Back in 2009, at that year's Monitoring Social Media conference, I forecast Google's entry into social analytics in Q1 2010. Whoops. Only fools do short-term forecasting. Wiser men look further out, by which time people have forgotten the prediction!
So here we are in Q2 2012 and the news from Google has dropped into my inbox. Verbatim:
Digital marketing has come a long way in the past decade, as we’ve moved beyond putting existing materials online and learned how to really harness the native advantages of digital technologies.
The pace of change continues unabated, and among its most important drivers is data – and the meaning of that data.
Every one of us is going to be producing more data describing our use of digital products and services. This is what I like to call digital detritus. Detritus – discarded organic matter which is decomposed by microorganisms and reappropriated by animal and plant life – is interestingly analogous to our regard for, and treatment of, the data that we’re all shedding.
When it comes to the increase in data, we’re working on a logarithmic scale: we’re talking about hundreds and thousands of times more. Data in such quantities may well prove to have important new mathematical properties that are attractive to marketers, customer service and product development teams. Moreover, we don’t actually do much with the digital detritus today – it mostly resides in inaccessible log files, although the technology for collating it is becoming increasingly achievable and affordable.
What does this mean in everyday terms? Read more
I'm a fortunate geek. I got to chair the 6UK launch back in November, with keynote by Vint Cerf – fondly referred to as one of the fathers of the Internet. And on Monday this week, I chaired Profiting From The New Web at the Royal Society with keynote by Sir Tim Berners-Lee – inventor of the World Wide Web. How cool is that?!
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, New Web, London, 23rd May 2011 (courtesy Intellect)
I worked with the Web Science Trust and Intellect to design this week's conference, and we set ourselves this mission:
Discover new and better ways to do business, run our countries, and lead fulfilling and sustainable lives via the intelligent, innovative and diligent development of the New Web, and to make progress faster than otherwise.
The term Web 1.0 is applied retrospectively to a Web of documents and ecommerce. The term Web 2.0 has come to describe social community and user-generated content. The New Web – the Web of Data or the Semantic Web, and sometimes Web 3.0 – entails the Web itself understanding the meaning of that participation and content.
A component of the Web of Data, known as Open Data, encompasses the idea of freeing data so that others may query it, check and challenge it, augment it, and mash it up with other sources. Sir Tim is particularly motivated by this vision given its potential to drive scientific breakthrough, enhance delivery of public services and open up new frontiers for competitive advantage. Read more
Regular readers know that social analytics is a subject close to my heart. And would you believe it, my ebook on the matter, The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008, still gets downloaded a thousand times a month. I also made sure to include a section on social analytics in my book of course (out this month in the UK and shortly in the US), listing twelve primary characteristics of the services to assist in your organisation's tool selection and procurement.
Well yesterday's CIPR TV was on the topic of social analytics, and Russell and I were delighted to have Alterian's Connie Bensen and NMIncite's Emily Dent join us on the sofa. We also managed to interleave a three minute interview I grabbed with Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun at last week's Radian6 Social2011 conference.
Check it out:
Last night the CIPR Social Summer series hosted a session on all things TweetDeck. If you haven't tried TweetDeck, try it now. It's free!
According to Twitstat.com today, after simply tweeting at twitter.com, Tweetdeck is the most popular Twitter client globally. Here's the stats I just grabbed from Twitstat:
| Rank | Client | % of users | Tweets/user | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | (1) | web | 16.80 % | 2.90 |
| 2 | (2) | TweetDeck | 9.50 % | 3.17 |
| 3 | (6) | twitterfeed | 5.90 % | 5.58 |
| 4 | (3) | foursquare | 5.85 % | 1.49 |
| 5 | (4) | Twitter for iPhone | 5.85 % | 2.38 |
| 6 | (5) | HootSuite | 5.39 % | 2.68 |
| 7 | (8) | Echofon | 3.22 % | 3.25 |
| 8 | (25) | API | 2.76 % | 6.66 |
| 9 | (7) | Tweetie for Mac | 2.55 % | 2.38 |
| 10 | (9) | Seesmic | 2.16 % | 3.02 |
But TweetDeck is more than a nice way to shepherd incoming tweets and craft your own. TweetDeck is rapidly becoming the most powerful way to manage your social networking without ever having to log onto each and every social network yourself. It aggregates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz and Foursquare, and it even lets you watch YouTube videos brought to your attention by your social network in situ.
So I was particularly delighted when TweetDeck MD Iain Dodsworth (@iaindodsworth) accepted our invitation to join us for one of our CIPR Social Summer sessions to share his insights and answer our questions. Read more
AVE. Three little letters I thought had been dragged and dropped into the PR waste basket some years back. Right next to "column inches", you know what I mean. Yet I have come across Advertising Value Equivalent no fewer than four times this week, coincidentally and oddly.
The first definition returned by a Google search is provided courtesy of SourceWatch: "...to 'measure' the benefit to a client from media coverage of a PR campaign". The description goes on to describe how you ask yourself the question "Mmmm, how much would this space have cost me to buy advertising stylee?" and then you multiply that by, oooh I don't know, 3, or 4, or 10?
Public Relations is about exerting influence and being influenced. We do this by sparking debate. Creating stimulating content, and demonstrating insight, passion and leadership by finding and starting conversations about the issues that matter to the marketplace, to our customers and prospects, and to our customers' customers.
What's the AVE of that conversation exactly? Read more