I can imagine a number of ways mapping a video ad within another, unrelated video, might be used - but till recently, perhaps now, that option wasn’t available on the low end (price scale), and now, it appears to be.

What this video which I found out about from Lies, Dammed Lies, tonight.

It’s getting harder and harder to figure out what is “real” - that quality of graphics and animation in Stanford movie is pretty darn good.   Looking forward to playing with this platform, someday soon.

I was cited in Johnathan Dingman’s blog on a debate on which was the better buy? YouTube or Flickr?

All I did was supply Jonathan with the Comscore data - you can read about it at http://tinyurl.com/YouTube-flickr

Image via Wikipedia

I was thinking about my own issues about a Board I’m currently on and this post by K.D. Paine on The value of transparency.

Besides K.D. Paine’s story of her friend Nick Ashooh, I’ve read about the Yahoo! Board of Directors care of Carl Icahn, who is on Yahoo!’s Board, and the Board Politics are all too familiar.   Though I haven’t been on but one Board in my entire life - I must say,  is there any instance where a Board, any Board, embraced transparency?  Lip service, yes, transparency, no.

I expressed my own feelings in my post on Difficult days for Social Media a few days ago, which was also picked up by Social Media Today, as I hope this one is, as well.

I know in Business, and life, in general, your expected to be putting your best foot forward - that is the conventional wisdom - on an interview, for example, you present the “best you” even as the interviewer tries to find out what your not saying - kicking the tires, as need be.

In Business, due to all kinds of legal stuff and the need to raise money - the image that’s presented to the world is often not what’s really going on behind the scenes - and, we might not really want to know all the gorey details, anyway.

However, Boards have a more fundamental issue because the fragmentation of responsibilities magnifies inefficiencies and reinforces a need to be nontransparent.  And then, there are even cases of Boards that are renegade, that nay sometimes act against the interests of the organizations they manage, and that certainly seems the to be the case with Yahoo!.  Now that Jerry Yang is stepping down, - see Yang: ‘Time is right’ for new leader on CNET let’s hope their Board get’s it right, ongoing.

In fact, according to the Guardian - Microsoft-Yahoo could be back on cards now that Yang has stepped down.

But getting back to this idea of Transparency, and why Boards don’t seem to be able to be transparent, even when they try to be - it gets even worse when your talking about Non-Profits.

Actually, I’d be interested to know how K.D. Paine measures the “Trust” level of Corporations and the Boards that help run them, as well as the non-profits; here’s what she says about the AIG Board and how they got it wrong:

“…In reality, companies ultimately have no choice but to be more transparent if they have a prayer of restoring the public’s trust in their institutions. It’s not just that AIG was idiotic in trying to cover up its role in the conference, its that in doing so, AIG further compromised whatever trust the public, and its elected officials, may have had in the organization.
I haven’t done a formal measurement of their trust level, but I’m guessing from the comments I’m reading that its dropped even faster than AIG’s stock price. So my question is: When will the C-suite wake up and realize that people will only regain trust in these institutions if they are utterly open and transparent. (I know, only when they fire all the lawyers) But seriously, do the math. The cost in reputation, failed relationships, lower trust, and now, government support, far outweighs whatever perceived cost that transparency may entail.”

I think it takes courage and leadership to be transparent - it may be both are lacking on many Boards; but more often I think Board Directors are trying to do the right thing and they just don’t know how, or can’t - they’re too worried about losing control.

Fast Forward to my last post on YouTube Video Search gradually replacing Textual Search? and add the rapid growth of user generated content, especially video and audio content, on just about any subject, much of it interesting, and we come to the death of privacy - there is no room for opaqueness in life ,or the Board Room - but the Board Room hasn’t realized it yet; because transparency means sharing control, and Boards don’t like sharing control, I’ve observed.

Today, people automatically equate non-transparency with having something to hide.  If you have nothing to hide, then you can afford to be transparent.  In the past, before Social Media, hiding stuff was pretty common, the Government did it, Business did it, people did it - but now …… it’s different - times have changed.

I do think we need to be our own “curators” much as Brands need to be curated - but that’s more a function of moderation, not hiding things.

In fact, the new Branding does involve having Brand Managers act as curators and that has come up many times over the last two years at the conferences I’ve attended since YouTube, Facebook and MySpace have become some commonly used.  I would say the same thing holds true in the Board Room  - instead of trying to hide the dealings, we ought to act more like curators - making sure the information appears in the best context, but not hold back - to the extent that’s possible.

One more factor was brought up by K.D. Paine, who I’ve met several times, and that is Speed - Speed of the transmission of information - it’s so fast that transparancy within 24 hours or less, when a major issue comes up is a necessity - and that’s something almost no Board can handle - they simple can’t respond quickly enough.

Corporate has Public Relations people for that function - but Non-Profits probably don’t respond quick enough, and the Board of a Non-Profit might be clueless for weeks - though usually, there is a silver lining - a Non-Profit probably is not engaged in anything scandalous - but then again. .. you never know.

At any rate, what all this tells me is that we need to think differently about what we do - what is actually required of us might not be the same things we think are required - but that’s for another post.

I read Is YouTube the Next Google? in Read/WriteWeb tonight (the title is somewhat misleading as YouTube is owned by Google so it’s not really the next Google, it is Google - but YouTube’s search is much different than Google’s textual search) and the post reminded me that, at times, I searched YouTube and was surprised how many of my typical search queries had user generated videos that existed and were tagged for that phrase or a related phase.

Earlier this year I had a client that ran an OCD clinic in London and wanted to create videos for Google Video Ads, and found several OCD videos in YouTube.   It worked for travel too - even in some details of places - perhaps even unfamilar hotels in a foriegn city that I might book a room in (if such were available); but it never went beyound that.

However, it appears that younger searches are using video search via services like YouTube almost as a replacement for Textual Search that Google normally provides.

True, Google has put Universal Search in place that includes videos and images into the mix, but at the end of the day what might emerge is textual search will eventually be replaced by visual and voice search (the new Google iPhone Voice Search was just released today in the iTunes store - though I can’t seem to find it yet and download it).

According to Read/WriteWeb

“….. he mentioned that his son accesses the web through YouTube. At first, I didn’t get it and thought Ian was making a joke. But then I realized he was not. Whenever his son needed any information, he would open up YouTube, type in the search term and then just watch the videos that showed up as matches. He never Googled anything; he never went to any other site; his entire web experience was confined to YouTube videos. It was rather puzzling.”

Since I have access to Comscore Media Metrix, I figured, if it’s really true that younger people are replacing textual search with video search, then the demographics profile of YouTube.com of October  07 compared to October 08 ought to show some marked differences - and they did!

October 2007  YouTube.com Demographics

Then I did the same thing for YouTube Demographics October 2008

Usage of YouTube by pre-adolescents 9-14 jumped by roughly 500% over that last year - kids between 2 and 11 years jumped up even more!

Now, you have to wonder - are kids of 2 years old using YouTube? I don’t know, but, somehow, ComScore thinks they are.   Hey, maybe we should call them “eKids” or “eToddlers”, and they probably aren’t as likely to use textual search as video search, or image search.

Also, notice the % Reach has gone up quite a bit, as well.  For example, % Reach is calculated as the the # of Unique Vistors (000) / Total Internet Audience for a Category - Comscore takes care of the Categorization and maintaining all of that is part of the hefty pricetag.

But ……. if YouTube is getting more youngsters searching on it - shouldn’t Google Textual Search get less, or at least, grow less fast, relative to Youtube?

Google Search Demographics - Comscore - October 2007

Again, I ran the same report for October 2008 and ….

And sure enough, there’s not nearly as much growth - for kids 9-14 there were 8,019,000 Uniques in October 2007 and 11,707,000 in 2008, an increase of 45% vs. the 497% growth of the use of YouTube for  the same age group.

Now, I didn’t look if there was differences in usage based on gender, but I’ve seen enough to be convinced that younger people, the future - is in video search and not so much textual search.

If that’s true, it has profound implications, as Search continues to evolve.

Further on in the Read/Write Web post Is YouTube the Next Google?

” … Ian said that his son frequently searches for episodes of Bakugan, which come up perfectly. Another likely search for a 9-year-old, Lance Wataru (a Pokemon character), works well, too. More specific searches, such as Donkey from Shrek, work even better.”

All I can say is ha, ha, ha …  so as more content is generated and placed online, search results for Video will get richer and richer and that can only mean textual searches days are numbered (but we don’t know the number yet).

In the RWW post it’s mentioned the main reason for textual search is hyperlinks work better - but that’s gradually being replaced by hyperlinking images

“…The main reason that text rules the web today is because of hyperlinks. Linking pages via text links is what makes the web possible. Hyperlinking videos would be a harder thing to do. Not impossible, of course, because you can link objects and insert text in videos, but it’s just not as elegant as text. Besides the linking issue, not everything would be an effective video. For example, a research paper could be made into a video but would not be as easy to follow as the text.

I agree, not everything is meant to be turned into video or audio content - and honestly, I bet if we took brain scans of searches using textual vs. voice search (ie: Google’s new iPhone Search applicaton with Audio Search) we’d find different centers of the brain being used in a textual search vs. an audio search - and we might as well extend that to video and image search as well.

And if we do that - we’ll see the queries themselves will differ in subtle ways, between what we’d write and what we’d say, when entering the same query to a Search Engine.

Is it far fetched to say the newer generation is evolving past textual search …. ?  I don’t think it’s that much of a strech.

I’ve been hearing about the Social Media Storm Spreads as Motrin Ad Angers Moms, that Social Media Campaigns for well established Brands, like Motrin, should always  be run by someone who knows the Brand very well AND knows  how  Social Media functions, well - and, evidently, that didn’t happen, as referenced by B.L. Ochman.

This Motrin ad about moms who wear their babies in a variety of slings has set off a fire-storm on Twitter, where #motrinmoms quickly became the topic of thousands of angry tweets, and in blogs from mothers and lots of others, like me, who find the ad condescending. A Facebook group of moms who find the ad offensive quickly followed.

Clearly, nobody at Motrin, or its agency, was paying attention today, Sunday. And by Monday, you can bet that you’ll hear about this on the evening news and in dead tree media. Sure, Motrin will respond, or take the ad down, withdraw it from its rotation, etc. But the damage to the brand, among the very large and vocal niche they were targeting, is done.

Lesson to Motrin: any company that wants to participate in social media and use the tools better know how to walk the walk.

Sounds like the Social Media Ad that got lots of Mom’s in pain protest was just another Ad Agency “manufactured” Social Media plug, that didn’t work - people see right though that kind of stuff now.

“…I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: an ad agency the last place a company should go when it wants to use the tools of social media. Before you venture into social media, hire creative talent that has already created successful social media marketing campaigns for major brands. Everyone and her dog says they’re a social media guru. That’s just not true. Don’t believe the hype. Look at the track record instead.”

But this goes back to another idea that I wrote about today, but in an entirely different context, at The Analytics Guru - about Detroit’s Dilemma and lack of support from Republicans due to their relience on, what I called, the Reptilian Brain - I wrote about the Reptilan Brain a while back in Power of Pervasive Subliminal Advertising.

Why does Social Media require transparency?  Think…..   In order to process peer to peer community information, genuine feelings, there require more complex brain functions that can’t be faked - where as primitive, two dimensional thinking can be faked and gamed -and often has been.

Just going and hiring an Ad Agency to do your Social Media for your is a mistake - they’re just hired contractors, doesn’t matter if they’re experienced by virture of creating other campaigns - they aren’t you - they can’t be genuine because the agency is just a hired contractor - perhaps a partner, but still, not you.

In order to be genuine, and to be worthy of trust, you have to real, open and transparent, and that’s something you almost will never get by just going out and hiring an agency.

By the way, the Reptilian Brain, is both the problem and solution to a lot of different things we’re facing - and I brought it in to this context because Motrin, took a passive role, it appears, by just hiring an agency to do their work for them instead of making it something more grass roots.

Honestly, with all the people that legitimately use Motrin and find it works, including Moms, you’d think they could have gone out and found real grassroots support for a Social Media Campaign.

By the way, I haven’t even talked about the measurement of this Motrin campaign - which would have been a whole different post.

Just a thought on this Sunday, at dusk.

I was at Gary Vaynerchuk’s Park Avenue Motivational Discussion tonight and took my own footage (I also appear in several frames in the video, below) which is being updated to YouTube right now - along with some additional video I hope you’ll enjoy - but for now, here’s CenterNetwork’s footage.

I think I’ll be ready to post my movies of this event on Thursday, at some point.

You know what, Jeremiah Owyang put together these stats on Social Media and the 2008 Presidential Election in Snapshot of Presidential Candidate Social Networking Stats: Nov 3, 2008

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Internet Usage in United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)

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Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

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MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

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YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

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Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

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Community Platforms/Branded Social Networks
MyBarackObama: I was unable to find total number of registered members (anyone have data?)
McCain Space: I was unable to find total number of registered members (anyone have data?)

I mean, overall, Obama had 4 times more presense in Social Media than John McCain. 

And, with Search Engines (ie: Google Insights for Search) it’s about 3:1 in Obama’s favor.

But don’t forget to vote Tuesday; I am certainly looking forward to it.

By the way, there was an article in the New York Times today about Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World

It seems to me Social Media and Web 2.0 are becoming more vital, perhaps even the centerpiece of campaigns, going forward:

“…..drawing on Mr. Obama’s background as a community organizer, his campaign decided early on to build a social network that would flank, and in some cases outflank, traditional news media.“

“.. Many of the media outlets influencing the 2008 election simply were not around in 2004. YouTube did not exist, and Facebook barely reached beyond the Ivy League. There was no Huffington Post to encourage citizen reporters, so Mr. Obama’s comment about voters clinging to guns or religion may have passed unnoticed. These sites and countless others have redefined how many Americans get their political news.

When viewers settle in Tuesday night to watch the election returns, they will also check text messages for alerts, browse the Web for exit poll results and watch videos distributed by the campaigns. And many folks will let go of the mouse only to pick up the remote and sample an array of cable channels with election coverage — from Comedy Central to BBC America.”

Could it be, that besides having more to day than McCain, Obama had a lot more avenues to say it?

I’m covering yet another session on Social Media Metrics by Jason Burby and Ryan Turner, both of ZAAZ.

Social Media Metrics

Jason Burby, ZAAZ
Ryan Turner, ZAAZ

I captured the tail end of Jason’s session.

Monitoring response and creating policies to respond. Plugging in ratings and reviews, intergrated social tools and internal communications.

How to handle authentication and user identities. Targeting popularity engines with your content.

Jason cited the case of a Sony camera with a review on CNET, and the feedback is mixed, you can respond in a fair way.

ZAAZ Web Analytics and ZAAZ Social Media approach are the same, defining what success is.

To be honest, so far, I am not hearing anything different on this talk then what I already know.

But here’s what I make at of this perception - Social Media Marketing is essentially web analytics, but with different inputs and outputs.

ZAAZ has a Social Media Conversion Calculator which is available on it’s site
-not a big deal, but you can fill in your own actions and related prices.

Both brand perception and shopping have always had a social context. Three years ago we accessed the opinions of 5 friends in the consideration process, today we can access the opinions of 5 million fellow customers. Measurement on the social web presents analysts with new challenges: How do you measure word of mouth? Can you model the relationships between online research and offline purchase? What is the value of a comment on a blog post? A connection in a social network? A question in a support forum? A tag on YouTube? How does engagement affect lifetime customer value? Jason Burby and Ryan Turner of ZAAZ will present some insights from their experiences grappling with these issues, and they’ll put forward some ideas about where businesses need to focus as the social web grows in importance over the coming years.

I think that’s where Michelle  Wolverton is going at SmartMobs when she posted on Using Twitter to Solve Problems on Election Day, where Twitter is envisioned as being leveraged to monitor the election and deploy resources in needed areas in real time.

I’m wondering what Obama campaign’s plans are, given the history of contentous elections, in leveraging the large grassroots support to monitor the election for such “irregularities” as can be expected.

One of the obvious reasons to expect irregularities, is that in the Federal and State, the opposition partly is largely still in control - and they don’t want to leave.  Forget about what’s better for the country or not, that’s always debatable and most of the country will never be on the same page about that - but we can play fair, except, some people don’t play fair, they play to win, sometimes, at any cost.

It sound like Obama’s campaign has taken all the neccessary steps, and he’s surrounded by really smart people who he shows the ability to listen to.  Certainly, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama today -see Powell Backs Obama and Criticizes McCain Tactics in the New York Times- is yet another step in “inoculating” Obama and his campaign in case a “national security” incident, all of a sudden, arises in the next two weeks, one that would play to John McCain’s strengths - I hope that doesn’t happen, but it’s naive, given the track record of the last 8 years, not to plan for it, especially if it’s the only card left to play.

It’s one thing, too, to broadly come out against unfair tactics, in a campaign, or party, and another to enforce it - especially at the local level.  In 2004 there was clearly a lot of fowl play that was difficult to pin down and react to till it was too late - and that’s where Twitter, YouTube and RSS Feeds can nutrualize a lot of the potential damage.

But another reason for mobalize grassroots support to document the election is the case where something goes wrong, massively wrong - and it ends up in the Supreme Court or Congress to solve.

Last time something like that happened, in 2000, and to some extent, in 2004, documentation, as I recall, of voting irregularities, were, no doubt, hard to pin down.

This can be very important if things do go south at the last minute - because with this much grass roots support and documentation, on the internet, on Election Day, the kind of antics pulled off in the last two elections, will be largely nullified - not entirely, but largely neutralized - and it’s important to take any step, ahead of time, know that the party in power, does not want to leave.   It’s hard to play the same card, over and over, and always win, at some point, it stops being effective - I think that’s what is happening in this election.

And look, there’s a lot of reasons for the ruling party not to want to leave - let’s not make it easier for them.

Ok, this is much better than Lively, it’s a new platform allowing you to create 3D Movies.  I found out at XtraNormal from TechCrunch - Build Your Own 3D Movie Clips In A Flash With Xtranormal.

Here’s the URL http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20081016182908570  though the program is very slow and the background didn’t render - I think there’s a lot of promise here for all kinds of things you can do with it - though the program is a bit sluggish.

Imagine when a 100 times more traffic hits XtraNormal’s servers - I don’t think it will take long for that to happen!