Been THAT busy  – but didn’t want to forget to share the information I found most interesting lately.

• Well, Klout still thinks I’m #1 for Social Media Measurement (though my Klout scores are way down those around me) but I was actually meaning to write about the news earlier this month that Klout bought BlockBoard. It’s an interesting play and, while people dismiss Klout (including me) I think buying BlockBoard shows some vision, to stand apart.

• I noticed recently that Gary Lee, the former CEO, left mBlast/mPACT for another opportunity, which makes me wonder what the direction is going to be for this Influence Platform.   I spoke to Gary a few months ago, and he suggested that it’s really hard to differentiate all the influence platforms.  My own take is that people aren’t buying into influence lists in a big enough way.   Then again, what is influence, anyway?  I get a lot of good information out of mPACT, but I notice that is doesn’t help me with hyper-local listings – at all – and interestingly enough – isn’t that what Klout is addressing by buying BlockBoard?

• Then again, a post on 5 types of Influencers was published that speaks directly to how Klout does it.  Now if they can get this down to a local level, they might have something.

I was always confused on why I kept  changing category in Klout from Pundit to Specialist, and then back again. Lately, it kept staying on Specialist – but I am rightfully puzzled on how my classification changes as often as it had, nor did I understand what the classifications mean – but now, the chart above, appears to explain it.  But it brings up as many questions as answers.

Say you buy Radian6 Insights and get Klout Classifications (you buy the Klout Insight), and you keep changing what your classification is … one week your a broadcaster, next week Klout says your a Pundit – and then you looking at the data in Radian6, what it going to show you?

Stuff like that keeps me up at night … doesn’t anyone think about the implications of what they are putting out with these tools? - how can one use them, seriously, when it’s so “wishy washy”.  I mean, I like the integration idea, just not sure it’s worth doing if you can’t be sure of it’s accuracy.

• Happy to hear that Huffington Post launched a social sharing Facebook App – the news comes from none other than friend Elena Haliczer, who was my co-chair at the WAA Social Media Committee, and now runs the technology behind the HuffPo News Room via the Adaptive Semantics acquisition.  One should always keep an eye on what HuffPo is doing, I know something of it, though would love an update (hint, hint).

• TechCrunch wrote about BuiltWith - an interesting platform to reverse engineer technology stacks on websites.  I used it before, but not too many people knew about it, and honestly, the platform would be a lot more useful if it made custom reports on industry segments that were also affordable.  Last I looked at their pricing, it was out of reach, making me wonder how much could the sell of it.

•  Social Media Week came and went – I went to a few sessions last Tuesday and Friday, but missed this one – yet I could watch the whole thing on LiveStream and it was excellent - it’s about Global Listening, and what it takes to do it well.

• As Usual, Avinash Kaushik writes post that rock (Avinash also wrote the forward to my book, Social Media Analytics).  I can’t help by copy and past the image below, it’s great and it goes with my material from London (www.monitoring-bootcamp.com) and the course that is just about to be announced in Singapore, on March 15th, 2012.  More soon.

Getting back to Avinash, who works at Google, – I wonder if, next time I see him, he’ll be wearing the Google Goggles that are coming out this year- I can see it now! – Geek Chic: Augmented Reality Google Glasses To Go On Sale This Year

• A post on A Marketer’s Guide to Picking the Perfect Analytics Tool should lead into the Social Media Measurement Tools Webinar that is taking place today with Semphonic, that I wrote about earlier.

• I think a post on Do students need to learn lower-level factual and procedural knowledge before they can do higher-order thinking?  is interesting, in that it outlines a misconception about “lower level knowledge” and “higher level knowledge”.  Seems the key is “context” (same as in Social Media – ha!), students need to understand why they are learning, according to this statement:

 …. schools like those in the New Tech, Big Picture Learning, Envision,Expeditionary Learning, Independent Curriculum Group, High Tech High, and EdVisions networks. These schools do a much better job than most traditional schools of emphasizing ‘higher-level’ thinking work for students while simultaneously ensuring that ‘kids know stuff.’ In fact, we’re finding that students in these schools typically are more successful and care more about what they’re learning because whatever facts and procedures they need to know are embedded within the context of doing more relevant, meaningful, and authentic work.

I was at AlwaysOn #OnMedia conference Tuesday and Wednesday this week, but I noted that another conference was going on, nearby, I would have liked to attend, OMNA Metrics and Measurement.  In general, at AlwaysOn, I heard a lot of platforms saying that had the perfect solution, for whatever, but I didn’t really believe most of it.

In particular, the idea of “Dynamic Audience” targeting, was over hyped.  Just think, if I throw a ball at a table where some people are sitting (at the AlwaysOn Conf) and 5 people jump to catch the ball, I suppose I could suddenly target them all, say they are a “dynamic segment” and then follow them, get their information, etc.  Is that any better than any other kind of targeting anyone has been doing?  Probably not.

Nuff said, it’s going to be a long day upcoming, the Semphonic Webinar and my class at Rutgers that I teach will give me enough suspense today – going to bed now.