year.

Nearly everyone’s a spectator: Three in four online Americans now consume social content.

Only 18% of US online adults don’t use social tools in 2009 — down from 25% in 2008.

Regardless of adoption, however, one of the primary hurdles now and in the future is that Social Media, as popular and empowering as it is, is still a largely compartmentalized experience. Social Networks and the relationships and interactivity fostered within each are silos. The true power of social media is the portability of not just content, but relationships.

Forrester concludes that now is the time to build social marketing applications and that Interactive marketers should influence social network chatter, master social communication, and develop social assets – even if their customers are older.

The social (r)evolution calls for distributed participation. But it requires strategic engagement that is directed and governed by listening and research. The conversations tied to keywords that are important to your industry define your participation level and focus. They also reveal opportunities for contribution and resolution.

Source: Shutterstock

Now is the time to pay attention. Now is the time to learn from the behavior and interaction that defines our markets. They develop and mature with or without our participation. We too, are empowered to engage and without it, we intentionally remove ourselves from the radar screens of our influencers and customers. As such, we are either part of or absent from the decision making process.

The state of socialized media is but only a chapter in an ongoing saga that will evolve and change over time. We are forever students of new media and as a result, our roles in this production are defined by our intentions and our actions. Before we are marketers, we are consumers. And, before we are consumers, we are personages of distinction. And when we align under a common goal, mission, or voice, we can change the course of behavior.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy the book/poster:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

What are you doing?

Perhaps, Twitter asked the wrong question all along.

In all honestly, who cares…it was really never about “what you were doing” that inspired your network to stay connected nor was it the siren for attracting new followers. We chose to follow you because you moved or encouraged us to do so – with every update.

For many of the users on Twitter, the question that engendered a response and also also aroused a cultural movement was, “what are you doing?” It was a prompt that, for the most part, was taken quite literally. Its answer served as the foundation for an entirely new form of communication, while also connecting people through ideas, interests, passions, and principles.

If we analyzed the most compelling tweets and then attempted to examine the question they were answering, I believe we would surface the nature of our aspirations and fascination.

Perhaps, now, potentially cognizant of the nature of intriguing dialogue on Twitter, we can or should officially concentrate our diversion and focus and answer to (regardless of stated question):

What excites or motivates you?

What has your attention right now?

What compels you to change something?

What did you learn today?

What are you thinking or feeling?

Twitter is a live wire, unraveling the “now” Web and surfacing the thoughts, events, breaking news, reactions and conversations that represent the focus of our attention.

Our updates on Twitter symbolize so much more than we may realize.

If, for but a moment, we can catch a fleeting glimpse of our personal significance right here, right now, we would recognize our instrumental role in the complete transformation in how information is reported, discovered, broadcast, and consumed.

Perhaps most significantly, Twitter represents a collective collaboration that manifests our ability to unconsciously connect kindred voices through the experiences that move us. As such, Twitter is a human seismograph. Through it, we feel everything that moves us.

At the very minimum, Twitter is a barometer for fascination, education, and obsession.

Twitter = what are we doing

Facebook = what we are sharing or reviewing

MySpace = what we are in to

LinkedIn = what’s in it for me…

Over time, Twitter itself, grasped that perhaps, the conversations fueling interaction on the 140-express stemmed from a question that many were no longer interested in answering nor following.

What are you doing eventually transformed into a more direct query, what’s happening. Like its predecessor however, it assumes too little for such a profound network that is nothing short of completely transforming media and communication.

Perhaps overdue for some and overly welcome for others, Twitter officially announced that it is changing its prompt to reflect the nature of events versus activity:

People, organizations, and businesses quickly began leveraging the open nature of the network to share anything they wanted, completely ignoring the original question, seemingly on a quest to both ask and answer a different, more immediate question, “What’s happening?” A simple text input field limited to 140 characters of text was all it took for creativity and ingenuity to thrive.

As the Twitter team observed…

The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates. Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. “What are you doing?” isn’t the right question anymore—starting today, we’ve shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, “What’s happening?”

Regardless of character count, the true revelation is that in order to inspire new insights from its community, the real question we should all answer is, “what do you think everyone is better off for knowing right here, right now.”

It’s the representation that the “me” in Social Media must evolve into the “we” in the Social Web in order to trigger progress.

Attention is a precious commodity and without recognizing or embracing this reality, we are doomed to succumb to it.

This is the real-time Web and as such, we have a prominent role in defining its relevance.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

A recent study revealed 20 percent of tweets published are actually invitations for product information, answers or responses from peers or directly by brand representatives. Now we learn that Twitter users are actively paying attention to brands on the popular information network.

According to research conducted by Performics and ROI Research, about half of Twitter users who were introduced to a brand on Twitter were compelled to search for additional information.

The companies studied the activity of 3,000 users of social networks in the U.S. Of those polled, 70% use Facebook, 40% use YouTube, and 22% use Twitter.

Participants were presented with roughly 100 questions that explored how they discover products in social networks and also their thresholds for advertising and marketing.

The survey found that 48% of those who came into contact with a brand name on Twitter went on to search for additional information on search engines compared to 34% on other social networks, which to be clear, is also an impressive number.

The inspiration, it seems, was tied to a desire to surface additional information about a product, service, or brand with 30% claiming they wished to learn more. Just under one-third (27%), reported that they were receptive to receiving invitations for events, special offers or promotions. 25% stated that they visited a site after learning about a product on their social network of preference.

Perhaps most astounding, was the number of people who readily share brand-related information with others. 44% admitted that they have recommended products in Social Media and 39% stated that they have discussed a product specifically on Twitter. However, Facebook users seemed to edge out Twitter, with 46% of respondents talking about or recommending products on the 225 million strong social network.

The economy seems to have galvanized a new channel for businesses to benefit from cost-effective “un” marketing campaigns, mostly driven by the community seeking and sharing information about interesting and favorite brands and products.  Direct engagement on social networks in support of this new found awareness will either foster interaction and collaboration or wind up decreasing the signal to noise ratio and polluting the stream of interactivity and resulting actions around brands.

Encouraging data such as that produced by this report, will motivate businesses to engage or amplify their existing programs. Nothing beats value however – for both sides of the equation. With Social Media comes great responsibility and accountability. We either introduce resolution, hope, excitement, empathy, and opportunity or we take away from the experience and diminish our prospects.

Everything indeed begins with search and this is why inbound marketing and social media optimization are so critical in this day and age. The act of marketing through participatory programs is only part of the answer. The other side relates to understanding where, when, and how people are interacting around your business, your competitors, and other parallel products and services. Placing content and social objects in these networks, fully optimized for discovery, places strategic messages and information in places where it can and will be found. It’s not unlike hiding Easter eggs. You can either make them difficult to find or you can employ tactics to make sure those seeking them will find them easily.

The social web is much greater than your ability to converse and interact within it directly. Outside of empowering the community to help extend your tenets, story and value proposition, social objects can serve as your brand beacons.

Search and you will find. Strategically place and you will be discovered.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

Prior to keynoting the PACA conference in Miami, Maria Kessler, president of the PACA Association, asked me if I had read a recent post by Fred Wilson entitled “The Golden Triangle.” We were deep in conversation as I was seeking an alternate title for my next book that identifies the divide between brands, information, and consumers and how we can, as social architects and engineers, build the bridges between people, contextual relationships, and technology. While “The Golden Triangle” isn’t a contender for the name of the next book, it did get me thinking.

In his brief, but thought-provoking article, Wilson identified the state of engagement, connectivity and interaction. And through a collaborative conversation in the comments thread, new opportunities for future innovation also surfaced.

As Fred Wilson observed, “I can’t remember who said it but at least I remember what was said: The three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are mobile, social, and real-time. I like to think of this as the golden triangle.”

Wilson continued, “The iPhone is the poster child of mobile. Facebook is the poster child of social. Twitter is the poster child of real-time. But it is what happens inside the golden triangle that is really interesting to me.”

His post served as a social object that demonstrated the “golden triangle” in action. It inspired real-time conversations across multiple social networks in and around his blog post, hosted on Web-based platforms on mobile and desktop devices and systems. This social object served as the catalyst for revealing what transpires within and what can potentially materialize within this Golden Triangle.

While it’s a concise and clear visual, it’s easy to misinterpret the true opportunity rife within the triangle. Tim O’Reilly, one of the most prolific and visionary leaders driving the evolution of the Web, left the first and among the most astute comments in response to Fred’s post:

Seems to me that Fred’s golden triangle applies to business as well, I’m afraid. There are certainly other trends at work that apply to business, but if you look at real-time for instance, it’s at the heart of Google’s ascendancy over Yahoo! and Microsoft in Search (real time ad auction). It’s at the heart of Wal-mart’s success (real time supply chain).

I will say that if you interpret these trends narrowly, you will miss a lot of stuff that these words are pointers to. Mobile does not just mean “mobile phone.” It means encountering computing out and about in the world. Dig deep, and you will see many other ways that computing is becoming mobile and ubiquitous. Similarly, if you think social is limited to “social networks,” you’ll miss all the other ways that social has been bubbling up over the years (e.g. Google’s pagerank was an early social computing breakthrough).

Like a lot of simple formulations that cover a lot of ground, this one is good because it anchors the corners of a very wide net. Fish in that net and you will find a lot, even for non-consumer-facing businesses….

Paul Diagle contributed insight to the dialogue that I also feel is worthy sharing as it brings perspective and context to the triangle

I totally agree– they will converge. But I do think the 3-screen concept will prove a lasting one from a practicality standpoint. We’ll go from having a TV, PC and phone to having a big screen, small screen and pocket screen. Currently our 3 screens represent competing platforms. Tomorrow they’ll be 3 complementary devices that each have certain advantages based on the activity we’re engaged with at a given moment. Pocket screens = single-user. Small screens = work stations. Big screens = group-experience stations. Otherwise their capabilities will be pretty much identical. All these screens will have an IP address and communicate inter-operably. Imagine commanding a 100 ft stadium display through your pocket screen. I totally agree… size will only matter in the number of users that need to experience the screen at a given moment. I think this is inevitable. The big question is how long it will take us to get there.

His point is very interesting as we are already starting to realize and benefit from the technology advancement in platforms, networks, and inter-connectivity that unite two of the three screens. For example, Yelp’s Monocle is a new augmented reality application that connects the Yelp Web-based network, the internal iPhone 3GS compass and camera, and your current position in the real world.

Google Wave joins distributed applications in a real-time collaborative environment that promises to connect people across platforms on two of the three screens.

The third screen, the television, as well as the elusive “living room,” represent the last mile that will link people, social objects, centralized data, and relationships where the Web has mostly been absent and definitely unexploited.

Twitter is giving us a taste of what engagement and communication on three screens looks like as well as illustrating its possibilities (mobile, PC, and TV). Network television and broadcast news continue to experiment with dedicating a portion of the screen to displaying viewer commentary via Twitter. However, watching unfiltered tweets fly across the screen is less useful than it is promising.

Some televisions feature wifi and ethernet connectivity, such as the new Samsung LED series, and include Yahoo! TV Widgets that enable viewers to simultaneously monitor their Twitter stream and also tweet while watching TV.

The Golden Triangle

As we traverse across the three screens, let us not forget the ties that bind us. Services and products aside, it is the construct of the Golden Triangle that facilitates a new genre of content production, distribution, and consumption as well as social interaction and collaboration. It’s borderless, untethered, and practically device agnostic.

“You” are at the center of the Golden Triangle and remain connected to your social and professional graph via devices, applications and networks hosted on mobile and Web-based (cloud) platforms. We are becoming increasingly less dependent on resident systems that lock us into one ecosystem and as such, relying on services that become ubiquitous. For example, you can access your social graph and corresponding data on Facebook from your mobile device or PC, regardless of location. With services such as Google Docs and Apple’s Mobile Me, your data and applications are also available to you whenever, wherever.

The governing corners or angles within the Golden Triangle (mobile, real-time, and social) are connected by content, relationships, and an expansive online ecosystem. It is also this evolving class of hardware devices that serves as the enabler to publishing, productivity, and access. Everything combined, we are witnessing a complete transformation in workflow, behavior, and communication, and it is forcing the rapid and inevitable evolution of every industry and how each connects to their supporting communities.

While technology indeed plays a factor in serving as our social OS and the conduit for interaction, it also facilitates how we forge and nurture relationships. It is that activity within the Golden Triangle and the diverse cultures, behavior, and socio-economic systems that ensue and emerge that fascinate me. I find myself continually coming back to “The Human Network” to describe the social economy that shapes activity within the triangle.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy the book/poster:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

This is the uncut version of my latest post on TechCrunch…

Measuring individual influence in Social Media is as coveted as it is elusive. While many tools claim to calculate authority, it is the definition of influence that requires clarification in order to grasp the relevance and differences of existing tools and services.

For the sake keeping this discussion on track, let’s define influence. According to Merriam-Webster, influence is having the power or capacity to cause an effect.

San Francisco-based Klout is no stranger to measuring influence on the Social Web. The company launched at SXSW Interactive 2009 to help Twitter users discover the voices that the world listens to (on Twitter anyway). Essentially, Klout measures influence at the topical level, sorting individuals who demonstrate the ability to drive action within respective social graphs when discussing particular subjects.

Today, Klout is announcing its most significant release to date. In addition to measuring authority on Twitter, the company is releasing a new, intelligent Twitter List engine that identifies and ranks the top 25 influencers for any topic of interest and produces a new, qualified, and ranked list as a result.

For example, here’s list of the most influential people on the topic of journalism:

And, according to Klout, Public Relations:

Prior to the official release of Lists, Twitter provided Klout with early access to its List APIs. As such, Klout was able to immediately address one of the early frustrations with Lists – the ability to modify a list started by someone else without having to recreate it. The new system now adds the means to introduce any list into Klout’s analysis engine and instantly view the analytics of each person on each list. Users can then either follow that list as is or customize it using Klout’s topical search and ranking feature to ensure that the list is inclusive of all necessary authorities.

Klout’s ability to add context to a person’s influence is critical for businesses that want to leverage influencers in spreading the word about their companies or products.

Klout’s algorithm involves three sophisticated stages of semantic calculation. The first, described as “True Reach,” measures influence between each and every relationship, evaluating the engaged audience versus total audience.

The service also employs a secondary metric known as “Amplification Probability,” which documents the likelihood of a specific tweet spreading beyond the primary network through retweets as well as generating a response from the immediate audience. The service then examines the percentage of actual mentions or retweets shared by a particular audience as well as the percentage of the originating messages generated a user’s actions.

Finally, Klout factors the “Network Value,” which measures the influence of those individuals who follow the original user and their propensity for sharing their content, which contributes to overall authority.

Overall, Klout’s scores place a significant emphasis on the number of clicks a person drives through the links they share on Twitter, thus truly measuring action associated with each update.

Twitter Lists impact not only influence, but also create an opportunity for a new layer of earned authority. Whether or not you inspire measurable action directly, the creation of highly accurate and meaningful lists is significant and also helpful to the Twitter community. The ability to identify and assemble proven authorities on relevant subjects allow followers to stay connected to verifiable and trustworthy sources and the voices, information and trends that in turn influence their activity. More importantly, Klout empowers followers to further modify lists to not only track activity, but also determine opportunities for future engagement and behavior tracking.

After all, influence is not in the eye of the beholder, it is the ability to inspire action and also measure its effects.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

While the title invites a predicted round of wordplay, I will spare you the attempts at low hanging witticisms.

During this past summer, I was in the throes of promoting my current book and writing my next title (which I won’t officially announce until January 2010.) As I was deep in the zero hour, I was approached by Clay Bridges Publishing to discuss my level of interest in writing the foreword for a new book on Social Media. Even though it was tempting, I maintained a fervent policy of saying “no” to anything that would distract me from my objectives. When I learned its author was Jacob Morgan, an old friend in the San Francisco Web scene, I immediately realized that no matter how preoccupied I was with my writing endeavors, I needed to push my schedule back. And, so I did…however, I did so with one request. I asked if I could share the full foreword with you once the book was published. They agreed.

At the time, I was spending a beautiful long weekend in Half Moon Bay. The Pacific Ocean served as my backdrop and the warm Northern California breeze roused my focus.

The book is now available. And, here I am, sharing with you a wonderful memory and hopefully an even better composition that I hope somehow helps you in your current or future venture.

The Human Network

Social media is a humbling topic, one that I do not approach without deep study and reflection. On the surface, social media has democratized content, placing the power of publishing in the hands of every day people. Peeling back the collective layers, we realize something more profound however; social media has democratized and equalized influence and the ability to inspire action and establish vibrant and dedicated communities around a sense of purpose and belonging.

Whether we’re consumers or brand advocates or both, we have been given a powerful gift in the form of real-time, uninhibited access to information and intelligence and the people who share their insights—the new influencers.

It is how we choose to embrace this gift and as such employ it and also interact with new influencers that defines our presence and stature within the social landscape and in turn, the real world.

Indeed social media is a privilege and with it comes great responsibility (and accountability).

You are reading this book and therefore have made a conscious decision to learn, and for that, you’re to be commended. Social media is an elusive subject and its lessons are extensive, invaluable, and continuous. Attempting to master any form of emerging media provides us with a unique and tuned perspective that actually relegates us to a more meaningful and beneficial role, one that represents practitioner, student, and apprentice.

We are always learning and we do so through observation and participation.

Questions are the seeds for cultivating knowledge and experience is the intelligence that serves as the curriculum for teaching and inspiring those around us. The shift from inquiry to practice is a pivotal step in earning a meaningful sense of understanding and judgment.

While we never cease to ask questions, we must also immerse ourselves in the online societies that will one day benefit from our strategic participation. It is not done without intelligence of course and for all intents and purposes, we are responsible for what we learn and what we earn. Our rewards are measured in relationships and reflective in communities and activity. Our failures are documented in the words and actions of influencers and visualized through the state of social capital and market share.

At some point, we must pause our reading, limit our attendance in webinars and conferences, and set aside our fears and excuses to listen and engage to the individuals who define our communities in online networks. It’s where we learn and it’s where we begin to uncover the answers to our questions that only we could fulfill specific to our own realities.

The study and application of emerging and interactive media is both an art and science. We have access to data, research, and academics that will provide us with an incredible knowledge base. It is our intuition and interpretation that determines our action however.

This is “social” media after all and therefore, we apply ourselves as individuals and personalities in everything we do. It is what we take away from our occurrences and experiences that defines our adeptness and shapes our future participation.

New media is a journey and not a destination. We grow in intellect and prowess at every stop in our ceaseless voyage. Thus, to succeed in social media requires us to study and grasp much more than what we know today. In many senses, throughout our interaction and immersion in interactive media, we become part marketer, customer service representative, publisher, connector, and digital anthropologist. We are the social architects who construct the framework for engagement and the engineers who build the roads between our stories, value, and wisdom for those seeking it.

In doing so, we become the very people we sought to reach and earn a place within the communities we hoped to galvanize. And, we learn through each instance and interaction to increase our awareness and eminence within our relevant networks.

The socialized Web is therefore more significant when viewed as a human network (Cisco.)

Conversations are distributed across multiple social networks and real world factions. In all honestly, attention spans only continue to thin with every new network that vies for their participation. As such, we are forever in a competition to earn the attention of those whom define and direct our markets, wherever they are active today. And as countless social networks and online communities populate the social Web, at first glance, engagement could frighten and intimidate many or otherwise seem impossible to manage and scale.

It is the listening and observation that tells us everything. By searching keywords in individual social networks and also using effective listening tools and dashboards, we can reveal the exact networks where relevant traffic and movement is transpiring right now. If we dive a bit deeper and view the activity through the lens of sociology and psychology, we also identify influencers, behavior, and cultures that govern each and every salient society.

While social and interactive media is connected and facilitated through technology, we are, in the end, attempting to make connections with people to engender relationships and influence action and responses.

We are forging connections with real people and those ties extend across networks—online and offline. If we are measured by the relationships and contacts that define our social graph, then we must visualize the constructs of the graph as it will be defined less by activity within individual social networks and more through our interaction and connectedness with influencers, advocates, and stakeholders where they discover, share, and collaborate. In the process, we humanize our brand and our persona, allowing personal connections and cooperation.

The Web then begins to become a much smaller and more efficient platform for collaboration and communication. The minute we let conversations, both positive and negative, affect us, is the instance when we truly socialize and humanize our work. In the process we too, earn influence and thus we become much more important than we realize.

Actions speak louder than words and thus, we earn the relationships, influence, and the reputation we deserve.

This is your opportunity to define and create your own destiny.

Be. Do. Get.

- Determine exactly where, who or what you strive to achieve.

-Symbolize and exercise the attributes, responsibilities, and disciplines required to earn and sustain your aspirations.

- Earn the very thing you were already becoming as you forced evolution through actions and outlook.

This is very much our moment in which we are empowered to shape how history remembers us.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

After publishing Putting the Public Back in Public Relations with Deirdre Breakenridge, one of the greatest rewards was the ability to connect with wonderful people all over the world who are facing extraordinary challenges while also accomplishing amazing things.

I’ve learned first-hand from their experiences, obstructions, struggles and resulting triumphs in almost every industry imaginable. In turn, I shared my journey and escapades to offer outside perspective and ideas to help trigger new opportunities.

As these exchanges continued to surmount, I realized, the common thread tying each instance together was the book. Every company I would speak to initially purchased books for their PR, service, marketing, interactive, digital, and social media teams to read, discuss, and then hopefully innovate inside. In turn, representatives from many organizations  took the initiative to ask for a call, Web chat or in-person visit to discuss the book and also take the time to answer questions from the team.

What unfolded was an online and offline book club that connected ideas, questions, and guidance.

I would like to extend the same opportunity to your company or school.

If you purchase books for your team, please let me know if you’d like to host a book club chat where we can discuss the lessons, examples, concerns, and thoughts contained in the book or those that stemmed from reading it. Or, if your class is reading the book this semester or next, let’s arrange a virtual visit.

In most cases, we hosted a video discussion via Skype to save on travel fees and time. We simply organized the book club team in a conference room with a notebook and webcam one side and me with a notebook and camera on the other. Seamless and effective…

Some of the companies that have hosted Book Clubs to date include:

- Facebook
- Southwest Airlines
- Home Depot
- Wynn
- Forrester Research
- GM
- San Francisco University

Please reach out and let’s explore the possibilities of hosting a live chat.

I would also like to take a moment to thank Lara McCulloch. She created and hosted the first Twitter-based book club series, discussing a chapter online every week. Thank you Lara. And also, thank you to everyone who helped organize a book club in the past.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

1 million, 5 million, 10 million…?

If you guessed 10 million, you weren’t even half right.

According to new data from Pingdom, Twitter users are averaging 27.3 million tweets per day with an annual run rate of 10 billion tweets. Just last month, Caroline McCarthy of CNET reported that the 5 billionth tweet posted.

Pingdom’s report highlights the pattern of tweets, which appear to spike during waking hours in the U.S. However, it’s important to note here that Comscore data shows that half of Twitter’s users reside outside of the U.S. As such, Pingdom’s data could suggest that tweets published in the morning here (EST) could actually also reflect the afternoon and early evening activity in Europe and other parts of the world.

This pattern of behavior was documented over three weeks between October 21st and November 11th. While 27 million tweets represents a massive scale, it is comparable to the number of times Yahoo Mail and IM users update their status each month.  To put this comparison into perspective however, Yahoo has at least five times as many users.

When we look at the average number of tweets per hour, Pingdom estimates that they are currently fluctuating between 567, 000 and 1.8 million per hour.

Even though the industry is theorizing why visitors to Twitter.com is down, it appears that existing users are only increasing their levels of engagement, posting, and interaction.

According to Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, stay tuned for a series of announcements that will revitalize Twitter.com and its appeal to new users.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

I carefully considered this topic before sharing my views. In doing so, my perception might have altered since the news of Hollywood studios banning film stars from using Twitter initially broke.

It’s not a secret that Hollywood has a long history of controlling what is said in the media. Like in almost every industry it touches, Twitter has completely disrupted the chain of command, democratizing influence and shifting the power of publicity, control and reach of information from executives to communities – for better or for worse.

Twitter has indeed upset the balance and it isn’t only affecting studios, it’s also sending publicists into a panic as actors are sending updates without counsel and strategy, only to find their words used in industry publications, blogs and other forms of Social Media.

As THR, Esq. so astutely observed, “getting an ill-advised word out to the wider public required a TV camera or a gossip columnist; social media eliminates the middleman and enables an actor to broadcast to millions in an instant.”

There’s a reason why publicists exist and why studios have held a tight grip on publicity over the decades. Sometimes, it’s in the best interest of the actors and the studios if the process is actively governed. Perhaps, if anything, these are the times when studios should consider empowering their advocates. And, publicists and managers should also proactively advise their clients how to leverage Twitter to fortify their brand personality and the mystique that surrounds it.

Evidence, however, suggests that studios may view Twitter as a threat in the hands of its stars and as such, this miscalculation in perception is fueling a less opportune reaction…

The Hollywood Reporter recently published a story citing proof that movie studios were banning stars from using Twitter. According to the entertainment news source, a Disney contract now includes a new clause forbidding confidentiality breaches via Social Media including, “Facebook, Twitter, or any other interactive social network or personal blog.”

In addition, DreamWorks studios reportedly included an amended section in its contracts that cautions writers not to supercede studio press releases via Social Media. One can assume that this social gag order applies to Cameron Diaz and Mike Myers for the upcoming Shrek movie due out next year.

As the Telegraph reported, Ryan Seacrest was criticized after he broke the news of NBC’s former co-chairman Ben Silverman’s resignation from the company on, you guessed it, Twitter. Paula Abdul reportedly surprised Fox executives by tweeting the news of her departure. And, Heroes actor Greg Grunberg, also sparked controversy about the future of the show when he tweeted during filming for the last episode of season three.

But the truth is that without viewing the contracts, I can not speculate as to the nature of the Twitter ban. I can however comment on what I know. Hollywood is asking its “talent” to not divulge production, trade, or contractual secrets via social media as an extension to the clauses that already include traditional media. Studios are NOT saying that actors cannot tweet, blog, or update their social profiles in the statusphere.

It appears that while these studio directives channel the recent fumbles made by the NFL’s endeavor to ban live tweets from players, coaches, and participating media, they are not as insular.  The NFL is attempting to control the production of all media that emanates from events, which is unrealistic and the attempt itself, screams ignorance. However, Hollywood is also not necessarily communicating that it understands the bigger picture either.

Twitter is a very public communications channel, creating a direct bridge from person to person and thus building an incredibly influential and vibrant one-to-many broadcast medium that inspires responses, sharing, and action with every meaningful update.

The sooner studios realize that Twitter and social media do not represent the relinquishment of control, the sooner they can actually possess some sense of it. I would argue that the possession of genuine control before social media was merely an illusion. If anything, we contributed to the loss of control by broadcasting messages without acknowledging their impressions upon those we wished to reach and inspire. The true opportunity is that through value-added participation and engagement, we can actually shape and steer perception and behavior based on our contributions, actions, and responses.

Everything starts with first opening our eyes and minds to evaluate the prospect of what’s new in order to ensure relevance now and in the future.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

I recently attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco hosted by Tim O’Reilly,  John Battelle, and TechWeb.

One of the highlights of the conference was a discussion between Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and FM Media’s John Battelle. It was a revealing and enlightening examination of the rise, state, and future of a social network that has been nothing short of transformative in its few short years of existence.

What appeared pervasive with every question, answer, and observation is that Twitter’s success prevails in spite of its obvious hurdles, limitations, and absence of clear direction and vision. Twitter is a wondrous marvel and rare phenomenon whose surge to profound cultural prominence has completely transformed how people communicate, share and discover events and information.  Its success is one that cannot be retraced.

I wanted to share a few highlights as Williams spoke convincingly and honestly through statements that always seemed to fall within 140 characters. I know, because I actually live-tweeted the event and marveled, and relished, at the fact that I did not need to edit or truncate his words to fit within Twitter’s self-proposed restraints.

@EV: Twitter is not a social network, it’s an information network

I found this to be an interesting comment as it aligns with my observations of Twitter’s role in transforming how we establish connections and interact with one another. Good friend Chris Brogan has described Twitter as a serendipity engine, which is also true in some cases. In many ways, our experience within and value derived from Twitter is tied directly to whom we follow and information crosses our paths while online. As such, we define and refine our connections based on those with whom our ideas, beliefs, and interests align. In the end, Twitter is a social network, an information network, and a serendipity engine that essentially forms what I call a contextual network or human network.

@EV: We’re putting emphasis on mobile, international, and the platform. Traffic on Twitter.com has slowed temporarily

Battelle was clear and frank when he asked Evan Williams why traffic at Twitter.com was curtailing. The truth is that while many existing users are engaging on Twitter via third-party clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic, many potential new users are unclear to the advantages, possibilities or basic next steps once visiting and/or registering for the service. While Twitter attempts to host your Social OS, it has more work to do in order to communicate its relevance and significance. However, as Williams alluded, Twitter would soon release new features that would increase the value of Twitter.com as a destination of interaction. The first appeared to be its new Lists and List Widget services. The second announcement in the lineup of new features also includes a new framework for retweets.

When asked specifically about lists, Ev enthusiastically replied, “Im excited about lists. It brings value to new and veteran users alike.”

@EV: The problem with Twitter is upfront, not over time. We’re focused on solving the problem of what to do with Twitter now for the first time

Twitter has had its fair share of growing pains, however, after a few years of technical advancement, Twitter as a platform can’t seem to shake the legacy of the #failwhale. Problems persist, but growth continues.

Battelle asked Williams specifically about the Fail Whale and the company’s ability to scale, to which he replied, “We’re not concerned with scale, but not satisfied where we are in terms of the fail whale. We are inventing in and working on reliability.”

@EV: We didn’t see that Twitter would be big when we first started it. We didn’t sell Twitter yet because we want to build it into something bigger

Of course there have been several rumors about the potential acquisition of Twitter. At one point rumors swirled around whether or not Google, Microsoft, and Apple were considering or entertaining acquisition strategies. And, with recent investments placing the valuation of the company at over $1 billion, the discussion concluded with Ev’s very direct and candid response. Twitter is not for sale – not yet anyway.

@EV: The world is big enough for Facebook and Twitter

As the competition for your social graph escalates, Evan Williams believes that the so-called race is mostly fabricated by the media as a form of sensationalism and link bait. Numbers agree.

However, as Evan observed, “Most people I know use Facebook and Twitter.” Perhaps it’s just that simple.

@EV: We didn’t know what Twitter would be, I sure as hell don’t know what Google Wave is going to be. Trying to get my mind around it

In an honest answer to Battelle’s question about the future and potential impact of Google Wave, Ev didn’t speculate. He admitted that even he didn’t have an idea as to the extent and direction of Twitter either.

Google Wave is the latest social media darling, mostly because its availability proves elusive and seemingly exclusive.  Those who have interacted with Wave in its current private beta stage have been greatly disappointed. However, the platform it introduces will force the real-time evolution of how we engage and interact on the social web. It’s a portal into a new genre of collaboration and communication and Twitter will be part of the experience, not necessarily displaced by the forthcoming tidal wave.

@EV: Top 5 growth countries: US, UK, Japan, Brazil, and Indonesia

According to Evan Williams, Twitter’s growth is in mobile and also in several countries worldwide. Twitter is a global play and it will follow Facebook’s path to global ubiquity.

@EV: It’s time to retire the suggested user list

In conclusion, Evan Williams acknowledged the need to kill the list that divided the community, the suggested user list. Twitter’s new user-generated lists will serve as its replacement.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

The role of influence is changing and diversifying and with it, the rules and responsibilities of engagement are also reshaping. While PR, analyst, and investor relations were clear yesterday, the rise of new influencers, tastemakers and authoritative users and customers becomes both pervasive and uncertain. As such, new opportunities for engagement emerge; creating new opportunities for cultivating distributed relationships. However, each new connection requires management, a support infrastructure, including a dedicated host.

The democratization of content production, publishing and distribution has extended the authoritative legacy of existing experts (media, analysts, pundits, online reporters) and also paved the way for a new genre of savants to join the fray. The social Web thus introduced a democratized content production and distribution and set the stage for the equalization of influence.

Eventually however, consumers and decision makers found it increasingly difficult to maintain the division between fact and conjecture and authority and popularity, and thus the lines of authority blurred and only continue to cloud the delineation between past, present, and future influence.

Suddenly pundits were sharing opinions, observations, and experiences that directly aligned with the greater markets they represented. As any audience will usually read more than it publishes, arguably to a participation inequality ratio of 90-9-1 (where 9% contribute content sometimes and 1% all the time), these new voices could and did earn prominence and attention.

Similar to the consumer experience, these new influencers also made it very difficult for PR and AR to segment the clear boundaries between influencers, or more simply, press and analysts.

Redefining Influence

The ability to shape and shift messages was suddenly distributed and therefore required an expansion in attention and outreach. Influence was not only democratized, it was and is omnipresent.

Influence as I define it, is the ability to inspire action and also measure it. New influence is transformative. And as such, the minimum ante to participate now increases the commitment and the human investment.

The implications for who, how, and when PR/AR targets suddenly multiplies and at first blush, appears incomprehensible and unscalable. However, it must be addressed, supported, and organized as the landscape for possible influencers is beyond the reach of most businesses as structured today. Therefore, we have to establish filters to qualify influence and also segment them within our organizations to know who is responsible for maintaining relationships – at every level, traditional and unorthodox.

A Hybrid of Influence Converges

As new players emerge, a grey zone soon follows, creating an air of confusion as to which group, team, or individual owns these seemingly ambiguous relationships. Does this dialogue fall under PR, analyst relations, or is a new segment necessary to embrace these tastemakers, who aren’t any less important to our business just because they’re not necessarily tracked and categorized in our media databases?

There isn’t a right answer, only that it needs to be addressed, assigned, and fostered. After all PR does not stand for publicity nor does narrowly represent media or analyst relations. This is about Public Relations and therefore socialized media is merely surfacing public sentiment, questions, concerns, advice, and vision and many are earning prominence with every tweet, post, and social object.

Jeremiah Owyang was the community manager for Hitachi Data Systems where he earned influence as an avid blogger discussing Social Media, new enterprise marketing, and community focused Web strategy. He later joined Podtech, then Forrester as a senior analyst covering social computing, and is now researching, evaluating, and recommending emerging technology at Altimeter Group with Charlene Li. He is also now covering CMO-level marketing trends for Forbes.

Robert Scoble earned prominence at Microsoft’s Channel 9, garnered greater significance at Podtech, Fast Company, The Gillmor Gang, and now continues to generate market shifting content on his personal blog as well as at Rackspace and Building 43.

Harry McCracken held the prestigious position of Editor-in-Chief at PC World, but ultimately resigned this position to start his own blog, Technologizer and thus, created his own path to market significance.

Charlene Li earned significant stature in her nine years as an analyst at Forrester and recently founded Altimeter where her importance only continues to grow.

Just to shake things up, Josh Bernoff is an analyst and Senior VP at Forrester, but he’s also a blogger. He shares his observations outside of his reports and in the process, he shapes opinions and decisions.

And, perhaps the most significant collection of influential voices that we have yet to recognize are those of Trust Agents who impact the decisions of our peers, customers, stakeholders, and experts. These individuals usually fall from view of most communications team unless it’s clear that the person is a reporter, blogger, analyst, or customer.

These examples symbolize a potential new channel for PR to recognize and embrace. And depending on the organization, may also fall into the scope of analyst relations as well as a new digital team manifesting to engage with new media

Honestly, this list is long and I could write a book on this subject alone (maybe some day I will). But let’s focus on transformation required outside and within organizations to ensure that we no longer miss the opportunities that exist and materialize before us. As I suggest in my call for a formal shift from CRM and sCRM to SRM, we recognize that all people, no matter what system they use, are equal. It represents a wider scope of active listening and participation across the full spectrum of influence mapped to specific department representatives within the organization using various lenses for which to identify individuals where and how they interact.

Influence Knows No Bounds

Whether a movement is ignited in its intention or deed, if a public statement or reaction is published and notable activity ensues, we are witnessing influence in action. Thus, in the new world of influence, we must take into account those who might not necessarily appear in our traditional media databases or CRM systems, but also those who frequently earn visibility in new media dashboards such as Collecta, Search.Twitter.com, Google Blog Search, Technorati, BackType, Radian6, Social Media Metrics, DNA13, BuzzGain, TweetMeme, Twitter Lists, etc.

As we search, we quickly realize that the market for influence diversifies:

Newsmakers and Market Makers

This category includes traditional reporters, analysts, financial analysts, A-list bloggers (who are now almost visually indistinguishable from the online media properties that they compete against – for a quick glimpse, just take a look at the Technorati 100), as well as industry pundits who have arisen as a direct result of their investment in new media engagement.

Although they are mostly indiscernible by the untrained eye, the principles, methodologies, and processes governing these properties are as similar as newspapers and Twitter. These individuals are interested in breaking news and concrete trends and are respected for their views. With every new update or post, activity usually ensues to the extent of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of clicks and reactions.

Magic Middle and Tastemakers

Social Media influencers are not Traditional Influencers…

Magic Middle bloggers maintain a consistent set of inbound links based on their views, research, and experience, but are usually pundits or tech experts who share their experiences with their peers. While the A-list reaches hundreds of thousands or millions of people, this group reaches a much more focused subset of readers usually in the thousands. It can be argued that while they achieve a lower volume of immediate resonance, their stories tend to reverberate deeper with peers and decision makers. The Magic Middle maintains a proud and protected sense of responsibility for what they share with their audiences.

Every industry is experiencing the metamorphosis of leverage as individuals define and redefine the landscape with every move they make. They are there now, shaping the perception of brands and trends with or without your involvement now.

However, tastemakers (Trust Agents) are also omnipresent and their platforms for influence may extend beyond blogs, as they build communities in social networks and other online forums. A blog is no longer a prerequisite in establishing authority. New networks equally trigger an influential effect in consumer behavior, whether it’s B2B, B2C, government/politics, non-profit, et al. Truth is that tastemakers have always maintained a prominent role in the direction of markets, they’re just more readily discoverable and reachable in the realm of new media. Their behavior and impact is discoverable through new media monitoring tools as well as the search boxes resident in every network.

The Rules of Engagement

Typically PR and communications are responsible for publicity and media relations, generating coverage and presence in and around news. Analyst relations, if the company was large enough to warrant a dedicated person or team, concentrated efforts on researchers covering the industry in the attempt to gain greater visibility and position within the reports commissioned or purchased by potential buyers.

But, what happens when an analyst is also a blogger? Who contacts a customer who blogs or actively posts on Facebook or Twitter? Which division is responsible for embracing someone whose opinions reverberate within pockets of leverage, but their level of authority falls below the A-list threshold? Which team is responsible for the activity that doesn’t fall in any of the categories above, yet maintains an active presence in your industry?

These questions require immediate answers as their eminence only continues to amplify.

While the answers will differ among brands, agencies, and consultants, the prevailing reaction will be one of ultimate compliance. We must now view PR as a true and literal role of Public Relations. We shift from an event-driven capacity of pitching and placing to a position of engagement.

Once we acquiesce to the inevitable, we will quickly learn that the existing tools we use for engagement today are grossly inadequate and meaningless. Our portfolio of press releases, q&a’s, messaging documents, features/benefits statements, only create a superficial dimension.

And while transparency and authenticity are characteristics required for genuine participation, believability is paramount. It is this notion of conveying credibility that serves as the foundation for trust and ultimately establishes the propensity for digesting and sharing information with peers across social graphs. Believability directly equates to attention, interest, and motion. When combined with fervor and commitment, everything tied to exchanges becomes contagious. Without it, we are forever relegated to information gatekeepers who prevent the real-time exchange of answers and direction.

In order to merit and justify this confidence and loyalty, we must become the people we wish to reach and thus immerse ourselves in their perspective understanding their challenges, opportunities, choices, and also their channels of influence.

Each of these groups are identifiable through the research performed by using the Conversation Prism and the Conversation Index, however, extra steps are required to determine patterns of coverage and also to establish the influencer hierarchy in which they’re ranked and qualified.

In the end, regardless of background, influence fuses our targets and also increases the list of prospects for Public Relations. What remains constant however is that the role of communications as it relates to the business of the brand and influencer, is ultimately dividable based on existing relationships and also the intent of the interaction and exchange. Whether we are seeking news coverage, a discussion of trends and solutions, sharing promotions, engendering community spirit, influencing decision, it is our responsibility to establish guidelines and standards that make it absolute in terms of influencer recognition and who’s responsible for the engagement in a variety of traditional and emerging scenarios.

Black and white gives way to a vibrant and dynamic ecosystem defined by grayscale. In order to assess and determine who we introduce into our communications process requires that we first acknowledge that our sphere of influence is much more magnificent than we realize today. Therefore, active research, collaboration and planning ultimately defines how, when, where, and who we interact with and why our conversations and outreach are worthy of attention.

Before we can communicate externally, we must first establish a system for frictionless and streamlined communication and cooperation within.

How are you dividing and conquering as a result?

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

Over the past several weeks, leaders in the search industry launched an aggressive, very public series of campaigns designed to capture the elusive future of search mind and market share.

The accelerated evolution of “real-time” search, introduced to us mostly through the adoption of Summize, which was eventually acquired to now serve as Twitter search, inspired both Google and Bing to release new iterations of its search engine to now include live Twitter results. Bing also announced a deal with Facebook to include status updates and shared content that were intentionally earmarked for public consumption – although this is expected to go into effect at a later date. Each announcement was strategically timed to release during the prestigious Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco while the technology world focused on tomorrow’s trends discussed during the show. With the great deal of attention thrust upon these two industry giants, Yahoo is now rumored to also have a real-time strategy in the works. Unlike Bing and Google however, Yahoo is potentially seeking to either partner with or acquire a current real-time search player.

And, just when we thought that the barrage of innovation was complete for the time being, Google announced another breakthrough that  ushers in a new era of hybrid search, combining traditional search algorithms and social media. With Social Search, Google now introduces the results sourced from your social graph related to your original search term. For example, if you “Google” the name of a local restaurant, you will receive standard results in addition to other social media content such as a review posted by a friend in Yelp. Or, if you’re searching a topic, a friend’s blog post on the subject may also surface in the results. Social Search provides a peer-to-peer element to everyday research packaged in an existing paradigm that doesn’t alter your patterns or behavior for discovery.

With the rapid-fire progression of iterations and innovation in search, perhaps we need to press pause, take a breath, and assess the current evolution and its potential impact on Internet behavior and culture. After all, as we recently discussed, everything essentially begins with some form of search.

Let’s start with defining the various options for search:

Traditional Search

Typical searches performed in established, leading search engines such as Google and Yahoo that display results based on propriety technology that indexes content and ranks results based on the assignment of weight and authority for a particular Web site or page that factors inbound links, keywords, relevance, etc. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often employed to boost the ranking of a page or site in the indexing and results. Obviously, there is greater reward for ranking in the top 1-2 pages of a search term and SEO contributes to the position of content intentionally anchored to specified keywords.

Real-Time Search

An emerging category of search, spawned by the adoption of Twitter search. In real-time search, content is readily discoverable as it’s published online – otherwise known as the live or now Web. Real-time Search engines include, Collecta (disclosure: I am a tech advisor), OneRiot, Topsy, among others. In most cases real-time search is usually associated with Twitter and Facebook results. If you search for iPhone, the results will funnel all results as they’re published to the Web, ordered by time, not necessarily weighted in authority. One of the reasons why I’m working with Collecta is because their view aligns with much of my work documenting the social landscape (The Conversation Prism.).  The Collecta team believes that the real-time Web is much bigger than Twitter and Facebook. Whether the source is a Web site, blog post, Digg, YouTube video, Flickr image, Tweet, Facebook status update, note, video, or comment, or published in any relevant social network, real-time search should feed that content to keyword results. If you’re truly dedicated to unearthing conversations related to important terms or phrases, real-time search is only as relevant as its ability to channel real-world activity online.

Social Search

Unlike traditional and real-time search, social search leverages the activity within a personal social graph to surface activity and content related to keywords and phrases within social networks and social media. As Danny Sullivan says, social search is essentially “trusted search,” as it taps into your social circle to find people and related content and introduce it into a contextual environment – such as a search engine, feed reader, or social network.

Semantic Search

Semantic search is the promise of the next web. Search results are identified and presented contextually via  natural language processing. The primary goal here is relevance based on your interest and intentions without you explicity communicating them in a search box. For example, if you search for Lincoln, it would know the difference between a city, automobile and person automatically. Instead of relying on ranking algorithms such as Google’s PageRank to predict relevancy, Semantic Search uses semantics, the science of meaning, to produce personalized and accurate search results.

Social Network Search

Until such time as traditional, social, or real-time search engines produce the weighted, trusted, and immediate results into one engine, it is necessary to search for relevant terms directly within communities social networks of interest.  Each network provides a search box and usually their results are proprietary to each individual network (walled gardens). Yes, this a very manual form of search within each social network where keywords or keyword strings are manually input into the search boxes. But, the results are directly tied to content that’s produced by friends as well as those you don’t already know. This content is much more likely to be relevant to your research and in most cases, wouldn’t appear in any other format or engine as of now. This is one of the reasons why if you create and upload content within social networks such as YouTube, Flickr, Docstoc, etc., that you employ a form of SEO for Social Media, otherwise referred to as Social Media Optimization (SMO). SMO is the intentional act of tagging, titling, describing and promoting content so that it is readily discoverable. SMO is a necessary element to inbound marketing.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo,  Posterous, or Facebook

Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect search real-time

What follows is my opening address to the Social Media World Forum…

As we look ahead to 2010 in the world of social media, we should first stop to appreciate how far we’ve come in this journey to new found relevance and presence.

Social media served as a great equalizer. The technology and the corresponding networks that freely connected us, democratized the ability to publish and share content, weave more meaningful relationships, as well reset the ecosystem for establishing and wielding influence.

Perhaps most notably, Social networks made the world a much smaller place. As such, it also set the stage for the emergence of a new caliber and genre of influencers and communities that support their mission and purpose. On any given subject, these authoritative networks can incite change and galvanize action to govern, change, and direct market behavior.

The power lies in the ability for anyone to find and forge connections with those who share passions, interests, beliefs, and aspirations. Our ability to form new ties online expands beyond friends, family, and associates. We now weave contextual networks, bonds that are adjoined through our ideas and representations.

But just because we have access to the tools doesn’t necessarily entitle us to reach out to customers, influencers, and stakeholders. Simply because we believe we have something to say doesn’t guarantee that anyone is ready or willing to listen. Nor does it mean what we have to say automatically entitles us to a ready audience.

Social Media aside, the act of communicating with someone is shaped by its intentions and interpreted by its purpose and design. In other words, the opportunity to participate and engage is a privilege. And, this privilege is rewarded with connections and community for those who realize that the minimum ante to engage is value.

At the very minimum, Social Media revealed the people who define our audiences, giving us a glimpse of not only who defines are marketplace and landscape of influence, but also what they think, what they need to know, and what they’re seeking. It allowed us to truly establish bridges between people and information in ways that elicited more favorable responses while investing and cultivating, engagement, loyalty and trust.

The fear of losing control of our message and brand transformed into the realization that we never had the level of control we assumed.

Social Media didn’t invent conversations, it only surfaced them – giving us the ability to identify opportunities to steer and change perception – and learn, adapt, and improve in the process. The power of perception has never been more prominent.

The art of listening and monitoring serves as the passage for identifying relevant voices and the communities that host interaction. More importantly, the powers of observation grant us perspective. If we are truly taking heed of this activity, we can’t help but feel the sentiment and emotions that govern and impact our online ecosystems and societies. In the process, we learn everything necessary to contribute value to the dialogue and to the greater community overall.

We now feel, hear, and see the world through the eyes of those we wish to reach and inspire. We’ve not only earned the right to participate, but also earned a genuine sense of empathy along the way. This is the only way we can truly contribute and steer the direction of our markets. We must take an active role in its definition as a leader and also through the democratized leadership that stems from collaboration and community empowerment.

This isn’t only a two-way street, it’s a road paved with mutually beneficial interaction to ensure that these roads attract meaningful traffic.

Individually and collectively, we are forever students of new media and our work is only just beginning.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

—
pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

On Twitter, trending topics offer a glimpse into the behavior and common interests of everyday users – as governed by time and attention. Prevailing themes represent the culmination of popular focal points that unveil characteristics of varying groups of users that transform and scale with events and trends.

The question is, do trending topics symbolize the topics that are relevant to you?

If trending topics collectively represent the state of conversations on Twitter, then perhaps “the wisdom of the crowds” doesn’t necessarily reflect the topics that might interest the disparate groups that form Twitter’s diverse community.

At the time of this post, Trending Topics included:

Trending topics and those driving their percolation contribute to their manifestation. Sometimes, many of us take to Twitter to share what has captured our interests or attention prior to realizing that they are also shared by many others within the community. But many times, the themes that capture the attention of those to whom we’re connected, don’t always make it onto our attention dashboard.

At the very least, Trending Topics create real-world “Conversational Networks” that allow us to study and graph user behavior, profiles, and the contextual lineages between people representing disparate groups of age, gender, and backgrounds. But when it comes to channeling relevant trends that match the interests of specific users, Trending Topics continue to fall victim to the noise that may threaten to pollute the very thought streams that serve as the lifeblood for Twitter itself. While Lists help to some extent, we can only benefit from a layer of intelligent filtering integrated into the stream to further personalize and improve the experience – not unlike what FeedHub and AideRSS attempted to do for RSS feeds.

As a result, Twitter is now taking a proactive role in filtering trends and evaluating what’s spam and what’s genuine as it struggles to reverse the downward trend in visitors to Twitter.com.

According to a recent post on Twitter’s blog:

We’re starting to experiment with improvements to trends that will help you find more relevant tweets. Specifically, we’re working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful. The improvement won’t be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results.

UPDATED

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

Each year at Blogworld Expo, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra presents The State of the Blogosphere as one of the event’s prestigious keynotes. For those who are unfamiliar with Technorati, it serves as a directory and search engine for the blogosphere as well as a benchmark for the ranking of blogs worldwide.

While there has been much discussion about the relevance and even demise of blogs as the statusphere and micro updates gained traction in addition to earning prominence in the mainstream spotlight, the reality is that blogs are a vital ingredient to the media ecosystem.

Released as a five-part series, Technorati provided a looking glass into the blogosphere and revealed the true shape and promise of this important medium.

Demographics

Analyzing the demographics of bloggers, we learn that they’re not necessarily similar to that of the Social Web. Where in Social Media, women rule, in the blogosphere it appears that men represent the majority of active blog authors.

• Two-thirds are male
• 60% are 18-44
• The majority are more affluent and educated than the general population
• 75% have college degrees
• 40% have graduate degrees
• One in three has an annual household income of $75K+
• One in four has an annual household income of $100K+
• Professional and self-employed bloggers are more affluent: nearly half have an annual household income of $75,000 and one third topped the $100,000 level
• More than half are married
• More than half are parents
• Half are employed full time, however ¾ of professional bloggers are employed full time.

The Technorati survey was distributed in English, however bloggers from over 50 companies responded which equated to almost half of all total responses. The other half of responses were sourced from the United States.

Within the U.S., the states with the highest concentrations of bloggers include:

California: 16%
New York: 9%
Florida: 5%
Texas: 5%
Washington: 5%
Massachusetts: 4%
Virginia: 4%

Experience

When reviewing the span of time respondents claimed to blog, the majority boasted at least 2 – 6 years experience.

Citizen Journalism

Citizen Media or Citizen Journalism is blamed or credited for the erosion of traditional media and its supporting financial support system. However, as Technorati discovered, the blogosphere is populated with new influencers, but also rich with traditional journalists who may or may not blog as part of their profession.

Technorati observed that respondents did not regard the rise of online media and blogging as the death knell for newspapers or other traditional media. Personally, I would simply say that choice and the democratization of media is actively luring the attention of a once devout and loyal media audience. Blogs, for better or for worse, are cutting into the attention share of those seeking information, making traditional news outlets rethink how and where they publish information. However, as you can see below, the consensus is grim for newspapers, but burgeoning for blogs and micro media.

Media Consumption Habits of Bloggers

When they’re not contributing to the world of media, they’re are indeed captivated by other mediums. Across the board, bloggers attested to watching television upwards of 9 hours per week, reading blogs on average of 8 hours weekly, and engaging in Social Media between 7 – 8 hours each week.

Why Do Bloggers Blog?

Self-expression and sharing expertise are among the primary motivations for bloggers. 70% of all respondents claim that personal satisfaction a primary form of measurement in the success of their blog. Pros, however, look to the number of unique visitors as a leading metric of success.

Blog Topics

When reviewing the topics that bloggers most often discuss, politics, business, technology and personal musings ranked supreme.

Why Do Bloggers Blog?

Technorati asked an important question, one that, in my opinion, unlocks a very human aspect associated with blogging. Technorati asked quite simply, “Why do you blog?” Not surprisingly, 71% say they blog in order to speak their minds.  Part-timers, on the other hand, are driven by sharing their expertise (72%) and also supplementing their income (61%). What came as a revelation to Technorati is the repsonse that Pros were less interested in supplementing their income (17%), instead attracting new clients for the businesses they work for (53%) proved pervasive. Entrepreneurs were also most interested in attracting new clients (72%).

Blogging Cultivates Communities and Business

One of the primary reasons 59% bloggers claim to blog more is because they feed off of the greater interaction that results from their commitment to quality of frequency of content. Perhaps more importantly, 74% of self-employed bloggers claim that blogging has proven valuable for promoting business services and capabilities.

Frequency = Authority

There was a time that I could only seem to commit one post per week. Over time, I’ve struggled to post 2-3 times per week. closing out 2009 and heading into 2010, you will notice an increase in activity here, posting as many as 4 -5 posts per week. If I could, I would blog much more often. However, reality is what it is.

Technorati found that authority is tied to investment of time, energy, and activity. The most read and highest ranking blogs publish more posts than the average blogger. 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging. This number goes up dramatically as we look at those who benefit directly from their posting with 24% of Part-Timers, 25% of Pros and 32% of Self-Employed bloggers spending 10 or more hours blogging.

One in five bloggers report updating their blogs daily. On average, the most common rate of posts ranks ats 2-3 times per week. On the whole, entrepreneurs update more often than other category of bloggers.

The distance between elite bloggers and those who aspire to join them is tied directly to prolificness. Those bloggers who rank among the highest according to Technorati Authority post nearly 300 times more than the lower ranked bloggers. Perhaps a goal for each one of us in 2010 is to blog more.

Did you know…The number of blogs in the average Blogroll is 47, a surprisingly high number. Source: Lijit

Mobile Blogging

20% of all bloggers report updating their blog from a mobile device with 59% reporting that they do so this year over last year.

Driving Traffic

Of course many of those who responded, upwards of 76%, claimed that they list their blog in the Technorati directory to attract a greater audience – those usually seeking new blogs or posts related to keywords.  In addition, many bloggers, 83% of pros for example, add “tags” to their posts, which lends to the social media optimization (SMO) and ultimately the discoverability of each post in the search results at Technorati. Also, bloggers are versed in the art and science of content promotion. On average bloggers engage five separate activities to drive traffic including listings in directors, tagging, commenting on other posts, linking to key blogs, and contributing content to other sites.

The most popular tags include:

• politics
• blogging
• video
• writing and poetry
• technology
• business
• friends
• blog
• romance and relationships
• sports
• family
• travel
• entertainment
• movies
• personal
• internet
• books
• art
• photography
• games

Traffic

Organized and optimized search plays a large role in the views of a blog post, contributing on average, 27% of total views from a horizontal search engine. This insight emanates from analytics, which are instrumental in the traffic analysis of 74% of all bloggers.

The three most popular third party services reported by bloggers are:

Google Analytics: 55
Sitemeter: 15
Statcounter: 14

Revealing the magicians secret to traffic is one thing, but understanding the volume of activity is the truth that ushers perspective and reality. While many of us understand or at least recognize the power and wonder of a-list blogs, most overlook the value of the Magic Middle, the class of bloggers that earn between 1,000 and 50,000 monthly unique visitors. It is the Magic Middle that out numbers the a-list and for that, provide an almost endless array of opportunities in and around news and trends.

Monitezation

Blogging may or may not contribute to a direct correlation between posting and earning revenue. In many cases, it is blogging that indirectly leads to other financial opportunities.

72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging.

Of those who have monetized their blogging to at least some extent:

• 54% are Part-Timers
• 32% are Self-Employed
• 14% are Corporates

Among Pro and Self-Employed bloggers, 17% of the total respondents derive their primary income from blogging.

Note that the majority of revenue is derived from direct revenue such as display ads and search ads as well as affiliate marketing links to the site. Indirect income is also a factor, stemming from opportunities that arise in the form of paid speeches, spokesblogging (paid conversations) and appearance fees.

Technorati asked part-timers and self-employed bloggers how much annual revenue they generate through advertising (roughly 40% of such bloggers). Self-employed reported as much as $120,000 with part timers documenting under $15,000.

51% of corporate bloggers, which equates to about 58%, reported earning a salary for blogging.

The breakdown of direct and indirect revenue tied to blogging breaks down as follows:

However, generating revenue isn’t necessarily the end-goal in blogging. Demonstrating expertise or simply sharing perspective is satisfactory. And, in some cases, the infusion of money only taints the process.

Brand Presence in Blogs

One in five tweets on Twitter is related to a brand. In the blogosphere, 70% of bloggers refer to them. 46% of bloggers post about the brands they love or hate, while and 38% post brand or product reviews. Part-Time and Self-Employed bloggers refer to brands at a much higher rate (80%), with one in three posting reviews at least once a week.

Company Blogs

Last year, Forrester Research documented that only 16% of consumers trusted company blogs. One year later, I would argue that the trust barometer now measures an increase in the establishment of trust and collaboration.

71% of respondents who maintain blogs for a business reported an increase in visibility within their industries as a result of blogging. 56% claim that their blogs helped their company establish as a thought leadership position within the industry.

Blogging also appear to have to experience positive career benefits ranging from industry eminence (58%) to increased internal visibility (15%). This is among the most consequential data to emerge from this report. Effective blogging creates a lift for brand presence and correlating value propositions as well as individual illustriousness.

Micromedia Meets Blogging

When I wrote a post defining how the Statusphere can help save journalism, I could have easily discussed the same principles describing how tools and networks such as Twitter and Facebook improve awareness and increase activity around blogs and blog posts.

According to the Technorati report, bloggers use Twitter much more than the general population. In a poll conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates in May 2009 for The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D conference, 14% of the general population reportedly use Twitter, but 73% of respondents in Technorati’s survey do, which includes 83% of Corporate and 88% of Self-Employed bloggers). Bloggers cite Twitter as a form of content promotion, business marketing, and information curation as well as a mechanism for tracking trends.

52% of responding bloggers reported that they syndicate their blog posts via their Twitter account and 41% also post tweets that are not associated with their blogs.

Depending on which blogger you speak to, I believe these answers will vary. In a discussion with Jay Rosen of NYU during Blogworld Expo, we recognized that Twitter may well borrow available time previously allocated for blogging. In some cases, the frequency and depth of posts has plummeted in favor of micro updates and responses posted on Twitter and Facebook. On the contrary, I personally and going to make a conscious effort to boost activity on multiple platforms as I believe that they will have positive impacts on many of the business aspects discussed above.

The Future of Blogging

As the study mostly observes, blogging is on an upward trajectory. With the introduction of new, mobile, and streamlined blogging platforms such as Posterous or even proven networks such as Tumblr, blogging will only grow in prominence as the preeminent form of sharing thoughts, opinion, and insights in way that’s impossible in other micro networks. 57% of bloggers predict that their future holds a greater level of blogging (including 74% of 18-24 year olds). Personally I can attest to this stat, 35% overall, with upwards of 43% of part-timers, plan to publish a book. As well, mobile blogging will continue to expand as well, as 20% plan to do so in the future.

Blogging over the years has impacted many industries leading with politics, technology, celebrity, and business.

The future of blogging is expected to affect the same top three industries, politics, technology, and business, however, celebrity/gossip gives way to green/environment.

As Technorati observes, “The Internet in general and blogging in particular have expanded the marketplace of ideas into the global community.”

Blogging continues to deliver a rich, interactive, entertaining and fulfilling experience that transcends traditional print, radio, and TV. It simply provides a sophisticated framework for facilitating the real-time exchange of information and community interaction. And, it is the community response that fuels the evolution of ideas as they spread globally giving rise to a new genre of influence and movement.

Perhaps it’s as simple as Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park observes:

Technorati believes that the next generation of blogs will be more action oriented, not just documenting real time happenings, but driving actual events.

Indeed, action speaks louder than words. But in the blogosphere, it is our words that inspire action.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

—
pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

This is breaking news at the moment, therefore this post will update as new information trickles in.

Twitter is making good on its recent promise to introduce new features to bring users back to Twitter.com.

Similar to the way that it rolled out Lists, Twitter is incrementally releasing its new Retweet feature initially previewed in August 2009.

As described by @Biz, co-founder of Twitter:

Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.

The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we’ll know right away. If things look good, we’ll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%.

The new retweet feature is particularly interesting as it organizes your experience directly at Twitter.com much in the same way third-party clients such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic have offered all along. Unlike these desktop applications however, Twitter.com remains as the pervasive interface for engaging on Twitter. For example, your lists, real-time search results, DMs, Twitter stream, and now retweets are key pillars to the personal experience at Twitter.com. For most users, the new retweet functionality, combined with important, cached searches (including your username), the need to stray from Twitter’s online hub begins to dissipate. And, the timing couldn’t be better…

Here’s a screenshot published on Mashable (Thank you Tonya Becker-Haddadeen):

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

Guest post by Damien Basille, follow him on Twitter | Read his blog

As more and more brands are moving all of their ad spend online, defining how influence affects their return on investment is necessary and must be done as soon as possible. While some are making inroads to define these calculations many are overlooking the fact that influence affects everything. Without factoring in the real issue of different types of influence you run into a number of problems, for instance focusing on one group of influencers over another or getting broad sweeping numbers instead of knowing exactly how effective your time and money has been spent on the proper target. One thing that usually doesn’t sync up here is that these online influencers with large followings are not the offline influencers.

People with social media influence are able to spread brand messages and have their audiences actually absorb it. To get things done one thing is for sure: the more influence you have the better. While it is important to be able to have your message spread far and wide to the right people it’s also equally if not more important to influence others offline. Generally people who are extremely influential offline fly under the radar online and are able to get things done this way.

Most of the time these people aren’t even online. Their offline networks are created so that they don’t need to be online. Some industries don’t necessarily need to be networking the way you and I may. When these offline influencers are online their follower numbers tend to be smaller and more concentrated. Why is that?

Online Influencers

What these people know is that while it’s important to have a large network to spread a message as wide as possible it’s even more important to have a smaller more concentrated network to make things happen. It’s the age old axiom of quality versus quantity. My answer to that is that it’s quantity of quality.

The one question you need to ask yourself is this: what is my purpose for connecting? Connecting just to connect is aimless. The reason the offline influencers command more influential ears is that they know their time is valuable so they make sure every connection has a purpose.

Every person in your life you connect to should have a purpose. Look at your 4 closest friends. Where they are will accurately reflect where and who you are. Ask yourself where you want to be successful in and focus on that. Both online and offline influencers know where they are successful because they concentrate on those areas.

Offline Influencers

What’s rarely seen is someone with a large online presence conveying an equal or greater command with influencers offline. Sure it’s been known to happen but not often. What happens with many online influencers is that their online influence starts to transcend these nonphysical boundaries and move into the physical world.

When this happens they may be able to wow the crowd but the savvy businessman will be able to spot a charlatans a mile away. Not to say that all those transcending are charlatans but what tends to happen is that because they can influence a crowd they think they can influence the boardroom. These two types of influence are not the same and take two different sets of skills.

Being able to influence C-level executives is different than getting a consumer to purchase a product. Sure the idea behind it is the same but you have to be able to speak not just two totally different languages. In fact each of those two languages are two different dialects.

The Influential Divide

Therein lies the problem with influence grading programs. While they try to ascertain digital influence this is still only a part of the picture. Even if you don’t factor in offline influence into the equation you still are left with a blanket influence grade. There’s all sorts of different types of online influence as I’ve talked about above, but let’s just only focus on the ‘big numbers’ influence for a moment.

Every influential person with large follower numbers interacting online in social media spaces are not doing so in the same way. Some of them aren’t even influential. But for the ones who are influential even they have different nuances in what they focus on. Programs can’t ever capture tactics, strategies, interactions and general feel of someone’s value. While someone may be 80% mass influencer and 20% executive influencer, grading programs can’t capture the secret conversations (IMs, DMs, emails, Facebooks mail, LinkedInmails etc) that make up the core of someone’s worth.

What often happens is that some of the most important decisions happen behind closed doors, online and offline. Sensitive correspondence tends to need discretion. Regardless of how transparent your interactions are there will always be something that you do that can be the linchpin to connecting.

The Future of Influence

Eventually what will have to happen is that programs like TweetPsych will be combined with social media grading programs like Klout as well as other lists like Ad Age Power150. All of these will factor in with some sort of sentiment analysis Myers-Briggs hybrid program that will tell you how you function. Signal Patterns is the closest there is to this so far.There are already programs analyzing your musical tastes and predicting for you (Pandora) as well as social media article prediction apps (my6sense) so why not a program that accurately pairs you up with people most similar to your interaction style?

YES this may be very self-referential and take out the randomness of life, but sometimes you just want to connect with like minds. Eventually what needs to happen is that a verified analysis program will have to scan all of your private correspondences and grade you on different sets of publicly published benchmarks. For obvious reasons there will need to be discretion in not saying exactly what is being looked as the correspondences are most likely sensitive.

Even Digg is building in influence to their ranking system:

…Digg and WeFollow will now be more closely linked as we experiment with user influence as it applies to the Twitter universe… user influence and the data we collect during this process will play an important role in upcoming versions of Digg.

I see this program not just analyzing the style and feeling of the messages but also the outcomes. Let’s say you have a conversation with someone about connecting them to something and lo and behold a deal comes to fruition with something you suggested. There’s no way anyone would know you had something to do with it unless you were explicitly a part of it. What if you connected the parties behind closed doors? That type of influence is lost on grading programs. (Klout tries to grade your Twitter Network Strength by asking How influential are the people who @ message you? and How influential are the people that retweet you? but how can you accurately do that if you don’t define the type of influence you’re looking to grade?)

There will be a need to use directories of people and correspondences that happen in the offline world akin to CrunchBase. This will be combined with all of the above along with something like a NetPromoter Score for people for a definitive influencer score. Social media is still in it’s infancy and still hashing out issues that other industries have long ago defined.

The next big hurdle for the online world to overcome will be converging interactions with the offline world that are organic, natural and can be quantified. As companies look to online networks to solve a lot of their traditional problems they’re going to want more and more accountability. This is where a converged influencer score will greatly help everyone out in the process in knowing someone’s real value, not just their perceived value.

In media and blogger relations, PR typically wields two powerful tools to help boost the effectiveness of pitching and potential placement of news: the embargo and the exclusive.

In the case of an exclusive, a story is usually packaged prior to official release for one particular writer, fully understanding their style, nuances, and audience. If the story is accepted, it is not pitched to any other media outlets until after the story runs. The benefit for PR is that it can bank on the publishing of a guaranteed, high profile story. The advantage for the reporter is that they maintain a position of authority on that particular event. The con for PR, is that usually, other media properties will forgo participating in the round of coverage because it quickly become old news.

The news business is similar to buying a new car. It’s immediately worth less the moment you drive it off of the lot. Once the press release crosses the wire or a reporter/blogger publishers the story, the news loses its value. Thus, news boasts its greatest leverage prior to public dissemination.

Embargoes on the other hand, are tied to newsworthy stories that are presented to a series of top newsmakers simultaneously before its official release with the intention of negotiating and coordinating an orchestrated release across multiple platforms concurrently. The advantage for PR is that it can architect a successful, expansive, and amplified release – giving more weight to the announcement as it’s distributed. Participating reporters benefit by contributing to a breaking story and creating the perception that each reporter was on top of something buzzworthy. On the other hand, journalists and bloggers can also feel the sting of participating if one writer should publish even one minute early.

This has become an increasingly competitive practice among online reporters trying to scoop each other to give the appearance that they broke the story and that others followed. Also, there can be a sense of animosity generated if the story was pitched profusely to colleagues and competitors based on quantity and not necessarily the quantity of quality. In many cases, the corral of participating influencers can and will become uncontrollable as it increases its circumference. Someone will inevitably break the embargo. Once that happens, chances are, that the rest of the group will kill the post and never run it, harboring bitterness against PR as a result.

Personally, I employ a less is more strategy, one where I work with a select few who represent varying reach, but ultimately impact the right people who are truly looking for relevant news. In my world, everything starts with expectation setting and management, as I no longer find value in casting a wider net, only to eventually shovel excuses to one side or the other of reporters/bloggers or company executives “when” something doesn’t live up to unsaid presumptions.

With embargoes, they are highly effective for all parties when practiced strategically. At the same time however, reporters and PR professionals who regularly abuse them, whether or not its intentional, set the stage for a series of boycotts and debates that continue to unfold in the public spotlight and damage relations between media and PR with every step of the way.

Although, I have yet to hear a backlash against exclusives except from unhappy executives who “always” believe that their news is consequential and disruptive regardless of reality.

But, PR, unfortunately, is perpetually working against a common dilemma; no matter what we achieve, it’s never enough. Nonetheless, PR in many cases, works against itself.

Michael Arrington, publisher of TechCrunch, one of the world’s leading and most influential blogs, has publicly decried embargoes claiming that the editorial team will no longer honor them. As a result, he dedicates a significant share of real estate to explain his position by chastising those who fortify his decision and perception (disclosure: I contribute to TechCrunch).

The Wall Street Journal also recently issued a statement recently that its reporters will only entertain exclusives moving forward and that for all intents and purposes, the embargo is dead to WSJ reporters.

What’s at stake here is a sacred bond between reporter/blogger and PR. The explicit and implicit trust that exists between the two sides will either grow stronger or completely unravel with every embargo and exclusive – depending on its outcome.

In the world of embargoes and exclusives, the risk can be greater than the reward and unfortunately, PR is usually caught holding the smoking gun when orchestration collapses.

The Future of News

While I was traveling in support of the new book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, which also addresses issues surround new media relations and embargoes, I missed an important discussion in San Francisco dedicated to the exploration of the embargo’s possible future. The expert panel included Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher, Dylan Tweney of Wired, Mark Glaser of PBS/Media Shift, Damon Darlin of the New York Times, and was moderated by Sam Whitmore of Media Survey.

Rafe Needleman of CNET/CBS and Paul Boutin of VentureBeat/NY Times participated from the audience.

I would have loved to participate on that panel. Even though it was hosted by global PR firm Waggener Edstrom, it appeared to be a soapbox for a one-sided view of a much larger issue that effects two sides of the news process – media and PR

Wired’s Dylan Tweney perhaps shared the night’s most interesting perspective on embargoes,, and as such, embodies a sentiment that reverberates throughout the media industry, “Embargo is Latin for F you!”

The New York Times Darlin said that embargoes co-opt the media. More importantly, he acknowledged that the Times often accepts embargoes because they ensure reporters don’t miss a story and that an inherent benefit is that they have time to do a thorough job.

Mark Glaser on the other hand, maintains a much bleaker outlook on the embargo, “I think they will become extinct.”

In fact, he believes that all journalists should reject them.

Tom Foremski partially agrees. In a post written prior to the event, he shared that even though the accepts embargoes, he often forgets or loses interest in them over time and as such, he believes, “embargoes don’t seem to work anymore.”

I disagree wholeheartedly. In fact, embargoes are powerful and effective for all parties when coordinated properly and centered on information that is indeed newsworthy.

As David Needle of Internet News reported, Dylan Tweney summed up the sentiment on embargoes in a positive light, “While most embargoes aren’t exclusive, he said the embargo process puts a story on the same continuum. Even if you’re one of 25 others getting the story, that’s worth something.”

Rafe Needleman is no stranger to the topic of PR #Fail. He maintains a separate blog, PR Pro Tips, and even published a recent book dedicated to documenting what doesn’t work, while also providing advice on how to practice PR in a way that actually helps him do his job more effectively.

He discussed the need for obtaining an NDA in advance of sharing news under an assumed embago.

In the process of corralling reporters, many make the mistake of sending the request for an NDA or agreement to the embargo along with the news. This is a mistake that is more common than not and one that hits a little too close to home. Someone on our team discovered this hard way and the pitch was rightfully called out because technically, the news was shared before we received commitment to the NDA – thus an embargo was never established.

Needleman wisely advised in his PR Pro Tips blog, “If you send an unsolicited email with an embargoed press release in it, we consider that fair game to cover immediately. Get your NDAs agreed to before you send them.”

Expectation Chain or Chained by Expectations

At the center of this quandary is the news release and the expectations that govern its pickup and distribution. While many place blame on the resulting tactics associated with pitching and placing news, the true source of the problem is the expectations of those companies and executives responsible for generating the news and ultimately the marketers and communications professionals who report to them. The expectation chain also continues beyond the c-suite as they also report to a board of directors and advisors, stakeholders, and investors. To them, it’s not about less is more, they’re goals are fully rooted in a “more is more” mentality rooted in a prevailing sense of entitlement. PR thus starts off from an almost losing position. The economy doesn’t help either…

Reporters and bloggers are also to blame for the inefficiencies and problems circling the embargo. While some have mistakenly published early, others have done so intentionally. There’s an advantage for doing so, traffic.

The Race to Authority: Content is Still King

At the San Francisco event, Mark Glaser didn’t buy the excuse that being one minute ahead of everyone else is important to page views. But if you are considered the lead in a breaking story by the public, it makes all the difference in the world – namely bragging rights and a much more profound case for selling sponsorships and ads. In the tech world, there’s also a visual element to the lead story. Techmeme, for example, usually rewards the first to publish a story that sparks a news trend, positioning following stories beneath the lead. You can bet that Techmeme sends a greater volume of traffic to the lead versus supporting posts. And, of course there’s Twitter. First to break an interesting story usually benefits from a wave of retweets.

Paul Boutin compared the embargo to a horse race. If we line up horses at the track, it’s in his best interest to break early.

And, Boutin also takes a hard nose position against those who break earlier and beat him to market. Even though many PR pros try to salvage coverage among those who then choose not to write a story because it’s already public, Boutin believes that there isn’t any value to a deeper story or new angle, “there’s no second chance to write a deeper story, speed counts.”

As Dylan Tweney from wired observed and then echoed by Rafe Needleman via Twitter, “The stories that get the most pageviews are almost never embargoed stories.”

But reporters and bloggers aren’t the only force to dictate the future of news and embargoes. PR also has a choice in who they decide to align with on important stories. Even though there is an unnecessarily great emphasis on the volume and mass of coverage (H.I.T.S. as KD Paine defines as How Idiots Track Success). In the immediate future, activity and influence will count for everything as PR becomes accountable for contributing to the bottom line of business, not just publicity. Some more advanced communications teams are already measuring the activity that derives from each post/article and it absolutely determines who is invited to participate in embargoes and stories in the future. Practiced well enough over time, PR fundamentally invests in the authority of chosen individuals and organizations.

The power and allure of a-list blogs and reporters is undeniable, but PR cannot ignore or overlook the value of the Magic Middle, the class of bloggers that earn between 1,000 and 50,000 monthly unique visitors. It is the Magic Middle that out numbers the a-list in reach and volume when compared to the overall blogosphere, and for that, provide an almost endless array of opportunities in and around news and trends.

However, if page views are of concern, then what can be considered timely news on one day could also be packaged as a feature or trend story in the future. I am not in the news business, but I do report on news. However, if I were to publish stories as news is breaking, I would surely lose out in the race for visibility and authority compared to those better at this game than I. Instead, if something is interesting, I will file it away and revisit it at a time when I can perform deeper analysis and thus share interesting and newly timed and relevant perspective. Page views are then incredibly more abundant. Thus I believe that Boutin and Tweney may consider rethinking their stance especially if the story is of particular substance to their audience.

The reality is that embargoes are an important and fundamental part of the news ecosystem. They mustn’t lose their stature. As such, it is the responsibility of PR to use them only when warranted and not relegate them merely as part of a day-to-day tactic in the process of PR pitching.

Current and future relationships with media are defined by our investment in collaboration with every news release, now and over time. This is a long-term play and there is no value or reward for practicing PR through shortsighted and insular campaigns.

In the end, PR earns the trust and relationships that it deserves.

—

Please also read:

The State of PR: You are the future

PR Doesn’t Stand for Press Release

The Art and Science of Blogger Relations

—

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

Twitter recently expanded its new Lists service to users network-wide and in doing so, injected a sense of excitement, confusion, and also utility. Lists represent a significant milestone for Twitter as it transcends asynchronous conversations and and broadcast messages into a form of intelligence gathering, education, entertainment, and news.

Twitter Lists are also stirring controversy as many believe that it sets the foundation for a new level of establishing a metric for influence. Whereas prominence was measured by the number of followers as well as the friends-to-follower ratio, now the amount of Lists that include any given entity factors into an equation for establishing authority.  At a minimum, the power of Lists is in the gesture in of itself. The act of including someone is a more significant validation and token of respect and friendship than a simple “follow” and in some cases more symbolic and meaningful than a RT (retweet).  We take cognizance of intellectual, isolated, and emotional substance.

Additionally, Twitter Lists signify an important art form of curation. Individually, we are empowered to create valuable lists, by theme and voice, in order to provide a service to ourselves and those who share the same passions, interests, and beliefs as us.

Twitter rolled out an important new feature that untethers Lists to journey across Websites and blogs as a fully contained, customizable widget, ergo a channeled, live experience. Now curated feeds can channel into the outside Web to share insights with others who may or may not use Twitter, including those who may or may not follow these individuals online or in the real world.

Most notably, List widgets are updated in real time, a capability not yet included in streams viewed on Twitter.com. If a Tweet is worthy of reply or RT, a “reply” button appears as you hover over the Tweet of interest.

Be mindful of these small, but important updates. Essentially, Lists are a new form of information aggregation and syndication. Lists and List Widgets serve as a new genre of a very personal RSS feedreaders. And now, these curated contextual streams are portable and embeddable as well.

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect

Source

Facebook is much more than a social network. Twitter is much more than an information network or serendipity engine. Each represent a dashboard for your attention, a foundation for conversations and collaboration, and a matrix for your social graph and contextual relationships. In other words, Facebook and Twitter essentially represent the entrée to the future of the social Web as each strive to host, what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and others, refer to as our personal social operating system (OS).

What Windows is to PCs and OS X is to Macs, Facebook and Twitter are to our social architecture and enterprise.  Certainly there’s a David and Goliath element here depending on which company you immediately view as Microsoft or Apple. However, Mac and Windows are simply operating systems, not networks per se, and that’s where the metaphor of OS’ break down. Either way, there is the perception that there is a competition between Facebook and Twitter for your attention and your network.

Why? At the very least, Twitter and Facebook combine the elements of productivity and interactivity, combining a social OS, a global network, and a platform for open development.

The fabric of our online activity stems form a sophisticated social framework that facilitates the exchange of information and the sustenance of professional, conversational, and contextual connections. Facebook and Twitter, like Windows and Mac, allow us to interact cross platform, while hosting dedicated applications that support our engagement, productivity, and communication.

As much attention as we pay to this mythical clash between Facebook and Twitter, the truth is that it’s not unprecedented to maintain networks in more than one ecosystem. For example, I use both Mac and Windows-based systems.

According to new data from Hitwise, it appears that the epic battle between the two perceived leaders in Social Media is one-sided – or perhaps better stated, dominated.

As of October 2009, Facebook accounts for 6 percent of all U.S. Internet visits while Twitter represents only .14 percent. In fact, visits to Twitter.com peaked at .20 percent between June and July 2009 and has slowly lost attention in the interim. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco recently, co-founder Evan Williams acknowledged the slow down in traffic to Twitter.com in the U.S., for now, but he also stated that they in the process of finalizing new features that will reverse the downward trend. Williams also reminded us Twitter continues to recognize growth in both mobile and abroad.

And, for those who take solace in the hope that traffic is migrating from Twitter.com to mobile clients, there is some truth to the theory. However, new visitors count for everything and Twitter needs to do a better job capturing new users and holding their interests after they register. The company needs to look further than its resident celebrities to attract and sustain traffic.

For the time being, regardless of numbers, Facebook and Twitter serve a purpose, and thus, remain the Mac and PC in the lives of many, including me.  And, until the day that I am forced or compelled to pledge allegiance to one or the other, I will continue to cultivate relationships and value across multiple landscapes and suggest that you do the same.

I am a Mac and I am a PC. I am Twitter and I am Facebook.

What do you think?

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, or Facebook
—
Click the image below to buy:

pr pr+2.0 pr2.0 public+relations marketing advertising interactive social+media socialmedia brian+solis social media media2.0 media+2.0 2.0 smo social+media+optimization marcom communication publicity advertising expert interactive spin brand branding guru social+architect