Just in case anyone in New York has the time to join us for our first meetup (and a birthday party for moi) we’re having our first DataSTORIES meetup at Havana Central Uptown location (near Columbia University).  Feel free to join the meetup group and join us  there.

Interesting post by Luke at OutSocialTimes (who I’ll be meeting shortly at Monitoring Social  Media 09, in 10 days) on why some companies should Not Use Social Media - and it ties into another thought that is seemingly unrelated, but not.

Luke poses a question I find interesting -

…. does the character (or “brand”) of a company dictate how successful it is likely to be in social media? Does a laid-back, fun-loving, youthful company stand a better chance of success on Facebook, Twitter and the like than an ancient, grey, corporate monolith?

Yes, it’s true.  Some companies take so long to respond, are so uptight, that Social Media is too hard for them to be active with – and Luke says as much..

… some large corporates have such torturous processes and regulations that it takes at least  48 hours for a Tweet to be approved by the lawyers – if indeed it is approved! This would make for rather stilted conversations, to say the least. In my experience the unwillingness for companies to free up staff and allow them to engage with customers via social media is subsiding – but there are undoubtedly still a large number of bosses who don’t “get” social media and shudder at the thought of their IT Support guy talking to customers.

But the question goes deeper than mere attitudes. Should the ethos of a company preclude it from engaging in social media? Or, put another way, are some companies so dowdy and uncool that encountering them on Facebook would feel like getting a friend request from your dad?

Yes, again.

However, there’s a role for a Public Relations Agency, in such cases, if I ever saw one.   With proper setup, a PR Agency can do for a large, conservative brand, what they can’t do for themselves  – but, the problem is that it would be expensive for a PR firm to do regular tweeting for Corporate Behemoth.  Something in between needs to evolve – but yes, there is a middle way – and it has only barely been explored.

On another note – Joe Taplin, over at TPMCafe, points out, in a post called The New Normal, that the 80% – 20% rule applies to labor and the employment report.

… What if some version of the Pareto Principle begins to apply itself to employment–20% of the workers produce 80% of the GDP? Dan Greenhaus of Miller Taback & Co has the grim reality of our future.

We have argued and continue to argue that another jobless recovery is materializing and if our estimates for G.D.P. growth going forward materialize, the unemployment rate will remain at elevated levels for several years. Nearly 16 million people are unemployed right now while another 9 million are working part-time jobs because they cannot get a full-time job.

Furthermore …

So here is the reality of life for the bottom 40% of America’s families. After they pay for food, housing and transportation they have $1200 per year to spend on “discretionary items” like clothing, medicine and doctors. Never mind telephone, Internet or cable TV which are supposed to be middle class entitlements. I don’t believe the 25 million underemployed people in this country are not going to sit on their hands passively zoned out in front of the TV set in the next two years, especially when they see Hedge Fund managers taking home $100 million bonuses for successfully taking down companies like Abitibi-Bowater, CIT, General Growth Properties, Six Flags and even General Motors with their brilliant government subsidized Credit Default Swaps and bond packages that forced the companies into bankruptcy.

Here’s how I think Luke’s earlier question about Social Media for Companies ties into Jon’s somewhat enlightening but depressing thoughts about the economy and future job prospects and disposable income.

It may be that only 20% of the companies or businesses can take advantage of Social Media – and will create 80% or 90% of the buzz.  That’s the tie in – all this talk about the production economy, all this talk about Social Media – but who is really positioning for the 20% – and that’s the paradox of it – of all of it … that much of the buzz and future, for labor, is directed at a much smaller number than what we need for the future.

This is the paradox of the future – what is needed is a much wider adoption than what we’re currently seeing.

I heard about Tynt Insight and tried it out, pretty impressed!

Tynt allows me to see how my content is being copied and used – but it also generates traffic – and it’s used on some larger sites (I believe Sports Illustrated is testing it out) – Tynt goes past what Web Analytics is currently capable of  in the way it can track content usage.  There is a tag involved, and for a blog, it’s put in the footer below the closing body tag.

I’m pretty impressed with how Tynt told me how much traffic it generated for my blog – it also, in the advanced features, figures out what is the most copied content per hour, and tweets it to my Twitter account.

The Link report shows which content has generated the most interest and divides it by Gold, Platinum and Silver – in terms of quality (I’ll go into that later, of in another post).

Here’s a content view – I’ll have more to say in a post very soon about Tynt.

Sometimes, I get ideas from other things that don’t appear related, at all, like  Eric T. Peterson’s post about “are you ready for the coming revolution?” and an exclusive, press only invite to Bauhaus 1919-1933 Workshops for Modernity @ MoMA that I attended today.  Eric would say, I’m sure, there’s no relationship, but there is, because I made a connection and bridged two totally different currents that really aren’t so different; and, what I mean.  Eric wrote this:

I’ll cut right to the chase: I believe that we are (finally) on the cusp of a profound revolution in web analytics and that the availability of third-generation web analytics technologies will finally get digital measurement the seat at the table we’ve been fighting to get for years.

Statistics, people … statistics and modeling, predictive analytics based on web data, true forecasting, and true analytical competition for the online channel. Yahoo’s use of confidence intervals when presenting demographic data and the application of statistical models in Google’s new “Analytics Intelligence” feature are just the beginning. As an industry it’s time to stop fearing math and embrace analytical sciences that have been around for longer than many of us have been alive. It’s time to stop grousing about how bad the data is and actually do something about it.

Today, as I visited MoMA to view the Bauhaus, I noted, Bauhaus  started with with the goal of challenging traditional hierarchies  placing fine art (painting, music, dance, photography) on the same footing with architecture and applied design (ceramics, textile design, furniture design) – information evolved in workshops instead of studios – each containing a crafts person and an artist – along with students.

When I saw this diagram, above, on how materials were designed, I thought about the physical structure of the Bauhaus building – where training was provided in 6 areas, sculpture, metalwork, cabinetry, painting and decorating, printmaking and weaving, according to the diagram above, promoting a unity of all those things – elevating none of them over each other.

Getting back to Web Analytics turning into Business Intelligence – Eric T. Peterson pointed out that  …..

The current state of digital analytics is untenable over time, and Web Analytics Demystified believes that companies that persist in treating online and offline as “separate and different” will begin to cede ground to competitors who are willing to invest in the creation and use of a strategic, whole-business data asset. These organizations are using third-generation digital analytics tools to effectively blur the lines between online and offline data—tools that bridge the gap between historical direct marketing and market research techniques and Internet generated data, affording their users unprecedented visibility into insights and opportunities.

This white paper describes the impending revolution in digital analytics, one that has the potential to change both the web analytics and business intelligence fields forever. We make the case for a new approach towards customer intelligence that leverages all available data, not just that data which is most convenient given the available tools. We make this case not because we believe there is anything wrong with today’s tools when used appropriately, but because we believe digital analytics should take a greater role in business decision making in the future.”

One of the challenges of studying history is applying it to the current time.  Bauhaus was one way of saying that if you approach problem solving and creativity as a team – where all team members are equal, and learn from each other, the result, product, and satisfaction of people on that team, will be greater than if the team operated in Silos.

But most teams are siloed, and companies I’ve worked for, and most that I know of, Silo product development, online marketing (including SEO, SEM, Banner Ads and Partnership deals), web design, ad creative, content creation, Public Relations, site usability, site analytics, e-commerce, web programming, database programming, lead generation, etc.

But ….. the “Bauhaus experiment” suggests what I have thought all along, that silos, while appearing to solve business problems, actually make them worse.

What if the original diagram of the Bauhaus curriculum by Walter Gropius, first published in the Statures of the sate Bauhaus in Weimar, in 1922, looked like this, today, in the modern Digital Workgroup?

What if … everyone who worked in the team had to, at least, partly, walk in each other’s shoes?

Tonight I was at the Sunshine Yammer + CRUSH IT! party w Gary Vaynerchuck! – Gary said, in  his typical way, that when he was a small business, when he was starting out in what he has become so famous for, he had to “do everything” – but he always followed his passion and did what he loves the best – and when he could afford to, he delegated what the didn’t want to do, to others.   But before delegating anything, he did enough of the work to understand what he was delegating.

In the modern corporation, people are hired, still, for the special skills they have, but the Bauhaus was designed to pair up people of different disciplines – and made no distinction between creativity and craft – they merged.

Looking at it in a different light – today, if you asked someone – who does society value more – a computer scientist or a fine artist, society will usually (but not always) go with the scientist.  But what Walter Gropius tried to do was show that treating these as separate, giving some more “weight” than others, was less useful to society than if we put all of it on equal footing and let it take off.

And, last month, at OMMA Global, attending a session of Top Social Media Case Studies in 2009, one of the panelists mentioned creating new teams comprising a Web Analytics Guru, Creative Person and Community Manager - which sorta of, in a very basic way, mirror the ideas I put forth here.

So, I maintain, that what Eric Peterson is moving towards, put another way, could well find a working model in The Bauhaus – but re-interpreted for 2009 – the one thing the MoMA show does not attempt to do.

Check out my entire post when you have the time ….Bauhaus 1919-1933 Workshops for Modernity @ MoMA

Actually, I did this presentation for the panel I’m speaking on focusing on the Future Of Social Media Monitoring at  Monitoring Social Media 09, yesterday.  Turns out, panelists don’t need presentations at #msm09 (unlike Search Engine Strategies and Emetrics Summit).   Not a problem, as it got me to think about what I think the Future of Social Media Monitoring is, and the current problems that exist now.

Here’s my presentation on Slideshare – let me know what you think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overall, Yahoo! Web Analytics is a better platform than Google Analytics, but that doesn’t mean it’s a more accessible platform and  it’s very clear Yahoo! Web Analytics really is a much better platform – but …. to tell people how and why … that’s more problematic, since I don’t have Yahoo! Analytics on any of my sites and haven’t done much with it, yet.

Fortunately, I don’t need to … someone has done that work of comparing Google Analytics and Yahoo! Analytics and come up with the point score of each.

Hint :  Look at slide 47 – Google Analytics scores at 53% while Yahoo! Analytics scores at 79%.  Ha!

It’s also clear that because a platform is better – might not mean it’s more popular.  Think of Yahoo! Analytics more like a upscale running shoe, like a Mizumo,  still affordable, while Google Analytics is ….. say …..  low end Nike running show.     You can’t even buy Mizumo running shoes in most stores  – same way, you can’t as easily get Yahoo! Analytics – and Yahoo! itself, simply doesn’t promote Yahoo! Analytics the way Google promotes Google! Analytics.

To be fair, if Yahoo! told everyone who had a Yahoo! email account, that they could also have a Yahoo! Web Analytics account and tags – and even encouraged people to put those tags on their sites and gave them a $100 Yahoo Advertising Credit, just to wet the juices, make it worthwhile (I‘d go for $250 dollar advertising credit – that would do it) the way Google used to ….. it might be a different story.

But Yahoo! simply isn’t into doing stuff like that … they’d never go for it.  That’s the paradox here – a much better platform, Yahoo! Web Analytics, probably won’t ever become a popular one (and according to Dennis, might not even need to be) because it’s not about popularity – Yahoo! probably is getting enough data from users, as it is, without having to open it up to the “masses”.

And there’s the other thing – Yahoo! knows that for every new feature Google Analytics! adds, it’s a cost in the processing power they have to provide (as Dennis likes to say it … it’s very “expensive”, from a processing perspective, to do the kinds of segmentation that Google Analytics has provided over the last year, and is continuing to build on).   There’s even a question weather Google will start having to charge for some of the more boutique features of Google Analytics down the line.

” ….A loosely connected but collaborative group of talented, committed volunteers can produce good free software; but a corporation, even one as innovatively structured as Google, cannot build powerful software, continuously upgrade it in material ways and provide it for free indefinitely.

But is ‘free’ the 4-letter ‘ f ‘ word?”

….we should no longer consider GA as ‘free’. Software developed without an alternate revenue stream but in the hope of donations, is free software. The Alexa Toolbar is not truly free. ‘Free’ does not only mean free of charge. It also includes free of funding or financial backing.

With the billions of dollars generated by AdWords, Google Analytics and related products like Google Website Optimizer that have proven to be contributing to AdWords’ success and growth, payment for GA’s advancement will continue to be pumped into GA and its sister products.

So, in reality, even large enterprises demanding the best in enterprise level web analytics solutions, are getting the software they need, paid for by another enterprise and by the masses of small business AdWords clients.

In the case of Google Analytics, ‘free’ is not the 4-letter ‘ f ‘ word. It’s just a different funding model.

In this, both Google Analytics and Yahoo! Analytics are not free – and by using both, or either, your giving data to Google or Yahoo!, data they use to make their products and advertising better – data they use to study us more (hopefully, to give us better products, but also, perhaps, to use for their own profit).   It’s not really free, I think that’s the point.

Actually, November 9th is my birthday – but it’s also the first meeting of the DataSTORIES meetup – taking place this time at Havana Central on 113th Street and Broadway, NYC.    If anyone who reads my blog is in NYC at that time, please join us.

The original idea was partly mine – to host an event with live data where a company will open it self up to a peer review in real time – and a panel and/or the audience will suggest solutions and insights – purely from the data presented.   DataSTORIES first test, as a concept, was at Google’s own location in Manhattan last May – and it was suggested at the time – to make this a group of it’s own.

So we have.   Join us – or if you can’t be in NYC - join the meetup group, anyway - as we’ll post ideas and results from the meetings we hold.  Also, if you want to speak at one of the future meetings of DataSTORIES – and/or, voleenteer to have your data analyzed in real time (for the story it tells) – sign up for the group and contact us via the Meetup Page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yep, Google’s at it again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turns our faster is better … When your talking about websites, according to an excellent post at Watchingwebsites.com

(see http://www.watchingwebsites.com/archives/proof-that-speeding-up-websites-improves-online-business)

I am wondering if it makes any sense to worry about bounce rate, if you can’t serve up you content within a fraction of a second? I don’t think so.

Look at this set of chilling charts below; the post at watchingwebsites.com has several more examples of slow sites affecting coversions.

At my last job, btw, a lot of money was spent adding features and capabilites to the site, but pages often took seconds to load, with frequent 404 messages.

Besides any other feature added to improve web effectiveness, is it any wonder why a slow site would equal declining profits?

I think, in Google Analytics, for example, average load time per page ought to be provided along with other metrics.