Updates:

Just published an article on True Political Supporters vs. The Bots at AllAnalytics.com, timely given the recent campaign results from South Carolina; however, I’m not of the opinion the results, this time, are particularly meaningful.  As the article I wrote puts forward, Social Analytics today, offers much more traction on what can be tracked and tabulated for a political election in 2012, than in 2008 or, even in 2010.   There are several things that I think ought to be tried, that aren’t being – and I’ll have more to say about that in my Venuelabs Webinar on 1/31/12 at 2PM EST – Sign up here.  Keep in mind the same technologies for Retail could also be used for polling at list collection, cross tabulation (ie: by districts).

There was also an excellent article in the Social Media Analytics Expert Interview Series on various sites including Business 2 Community and I was featured as part of a build up for the first Social Media Analytics Summit in mid April, taking place in San Francisco, which I’ll be speaking at.

Web Journal

In Building the Right Digital Measurement Infrastructure: The Celebrus White Paper Gary Angel points out that Real Time Data Warehouses might be crippled in their functionality if they rely, as most currently do, on Web Analytics data feeds from most Web Analytics platforms, as they currently exist, today.    According to Gary….

• “…The vast majority of digital data warehouses that Semphonic worked with last year were sourced via a data-feed from a Web analytics solution. “
• “…Traditional tag-based Web analytics tools were often sold on the premise that real-time data collection and reporting was a significant and important advantage. In general, that’s simply not true. Very few business decisions and very few analytic tasks can or should be tackled in real-time. ” “…. So the 24 hour delay inherent in sourcing your data warehouse from a Web analytics data feed should be no big deal, right?“
• “… sourcing your data warehouse from a Web analytics solutions will effectively preclude you from advanced personalization and re-marketing.”

The problem is with the real time data necessary to make a decision.  Gary also brings up another point in the post with Tag Management and Governance, which is vital for Web Analytics and Social Media Analytics – but… points out the ability of tag and measure data has to come in advance of going out and collecting it – and in most cases, that’s not happening.  So the upshot, is that nothing really solves the problem of having a business that is not invested in measurement and governance of it’s own data.

That’s about it for this post – heading to London right now and will post as I can.

I was interviewed last week on the Literally Social Show by  Lori Randall Stradtman – wish I could embed the podcast here – but you’ll need to go to the site.

If there’s one thing I have to own up to – it’s the need to have a better, noise canceling headset – and the need to do these interviews in a quieter place.    I think, given the frequency these interviews take place and the frequent noise problems on way too many of the webcasts – I’m more aware that cheap equipment tends to pick up the background noise and magnify it.

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However, if you can get past that – and the sound is bearable and even decent in many parts, this is one of the best interviews I’ve given, to date.

A massive amount of brain work has hit me – so much – that I have all I can do to compete it – and that is why I haven’t posted here as much as I’d like.  I noticed certain processes, gathering information, working with clients, working on decks for presentations, and so on is so draining, intensive and restricted, there’s often not enough energy left, to share what’s left (the parts, that is, that can be shared).  The Rutgers course on Social Media and The Arts has begun, and as of today we have 81 students in it, and that’s taken up a bit of time, both preparing for the course, and now, attending to students’ questions as they begin the course.

Let’s talk about  Webinars past and future.

• Feedback from last week’s Semphonic Webinar is on SemAngel, Gary Angel’s blog, right now – Social Media Measurement Tools - and there will be another webinar in mid February.  We’re on a roll now and we had 127 attendees (true, over 2000 people clicked on the link to sign for the webinar), but  we did very well considering that our focus was on tools and platforms, and not the regular social media strategy and “how to” webinar stuff everyone else seems to focus on.
• Venuelabs and I are doing a joint webinar on January 31st, at 2PM EST – here’s the link to sign up for the webinar.  There’s also a Venuelabs blog post on the Webinar - here.
• Recorded Future and I am doing another webinar on February 2nd, 2012 – no link for it, yet.

Events -

• I will be at the launch of Unified Social on Thursday evening in NYC. Unified has an interesting platform that I’ll be working with closely (here’s a video of what it does).

•  There’s also still time to sign up for the London course next week on 1/26 at Innovation Factory near Farrington Station and MyCustomer.com is promoting it as well.
• A Synthesio sponsored Book Signing for Social Media Analytics is taking place at the Hospital Club on 1/25 in the afternoon – it’s a private book signing, meaning I can’t invite the world (as much as I’d like to do just that).  Synthesio put out an excellent little book, themselves, on Social Media, which can be downloaded from this page and I‘ll be visiting Synthesio’s London digs next Tuesday for lunch, and to firm up details (Synthesio’s London office looks fantastic, in fact) – wow!

Blog Posts / Interviews

• Robert Lavigne (lifeat42.com) released a review of Chapter 5 of Social Media Analytics and a review of Chapter 6 is coming out any day, I love Roberts note – “…You see, Numbers LIE!  Yes you read that right, NUMBERS LIE!” – being that Analytics is all about “numbers”, that’s telling – ha!
• Text Analytics News has an interview I provided, as a lead in for April’s Social Media Analytics Summit in San Francisco, that I’m speaking at.
• I was interviewed by Lori Randall Stradtman last week and the interview will appear today, most likely at her Podcast site, or at another location she controls – I will probably post about the Podcast, once it appears.
• There were two articles I wrote for AllAnalytics.com that appeared recently – one on Klout, and the other on Generate Your Insight, appeared a few days ago.

Readings – thoughts about:

A lot of attention on Google last week – as the general consensus was that Google had given up of Search and was pushing a lot of their traffic to Google Plus.  Dachis Group released the Social Business Index - looking at a specific business such as Vodafone UK brings up and interesting diagram, but it doesn’t tell me much (unless I sign in, gulp!). Right now, not sure how I’d evaluate a platform like this, and I’d have to see a whole lot more, before deciding I’d like it or not.

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SOPA, SOPA SOPA is in the news quite a lot and there are tons of stories on it.

And then there is the quest for the perfect Data Scientist – whilst no one has defined quite well, what background, exactly, you need to be considered a bank scientist - but here’s an infographic.   Then Dan Zarella is at it again, posting on Twitter and Analytics.

Thoughts:

Been talking with Branding experts and Brand Representatives, and the feeling is – you can’t work closely or quickly enough for big brands where they are easy to sell or pitch anything to them  – I will have more about this later.

Think that is about it for now.