Last Sunday I dropped by Fred Wilson’s meetup in Union Square (no surprise since his Union Square Ventures has major presence in the startup community here) – the venue was dark and the conversation was typical, but as I tried to introduce a friend – I threw in a wild card by asking Fred what the thought about the price of Gold and how it was invested- since he wrote about it the day before – and that had the desired effect (like throwing a cat in with a pack of dogs); I was able to introduce my friend as the fervor died down.

Anyway, Fred Wilson’s feeling was that Gold doesn’t really contribute to Social Good – it’s easy to redeem but doesn’t …. add value to society – here’s more from his post:

I’m not sold on gold. I don’t really know what I’d do with a bunch of gold. On the other hand, I do understand the need to have a portion of your net worth in tangible assets that you can touch, control, and physically own.

I prefer real assets like commercial real estate and land. These assets can be scarce, you can own them outright, you can touch and feel them, and most importantly you can generate income with them.

Let’s say you had $1 million of cash in the bank that you wanted to use as a hedge against a major financial disaster. You could purchase gold bullion and take delivery of it and put it in a safe at a bank. Or you could purchase a building with a number of apartments for rent with it. The gold will sit safely in the bank earning you nothing. A building purchased for $1mm could produce something like $100,000 per year in rental income if you buy it right.

If the financial disaster was really terrible, your building might go down in value, but as long as you own it outright and don’t have a mortgage on it, there is no reason that you’d have to sell it. You could continue to generate the $100k per year of income assuming rental rates hold up. And generally speaking, real estate will maintain its value over the long haul.

Read about as service called “Be the Mayor on FourSquare” that tells you how many more times you’d need to check in to be the mayor of any location you choose.

If you ever wondered how much you’d have to visit a place and check in to be mayor – you won’t have to any longer.

But then again, all this internet stuff might be dangerous for our brains – at least – some studies claim to show this such as the one cited in Is Social Media Dangerous for Your Brain? in Social Media Today earlier this week.

… If I strike a chord, here’s a newsflash for you: Multitasking — whether online or off — is a farce. Despite what every employer and job description thinks you are expected to do, multitasking won’t get you ahead. Defending your ability talk on the phone to a client while playing Tetris and instant messaging your friends is a promise waiting to be broken. Your brain is not wired to perform multiple tasks at the same time. It’s humanly impossible.

Reading this sentence while listening to music in the background is doable, but when you introduce your toddler’s crying in the background, your brain goes fuzzy.

French scientists Sylvain Charron and Etienne Koechlin discovered our brains are weaker than we think….

And that same study was cited at Read Write Web’s Real Time Web Summit on Friday – with just the opposite conclusion – that we need to embrace the changes in how information flows if we’re going to be able to function in the world that is forming in front of us now.
WordStream made  a smart move by allowing their keyword tools to be embedded into any site – Embed Keyword Research Tools on Your Website – I haven’t gotten to it yet but I think I’ll try embedding one of them here at Webmetricsguru.com.

In yet another post that appeared this week Chris Brogan mentioned the importance of Labs – and I very much believe he is right on the money here.  In fact, that is what I really want to do with Social Media – create a lab environment and try out new ideas with willing participants and see what works – and then build a framework out of that – instead of the way people are trying to do now.  In fact, I was told by John Lovett that I would cited in this webcast as I put in more work into analyzing Altimeter’s research than almost anyone – and in fact, I was cited in the beginning of the webcast as the one that posted about this subject the most.   I’ll have a seporate post about this webcast in a few days.

Social Marketing Analytics: A New Framework for Measuring Results in Social Media, by John Lovett and Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group on Vimeo.

However, much of what is does with Social Media Measurement doesn’t have a quantifiable value – and that is the point of the framework.  But the work I put forth in the case study on Havana Central over the last week does address working from the inside out, as Altimeter suggests we do – and provides actual ROI.

I also took a look at WebSEOAnalytics.com - a new site that tries to do SEO Analytics.

That’s enough for one post – enjoy the rest of Sunday – I’ll try.