So-called "Web 2.0" dominated the last decade. This decade be prepared for "Web 3.0". Why the quotes?... well these terms are loosely defined at best, but remain useful as signposts of major change.

Most pundits associate 3.0 with something called the Semantic Web. Effectively, if Web 2.0 was about community and content, then Web 3.0 / the Semantic Web is about understanding the meaning of those social contributions and content.

Importantly, Web 3.0 is going to have as big an impact on what it means to practice marketing and public relations as Web 2.0. The implications are widespread and interlinked, which is not surprising when something called LinkedData is a sub-set of the Semantic Web.

After a decade's gestation, the Semantic Web is not far from emerging into the mainstream, so expect to feel the first birth pangs any time soon. The first thing I expect we'll notice is the dropping of job titles or self-promotion monikers like "social media expert", which are now waaaaay too common anyway, in deference to "Semantic marketing pro" or somesuch [note to self!].

If you are amongst the marketing and PR geekerati, then you might want to help a group of us define the world's first Semantic Web ontology for feelings about things. This ontology will help convey the meaning of the social Web's contributions so that your heartfelt fanboy exclamations and miserable #fail sentencings don't just reside in obscurity but contribute to a wider resonance. Interested?

Lastly, I'll leave you with a link to my favourite post of the week, and outrageously it's not on MarCom Professional. It's a post by Marshall Sponder, the Web Metrics Guru, and explores the meaning of "influencer" and how you might use various social Web analytics services to find them. Nice work Marshall and see you at the Monitoring Social Media bootcamp next month.

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

Digital Marketing Practitioners Walk the Walk

by David H Deans of Digital Lifescapes

Marketers continue to shift their budgets from traditional to digital media, but simply including online ad campaigns and social media efforts is not enough for an effective marketing mix, reports eMarketer.

According to Alterian's assessment, the maturity of digital and social media requires integration of marketing strategies. Marketers must move from a focus on isolated campaigns to an emphasis on listening to and communicating across channels.

In this study, more than one-half of marketers worldwide reported directing their efforts toward integrating their communication strategies to emphasize multichannel engagement. More...

What's it like applying to work for your company?

by Rebecca Caroe of Creative Agency Secrets

B2B recruitment is an area where it is easy to forget the importance of branding and corporate communication. Nowadays you can find out loads about what it’s like working for a company online – and mostly through non-official sites. I was really pleased to read this post from Jeffrey L. Cohen in which he interviews Laurie Ruettimann, an HR Consultant and blogger, about how she would advise an organisation to use social media for recruitment.

If you don’t have time to hear the full 8 minute interview, here are the notes I took from it. More...

How to crowdsource videos for your company

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

Wouldn’t it be cool if people created videos for you? Perhaps like HP, you could hold a contest to get students to put forward their best efforts.

The contest was simple. "Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive." This video filmed, edited and directed by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth for the contest is just terrific.

Please take just 80 seconds to watch this amazing video.

Direct link to HP Invent video by Matt and Tom here. More...

The Internationalization of Social Media

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

If you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.

Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating Conversation Prisms specific to each country. More...

Social Media and How it is Impacting on Public Relations (Part Two)

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

This is PART TWO of a guest post by strategic public relations professional and blogger, Craig Pearce (below). His views and news on PR can be found at Public relations and managing reputation: better business and society.

In the second post of this three-part series (READ PART ONE HERE), issues discussed will include the participation required to utilise social media to its full effect, the dialectic between reputation and engagement for organisational stakeholders and social media as an issues management activity. More...

Ten things you need to know about Google Buzz

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

Google Buzz started to roll out to Gmail users this evening in a move said to challenge Facebook and Twitter.

It’s available immediately to all Gmail users; unlike Google Wave it isn’t restricted to beta users. According to Google it will appear in your inbox in the next day or so
Google Buzz is a realtime social network like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. You can use it to share links, photos, videos, and status updates with your network
Updates from people in your network will automatically be posted your Gmail inbox
The network will prioritise messages from people in your network that the Google Buzz algorithms determine are most relevant to you
Google Buzz incorporates a function similar to Twitter’s retweet. More...

The Information Divide: The Socialization of News

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

In the era of the real-time Web, information travels at a greater velocity than the infrastructure of mainstream media can support as it exists today. As events materialize, the access to social publishing and syndication platforms propels information across attentive and connected nodes that link social graphs all over the world. Current events are now at the epicenter of global attention as social media makes the world a much smaller place.

It’s a timely subject as Clay Shirky will discuss how Social Media can make history at this year’s TED conference. More...

Paperchase social media storm versus journalistic integrity; and implications for crisis communications

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

Paperchase has published a statement on the contact section of its web site about the alleged copyright theft of work by independent artist Hidden Eloise. The stationery firm said that it purchased the image in good faith from a small London based design company called Gather No Moss. “[…] In this case, we would like to confirm that Paperchase bought the artwork in question, in good faith, in October 2008, from a well-known central London Design Studio along with a number of other designs. More...