Again, getting my manuscript fine tuned for McGraw Hill is taking much of the time I’d normally post here – hopefully within a few weeks I’ll be able to resume my normal blogging habits.   While preparing for the media blitz around Social Media Analytics book I used the mPACT platform to generate an influencer list using the category keywords below against

Specifics: (Metrics, Social Media Metrics, Visitor Tracking, Visitor Conversions and Social Media Dashboard).

Category social media, web analytics, search engines, content management, audence measurement, influencers, event correlation, Return on Investment, ROI, Social Monitoring, Social Listening, Brand Monitoring, Reputation Monitoring, workflow management, analytics insights)

Here’s the Influencer Map mPACT came back with, which changes daily – I just happened to show up on the list which is a happy circumstance – ha!:

I realize the chart might be covering parts of my sidebar but wanted my readers to be able to see the influencer list the say way I do.

Writing a book, and now getting the completed manuscript to the right size/focus has been taking up a lot of my blogging time, but feel the need to keep the blog up to date, especially the web journal part, and there are a lot of events, meetings and discussions I have not had a chance to post about, but if I had the time and energy, would have.

Last month Gawker ran a post on David Hockney’s IPAD paintings and asked if they were good or bad; I think they they look good enough though it is difficult to figure out what is “good” or “bad” when it comes to art, especially on the iPAD, since just about anything that anyone does, looks good.   Maybe the only thing I can say about Hockney’s IPAD images (being an artist myself) is they don’t appear to use platform in an innovative way.  One thing I’ve noted in many iPhone and iPAD art applications is the ability to animate artwork – you can “play it back“.   Just using iPAD as sketch pad, as appealing as that might seem to be, is boring and unimaginative use of the medium, but hey… it’s just my opinion.

Also noted a comment by about Mobile – Social (think  Larry Page is taking over the helm at Google) is what 2011 is going to be all about and a post about Pepsi “exec” being the top trend in 2011 – turns out Bonin Bough, who I have met several times in NYC (and who co-authored a book with Stephanie Agresta I contributed to - Perspectives on Social Media Marketing – I have a piece on pages 227-228 on how Social Media Measurement is different than Traditional Marketing) is going to be speaking at the On The Top Conference that I’m at in Davos next month.  Getting more excited about the conference, which I’ve been signed up to speak at since last Spring.

Pepsi digital and social media director Bonin Bough says location-based marketing services will see huge growth as consumers continue to increase mobile phone usage for reasons beyond just making calls.

I think we agree – it’s mobile in 2011 – whatever is invented this year, or becomes popular – is going to work on mobile devices – has to work on mobile devices – because that is where most people are now consuming content, and, more likely, interacting with each other – not at the desktop, and possibly, not much anywhere else (I’m going out on a limb with  the last few words), that implies fundamental shifts for marketing that have not fully been thought out, yet.

Over the vacation I found an application called Chirpstory.com that I finally got to play with now – it’s an application long overdue – allowing anyone to curate a selection tweets, putting them in the order they want – which is pretty important, but hardly anyone tries to do it since the process is so manual – Chirpstory does it for you – check it out.

By the way, if we can wait to 2015, the first holographic phone calls will be available on mobile devices according to an IBM Survey.

…..Around this time every year, IBM surveys 3,000 researchers to find out what they think is going to be big in the future. This year, everyone’s caught the FaceTime bug, and is looking forward to 3D hologram video calls.

“The video calls will be projected from cellphones using pico-projector technology, according to the survey”.

That’s not too hard to foresee as most of the technology exists in 2011 – I think 2015 is doable.

There was also a good post on the value of a Facebook Fan for B2B that echos a chapter of my book – which examines the subject in depth.   But you know what – the real  shock I got was from Dennis Yu of AllFacebook.com (BlitzLocal.com/WebTrends.com) that told me over the vacation (he planned to contribute a case study for the book, as well as some material on Facebook Analytics – though it never showed up – at least, not yet).  Dennis said, according to his backend data that a successful fan page for a business needs at least 3000 fans PER LOCATION, to be considered successful - that is an amazing number and draws on Dunbar numbers and Friends of Friends Social Graph calculations.    I’ll have a lot more to say in the book – and in teasers on SocialMediaAnalyticsBook.com later this spring.

Last month there was a very revealing post on how to Save Porter Novelli PR by David Henderson which predicts Porter Novelli will be the first of the big PR agencies to fail/fall.  Since I worked there last year, I feel I should not comment, but I will say this.  Whatever is going on at Porter Novelli is symptomatic of the larger issues of the validity of hiring PR agencies – which is up for question.     I think PR has lost it’s way (not that it ever had “a way”, at least as far as I can tell) and has grabbed on to Social Media to “save it” – and I deal with this in the book – but I’m still undecided if I want to fully publish all I’ve written in the manuscript.

First, I don’t personally believe Public Relations is the right place for Social Media Measurement – though I know we could split hairs here, and I did, recently with a friend who still works at Porter Novelli.    Why?   A PR company can not be relied on to report on the effect of it’s own messaging for a client since it has a vested interest in reporting the messaging worked.   Second, PR doesn’t know what to do with analysts like me or with analytics, at Porter Novelli, or for that matter, in just about any other PR agency in the World.   I can’t say there aren’t any agencies that know what to do with analysts, or how to invest in analytics, but I can say … if they exist, they probably are no more than the number of fingers I have on one hand.

I will leave the rest of this discussion for the book – wait till next August.

As I mentioned last month – Visual Revenue LLC launched last month and is doing great, my friend Dennis Mortensen, who was one of the founders of IndexTools (sold to Yahoo! in 2009 and became Yahoo!Analytics) and a few friends build a new business optimizing newspaper front pages and section pages for optimal running/placements of news stories.   I met with Dennis last night near Wall Street and spent over an hour seeing the new Visual Revenue platform – which already has 11 larger newspaper publishers that signed on.   I’m waiting on Dennis to send me some good screenshots before writing a full post on Visual Revenue – but I will say this – Well Done …. Dennis … Well done, indeed – Visual Revenue is an impressive platform that does something Web Analytics can not do – and it does it in a very innovative and interesting way …. stay tuned – you’ll want to read  my long post on Visual Revenue LLC when I write it in the next week or so.

Noted the health benefits of using mobile devices like the iPhone and iPAD and predict this will become part of the mobile trend for 2011-2012.  I think the devices need to do a bit more than just measure blood pressure, and they will, in the future – turn into mobile labs.

In addition, another mobile trend for 2011 is Analytics for Mobile Applications and Localytics is a new analytics platform that tracks mobile applications – was covered at Web Analytics Demystified.

The primary beneficiaries of this technology are the marketers who will be able to keep tabs on the use and utilization of their mobile apps. Not only can they watch what’s happening in real-time, but the segmentation and analysis capabilities (if wielded properly) can empower them to take action on this data. For example, marketers could test price sensitivity by watching app download activity when prices are adjusted – or – identify problematic areas of apps if users tend to drop off at specific areas. While, this technology may initially appeal to the app developer looking to understand their project adoption and utilization, a great deal of value is delivered to decision-making marketers.

Also, last week mPACT came out on 1/10/11 (or 1111 – wonder if that was deliberate) the new influencer platform which I got a hold of and wrote a few posts on.  Gary Lee, CEO of mBLAST did an interview for my book as well has helping by contributing information for my chapter on Influence.  I have gotten excellent results with mPACT – and I fully agree with Jason Falls on this. SocialTimes had a similar post on mPACT.  A few days later Jason Falls posted a great list of Influencer Identification tools which I think is required reading.

SearchMetrics, a platform that I’m familiar with and have tested out, just got a large round of additional funding, and a friend of mine works there.   What impressed with with SearchMetrics when I first saw it two years ago was how it could merge Search Metrics with Web Analytics – no one else was doing that – and I think that is still largely the case.   In a way, the argument can be made for merging all the platforms together with the differences in where the “seat” of power should lie.

Social Media —>Search —–> Web Analytics——-> Social CRM ——> House Data ——-whatever

It seems to me parts of the puzzle have been assembled, but not the whole pie.

Google Analytics/WebTrends/Site Catalyst   +  Radian6

Search Engine Rankings  and Indexing  + WebTrends/Google Analytics  =   Searchmetrics

Salesforce + Radian6/Sysomos

We can go on and on, but no one yet seems to have the full integration of everything and it seems like …. we should (have it).   Weather it sites in Salesforce/Oracle, or in Web Analytics or even is Social Media Analytics …. that is up to the fates to decide now … but we need the full integration of all the data sources and it seems like the majority of people I have talked to have agreed with my initial writings that the seat of intelligence should be in a Web Analytics platform.

By the way, there is a great Lithium +Vistaprint Case Study in my book that proves, once and for all, Social Media ROI and …. I believe the form the case study I have … is unique to the book – no one else to my knowledge has it.

And in other news, for those readers who follow Web Analytics - some big changes happened at Web Analytics Demystified including news what WAD will no longer cosponsor the XChange conference, still trying to wrap my head around that one and what it means.

On Wednesday we announced an exclusive partnership with tactical and technical consulting practice leaders Keystone Solutions. Keystone is a slightly better-kept secret than Adam Greco, although their current clients certainly know who they are. Founded years ago by former Omniture super-star Matthew Gellis, Keystone has grown into a talent magnet comprable to, well, Web Analytics Demystified.  Matt Wright from HP, Kurt Slater from Expedia, Rudi Schumpert from Ariba, and a host of other amazing analytics technicians.

Now, unfortunate as it is, we were not able to pursue this type of relationship with Keystone without some cost. The immediate fall-out is that Web Analytics Demystified will no longer be participating in the X Change conference. While this breaks my heart after having put three years of sweat equity into the event, relationships change and so it is time to move on..

Sounds like Adam Greco + Keystone are in ….. but the money to do that meant WAD could not support XChange any longer.    I look beyond that and see a tooling up as Eric grows his agency – it’s as if the new firms are growing up as older ones, like Forrester are …. well … I can’t say, dying, but are less and less attractive to work at/for when your speakers and consultants are more, let’s say …. creative.  The marketplace require that level of creativity.  Pity about XChange though …. I’ve been to the first two conferences in Napa Valley and San Francisco.

And speaking of Conferences - check out OurSocialTimes – I’ll be speaking at a few of the conferences in 2011.

And now a section on Google:

Google’s Prediction API - there was a post about Google charging for it at ReadWriteWeb - but most people aren’t aware Google has a Prediction API and I wonder if it is in any way related to The Recorded Future, a platform that Google has a financial stake in and which I have played with, tested and written about in the past.

The Prediction API gives developers access to Google’s own machine learning algorithms to analyze data and predict outcomes. I’m experiencing a bit of Deja Vu citing Pete Warden in our earlier articleabout BigQuery and Prediction API for the second time today:

About two weeks ago, foretelling the events of the last few days people have been questioning if Google has lost it’s way .  With Larry Page taking the helm the rumors have been confirmed – but at least Google is taking action on it – and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next year or so at Mountain View Headquarters.

Google used to be the best search engine (10 years ago) and we all use it as a habit - but a recent test between Google and Bing shows that, all and all, Bing provides better results than Google for most searches – not that it matters that much anymore, since Google is a habit, and synonymous with Search – but if you care about quality – Google might no longer be where it’s at.   And Google certainly has it’s work cut out if it wants to to get the other 99% of search that says it doesn’t have nailed down yet.  In fact, in my book I made a guess the real reason Google is buying ITA Software is not for the travel business as much as it is for the patent on Needle and Needlebase (you’ll read all about it in August – but I will say this – the acquisition of  ITA software is now being investigated by the Justice Department – so we don’t yet know if Google will actually own ITA software anytime soon, or not).

Well …. my manuscript is finally done (at least, in draft form) and submitted to the publisher, McGraw Hill. Whew! Exhausted. But now I can post about mPACT from mBLAST, the new influencer mapping platform that launched last week and I am very impressed, and that is not easy for me – It takes a lot to impress me.

I did a long query with 5 movies including Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Iron Man, Thor and The Avengers movie, all with Marvel or DC Studios, etc. For the most part the influencers I got were plausible and and you can break down the influence map for each Influencer. I also spoke with mBLAST founder Gary Lee last week who supplied an interview for my Social Media Analytics Book and material for a chapter on Influence.

Impressed that I could go back for up to a year, and export all the data into Excel, if I wanted (and I did, here’s the links in Excel and PDF – all article volumes – curious – though I asked for a year, I got about 2 months worth of actual articles, my guess is after 4000 rows, records, that might be the max size of a file, but I don’t know if that is true or not.

THOR – Green Latern – Green Hornet – Iron Man – Avengers 1yr Volume – ArticleVolume – Excel File

ArticleVolume-PDF file

The mPACT package does an exceptional job of linking people to urls, but having said that, it could certainly use some more data on the people, and a platform such as PeekYou fill in some of the gaps; still, it’s impressive they are able to go this far in resolving influence and article attribution back to a person and tell you what they are influential for (in this case, one or more of the 5 Super Hero movies).

In very narrow, niche queries, they have had more information on the influencers (who are all ranked) – but in a topic of this size, I’m greatfull for what they have been able to collect.

You can display an influencer list for each movie, or all of them at one time – FANTASTIC! Here’s a list of the top 25 Influencers for The Thor Movie.

Klout can’t touch this – influence that is topical and subject related.

You can look at the Social Media Mentions by Movie – in this case it is all Twitter and Facebook

While you can click on the Twitter Social Media mentions the Facebook one’s don’t resolve to usable urls, but, you still have the name of the individual in the article url and the mentions can be exported into Excel or PDF files.

The Opportunities section is the only area that has a bug – it seems to show me the same information as the original tab I created for a previous report – I think it’s a bug mPACT is working on fixing – otherwise, the Opportunities would show me changes to engage with influencers from upcoming meetings taking place all over the world.

I think it’s possible to take the output of mPACT and segment it any way one wants – perhaps beyond what mPACT or mBLAST can do, for itself, right now (such as, by country, or by media channel) but that’s the point – it’s the most advanced influencer platform on the planet, and believe it or not, one of the most affordable and easiest to work with.

Finally, I noticed a much stronger presence for Green Hornet than the other superhero movies which I took to mean whatever is prominent at the moment (for example the Green Hornet movie came out over the weekend gets favored).

There’s the actual Boolean Query mPACT shows the user … I pasted the same query into Sysomos MAP and got pretty good results – Sysomos processed the long Boolean query without a problem … And did the same thing, favoring The Green Hornet by a ratio of 5:1. I think I know why. Actually, it’s similar to how people look at strong sunlight and see the aftereffects as ghost images for a few minutes. My guess is monitoring algorithms gift much more weight to whatever is trending upwards right now. If I ran the same query in May, when the THOR movie comes out ……Thor will dominate 5:1 over Green Hornet and the rest, for the most part.

But, then again, what we’re seeing with Green Hornet and mPACT is effects of promotion, getting the message out ….. I guess my analogy to gazing into a strong headlight is not far off from the way it is, after all.