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).
