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.