Now that I’m using MySixSense as a primary reader for my feeds (and Google Reader) I’m adapting to it and still getting used to how I’m storing information to write about.  With MySixSense, I’ll probably end up buying InstaPaper Pro (the developer lives in Brooklyn, NY – where I live – interesting) but anyway – that’s neither here or there – lets get on with it.

I noticed a post by Michael Wu, Ph.D of Lithium on finding Influencers in your network – the same Lithium Technologies that bought Scout Labs a few weeks ago - Interesting.  Honestly, if Lithium marries Michael’s brain with Scout Labs crawling technology (I think they will) there’s no telling where this is going end up going – esp with CRM – but also with Social Influencers identification - the stuff that Stowe Boyd was talking about a few months ago (where he thought the tools didn’t exist yet  – next time I have a drink with Stowe – like I did this week – I’m going to tell him … Stowe – they probably do exist – even if only in Lithium’s lab – it will be here soon enough).

I don’t know how Micheal generated this image  (too bad it’s not the 4th of July instead of Memorial Day weekend – this chart goes with that holiday more than this one!) but I bet with Scout Labs information – Lithium/Scout is going to get a lot better.

Michael’s earlier post on Community Influencers Step by Step gives the 10 factors he’s measuring – but I really need to read this stuff in more detail than I can now – all i can say is this is the “real stuff” not the marketing fluff – it’s the things you need to do if your going to take data and find useful information – truly useful information – out of it.  According to Micheal – he’s gone after 10 factors (though he hasn’t told us what weighting each has).

Currently, I’ve implemented 10 different such node metrics:

1. Degree Centrality: How connected a user is, (depending on the edge relationship, this centrality measures the number of connections of a user — friends, colleagues, etc.)
2. Eigenvector Centrality: How reputable and recognized is a user
3. PageRank Score: How much of an authority the user is (this is the same algorithm that Google uses to find authority web pages on the Internet)
4. Potential reach: How many people can the user reach within two degrees
5. Clustering Coefficient: How cliquish is the user (the probability that two of your friends are also friends with each other)
6. Betweenness Centrality: How critical is the user for information diffusion
7. Core Number: How central is the user in the network
8. Vertex Eccentricity: How far away from the center is the user
9. Closeness Centrality for the connected components: How close the user is to the rest of the connected component of the network
10. Closeness Centrality for all components: How close the user is to the entire network, including disconnected components

Again – I need to run this by Stowe Boyd next time I see him.   I bet he’ll tell me more about this than I yet understand, too – but I’m not sure Stowe is aware of Michael’s work, either.  And even Node/XL does some of this – but I think what I am seeing here goes well beyond an Excel Charting Package for Influencers.

I am wondering if some of these people above are at Scout Labs – Laura looks familiar – but maybe I’m mistaken.  Anyway….

Has anyone heard about Visual Website Optimizer?  Using A/B Testing?  This looks like a very promising product and I may use it with one of my Pro-Bono clients soon – esp as there is a 30 day trial period to use it for free.

Getting to the rest of the Journal – Some webmasters aren’t too happy with Google’s May Surprise – and Google is making ranking changes almost once a day according to JaTin.  He also says that Google is going after Newspapers and telling them to take down “paid” links that Google thinks the papers might be selling.   Meanwhile, Google confirms via Matt Cutts that indeed, changes have taken place that  Google decided it needed to do.

…. This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt’s comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from “higher quality” sites (or perhaps are “higher quality” pages).

Clearly, Google is going to be regulated at some point, hopefully soon  – and this is just one more thing that points to a perception that Google is both the Law and the Policeman at the same time – and as we know – that’s not soposed to work too well – that’s why we have what we call a “democracy” – even if it’s only a farce – which it often is – still if Google makes the rules and enforces them – what is stop Google from acting in it’s own self interest – Nothing.  And that’s the problem.   Because it’s not always clear what is and isn’t in Google self interest.

Meanwhile A/VC says that he’s now sold on the Apple iPAD – I guess it’s time to get one.

I’ll have more to add to my web journal later this weekend – can’t put it all in one post and I have to get some work done.  Bye for now.

I’ll take the second, first.  Google‘s Feedburner showed over 4000 RSS subscribers yesterday, shows about 1800 today, showed 3400 for Monday and Tuesday of this week – I wonder when they are going to fix their problem – or does make sense to show the Feedburner chicklet at all?    This is one example of when things go bad with Google – and they’re taking a long time to figure it out.    I know they’re trying to make the subscriber count more accurate – but … is what they’re doing now an improvement?  I don’t think so.

Anyway, yesterday I happened to look at Alterian/SM2/Techrigy emotions report and realized it could be a lot more useful that I initially thought.

I’m looking at a profile of Havana Central - the Cuban restaurant chain I’m doing some analytics enablement work for realized the emotions chart could be a way to categorize the type of conversations taking place – it’s a beginning and obviously someone needs to dig in and categorize it further – but here’s the idea, anyway:

Since Havana Central is a restaurant I would expect a lot of the conversations to contain references to “ingesting” something – like food or drink.  I imagine it also makes sense the most common reference is to “Social” which isn’t really an emotion – it’s more of an activity.  Leisure comes right up there too.

Breaking it down – when conversations talk about ingesting – what are they saying?

What we could here – is break down further – get the main themes for ingesting – and present that as report.

Now, Techrigy has some tools that could help, but they don’t work with emotions – just categories – which is unfortunate in this case – as the Advanced Themes  chart might have done most of the heavy lifting.

If, in addition to categories, you also had the emotions and activities – something that would not be hard for them to do – is would be a very interesting chart you could produce – I think – but as I have not seen it yet (because it doesn’t exist) I don’t know for sure .. all I say is – they should do this.

Right now all I get when I look at Havana Central for major themes over the last month is this (above) – not bad – and you can click on each of the circle and get the posts mentions corresponding  – and of course, the larger circles mean more posts – but you can also see the circle are not that close together (related) – and that’s an area that ought to be looked at.   What would make these conversations more related that is not happening?  That is a question for the Social Analyst (me) to answer.

But you can more or less see where I’m going with this post – Techrigy does give you a quick way to categorize conversations round any profile you set up.  You may even be able to make a pitch saying – “here’s your conversations now” … and “here’s how we’re going to change them” … and use this report as the basis.
About a year ago I wrote a post on this part of Techrigy – looking at Sophisticated Audience – and found the report promising – but lacking a good way to export the data and work on it more.

It’s as if Techrigy has a lot of good starts – but never carried those ideas as far as they could logically go – the tool was good – it just could have been better – but the emotion view is unique – no other platform I worked with actually has this.

One of the views you could have gotten to here – “what kind of foods to people talk about eating here” – and then extracted that out of this report … or what kind of food / drink  customers complain about?    You could really dive in – main problem is SM2/Techrigy never built to platform for that – but like I say – they have good ideas – but if your going to use their platform as I suggest – you’ll need to export into Excel and do a lot of filtering and possibly – transformations on the data – something they ought to be doing , in my opinion.

Speaking at SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS & ENTREPRENEURSHIP Alumni Club on June 16th – Here’s the information – hope you’ll join me if your in New York City at this time.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS & ENTREPRENEURSHIP (Alumni Club)

—It’s Here to Stay—Now What?
Event Date: Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 6:30pm

Please join us for a very informative panel about social media, for the corporate marketer, the small business owner, and the “newbie” social media user.  This will be the first of a seven –part educational series of social media events which will cover the full spectrum of issues regarding social media (e.g., how to utilize it to promote business and build a brand/franchise, personal branding for your career, measuring ROI , etc.).  At the end of the event, volunteers will be stationed at the Samsung computers for hands-on show-and-tell.

Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Time: 6:30 – 8:30 pm (includes refreshments, one-hour panel discussion and Q & A)

Location: The Samsung Experience, 10 Columbus Circle, 3rd Floor, New York 10019

Cost: $25 for CBSAC/NY members/ $35 for Non-Members

Click here to buy tickets!!!

Become a member of  CBSAC/NY
Moderator: Dorian Benkoil

Panelists: Marshall Sponder, Jeremy Merrin EMBA ‘00, and Lawrence Sherman, FACME, CCMEP

Dorian Benkoil has over 20 years’ media experience and is currently SVP and Senior Consultant at Teeming Media (www.teemingmedia.com), a NY-based strategic digital media business and editorial consultancy.  He was previously Editorial Director for Mediabistro.com and has worked at ABCNews.com, Fairchild Publications and CNET.com.

Marshall Sponder is a Social Media and Analytics Consultant and Founder of www.webmetricsguru.com –a blog renowned in the industry. His major clients include award-winning agencies such as Porter Novelli and Converseon. He previously worked as a Senior Web Analyst for Insights Group at MONSTER Worldwide, Inc. as well as at IBM.com. He also co-leads the Meetup Group: NY Data Stories.

Jeremy Merrin, EMBA ’00 is the Founder & CEO of Havana Central (www.havanacentral.com). One of the locations of this Cuban restaurant chain was formerly known as the West End Gate, a landmark bar/restaurant and still a meeting place for many Columbia students. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur he was Executive VP of Business Development at iParty.com.

Lawrence Sherman, FACME, CCMEP, is a medical educational professional known worldwide for using new and unique approaches such as social media in medical education.  He works for Prova Education (www.provaeducation.com), an evidence-based continuing medical education organization for physicians and healthcare professionals.

Sponsored by the CBSAC/NY Social Media Committee and Sobel Media Events and Samsung with special thanks to Cecilia Pineda Feret ’92 and Bill Sobel.