Starting from today – Robert Scoble thinks it is too late to regulate Facebook for the changes it’s made coming out of the F8 conference last week that are painting the web with Facebook Like Buttons and sharing more data with the likes of Pandora and Yelp than anyone realized till now.   I don’t know if that is a bad thing or not – but it changes the game – away from Google (and that is a good thing – let them battle it out).   Also, earlier this week Jeremiah Owyang wrote -  First Take Analysis: Facebook’s Crusade of Colonization summarizing what the threat and opportunities are for Facebook and for us with the new changes that came out of F8.

Today LUKE BRYNLEY-JONES (Our Social Times – he put together the Social Media Monitoring Bootcamp last month in London that I spoke at) adds his voice by suggesting Mashable’s assessment left out Geo-Location which is along the lines of what I think, and I’m more optimistic than he is.  Even the Wall Street Journal is experimenting with Geo Location of local area news – I think we’ll see a lot more of this.

But socially driven recommendations have their limits. What percentage of your Google searches fall outside your normal buying patterns or interests? We all buy presents, look up random facts, figures, places and people. I would suggest that at least half of my online activity is not predictable or connected to my typical interests. Were this information to be included as “recommendations” to my friends, it’s likely to confuse rather than help.

Geo-location, it is suggested, will provide yet more options for location-based recommendations. While this is probably true, having worked on mobile social networks – for which having an effective location dimension is the Holy Grail – I’m very aware that geo-location has consistently failed to live up to it’s promise. Let’s see of Foursquare and it’s competitors can prove me wrong.

Also today Seth Grimes posted about Sentiment Analysis - Sentiment Analysis Feels Its Way Forward and quoted me, not so much for what I said at the Sentiment Analysis Symposium, but for the footage I took of the Lightening Pitches – the only video record of anything said at the Symposium.

The only symposium segment that was recorded was the series of 16 lightning talks, 5-minute presentation-demos of a diverse set of technologies and solutions. Social-media analytics guru Marshall Sponder captured with his iPhone. (Marshall hates my calling him a guru, but he’s tried more of the tools hands-on than anyone else I know, just as fellow guru and symposium participant Nathan Gilliatt has evaluated a broader set of tools than anyone else, to my knowledge, assessment he has written up in his Social Media Analysis Platforms for Workgroups report.)

The entire footage of the Lightening Talk pitches is here – I do need to make a few corrections to the playlist with regard to speaker’s names – a lot of new companies that were showing their sentiment technology for the first time in this audience – worth looking through.

Leena Rao (who also writes for TechCrunch) wrote about Sysomos: The Kevin Bacon Game Applies To Twitter and said that we’re only 5 steps away from anyone else on Twitter – and my first thought about that was … isn’t that a function of how Twitter is designed?   I mean – if in real life it takes six steps of separation - and on Twitter it takes 5, what does it take on Facebook?   Some of it will depend on how easy it is to connect with friends of friends of friends, etc.

Conversation Marketing wrote a good post on using bit.ly to track Social Media Marketing – nothing new here but it’s simple and easy to do.  A lot of good data is missed because we often forget to take advantage of the tools we have to collect data.  Another post was done in ReadWriteWeb asking if Social Media has changed the way we speak and write. Well, for one thing, we use abbreviation a lot more and writing is “more concise” – with people also reveling more of their personal ideas, feelings and thoughts.   Meanwhile, Klout Raises $1.5 Million To Measure Influence And Authority on Twitter which is interesting as I was present when Klout was first announced at the New York Tech Meetup in 2008 at the IAC building.  There’s money in Metrics – at least, in Twitter Metrics.

Also Akamai’s State of the Internet Report was released and critiqued in ReadWriteWeb

Among the findings are the persistence of Russia as the top location for attack traffic and of South Korea for speed of web connections.The number of unique ports attacked has increased by almost three times what it was in Q3.

The single oddest statement in the report is Akamai’s contention that “slightly more than
465 million unique IP addresses, from 234 countries, connected to the Akamai network-
4.7% more than in the third quarter of 2009, and 16% more than in the same quarter
a year ago.”

Well, I really don’t know about that … but it’s interesting – and the Russia part… makes sense.

Also, there was a roundup post on what many people think about Social Media Strategy comes before tactics – it’s long enough that I haven’t read it all but need to, might be worth reading for anyone else, too.  At the same time, a post on The Social Media Effect was with a cool graphic was shown.

That’s it – by the way – the conference I was going to speak at in Long Island on Saturday was postponed till later in June.

Didn’t mention this before – speaking at Social Media Camp Long Island this Saturday on Geo-Location and Social Media with Cecilia Pineda Feret of Havana Central New York restaurant chain.  For any of my readers in New York – esp. Long Island – hope you can make it over to Hofstra University from 11AM – 6PM on May 1st.

We will be speaking on Makin’ Bacon for Your Bricks & Mortar Biz using Geo-Location Services Like FourSquare: Case Study of Havana Central – this is a similar presentation to what I gave at Jeff Pulver’s 140 meetup last month but we plan to expand on it, add more data and show the potential for increased Brand Awareness and Sales through a few simple steps.

Here’s a description of the session:

Makin’ Bacon for Your Bricks & Mortar Biz using Geo-Location Services Like FourSquare: Case Study of Havana Central

Social Media? Easy for an ONLINE business, but how do you engage with customers once they are near or at your store?
Learn how to build your “audience” of consumers into a strong network no unhappy wolf can huff & puff at.

Marshall Sponder, Founder, Web Metrics Guru & Online Analyst, and Cecilia Pineda Feret, Online Marketing & Community Strategist, describe what you can do to drive sales.

Havana Central guests go to Facebook and Twitter andFourSquare to share how much they love the food, the service, the ambiance. Havana Central’s and guests’ fans & followers “get the message” to go there, too!

We’re also planning to give a similar presentation – but even more advanced – at the Web 2.0 Conference here in NYC this fall.

There is a great conference that is coming up in New York City in Mid June 2010 – it’s called the Corporate Social Media Summit and from all indications – the content and people speaking and attending are intriguing.   Here’s a description of what the Corporate Social Media Summit will cover:

1.  The conference is billed as the best collection of BUSINESS social media expertise assembled. Executives who have ‘been there and done that’ in big businesses from across the US will be sharing their insights – it’s not a collection of consultants and service providers. You can see a full list at http://usefulsocialmedia.com/speakers

2. Too many social media conferences spend their time talking about interesting developments in the social media space with this event is entirely devoted to real world commercial applications of social media to improve your marketing and communications.

3. Over 2 days and 14 workshops, you’ll get insights on integrating social media fully into your marketing mix, how to turn your employees into effective brand ambassadors, accurate measurement and defining tailored KPIs for your own social media strategy, how to spot early warnings of trouble and manage reputational risk – and much more.  There will also be case studies on how your company should be using the major social networks – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and location-based networks like Foursquare and Gowalla. For the agenda, go to http://usefulsocialmedia.com/agenda.

4.  Executives from Timberland, Sears, BASF, Merrill Lynch, Polo Ralph Lauren and many more have confirmed their attendance. If you’d like to meet them, then you should be at the Corporate Social Media Summit.

You can download a brochure with more info on all aspects of the conference at http://usefulsocialmedia.com/brochure

I had hoped to meet Nick Johnson when I was in London last month – but we never crossed paths – so I’ll meet him in New York City this June, instead.  I like the kind of analytics that Nick comes up with – like his post on the impact of new website traffic and new contacts that are developed as a result of that traffic (see this link).

Here’s a list of speakers (http://usefulsocialmedia.com/speakers) who are presenting at the Corporate Social Media Summit – I hope to see you in the audience.