I met Steve Rubel the other day at AlwaysON - well, just for 10 seconds, a handshake really.   However, I find Steve's blog - Micro Persuasion, one of the very best blogs to read, perhaps I've gotten more "trendy" stuff from his blog than any other.

Well, now Steve Rubel hit on something that I've been thinking about for several months - with all the hype about Second Life lately - when will the jobs for Second Life appear?   My guess - within the next 6 months. 

Here's some excerpts from Steve Rubel's post on Web 2.0 Indicators: Tracking Buzz, News and Jobs (I won't indent because there's some great charts I don't want to truncate)

First, I never used Indeed.com this way (now I need to take a closer look at Indeed).   According to Steve:

"….So what's all mean? Well, the evidence is anecdotal but it appears as though blogs and podcasts, which skyrocketed to prominence in 2004 and 2005, are now mature. They are largely flat when it comes to hype but they are generating more jobs. So with Second Life hype climbing, will it start generating jobs? Stay tuned, "

Certainly, based on the attendance at AlwaysON NYC  -there were room for about 30 bloggers (I being one of them) - a whole section of the room was left open for us.

Plus, many bloggers were at Davos - including Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine - who I briefly spoke to.  It turned out Bloggers had more access to the events going on at Davos than Main Stream Media!   Here's what Jeff Jarvis wrote of his access rights at Davos:

"…..

Ben Hammersley of the Guardian — one of my roomies in the crowded lodgings of Davos — notes with a tinge of complaint that bloggers got better access than big media at Davos:

Still, all of this meant that the World Economic Forum gave some bloggers - Jeff Jarvis, Loic Le Meur, for example - greater access rights than the regular media. Bloggers with HD camcorders could wander anywhere in the building, while professional crews were restricted to the hallways and 30-minute bursts. Openness, it seems, is only for the amateur.

 

Well, ain’t that ironic?….."

So Bloggers are now considered a "privileged class"!  Whew!  

At least I did something right once in my life by starting these blogs (Webmetricsguru.com, Artnewyorkcity.com; I also contribute to Smartmobs.com and Biggreenblog.com).

But now I see the next horizon …… is it Second Life?  I think it may be.

So … for me, the next step would be to move up a notch and become the Second Life Web Analyst, which I've actually mentioned before. 

It's my wish to take Web Analytics into Second Life.  Anyone care to work on that with me?  I know there's a couple of packages coming onto the market soon that can give some web metrics data - but I see a gold mine here - and I want to be ahead of the curve.

Always need to think about the next step - where is all of this going?   Well, some of it …. to Second Life and other 3D virtual environments.

I don't say that I really like moving around in Second Life that much - I haven't spent enough time there to really become an "adept" - but  I see opportunity for Web Analytics in Second Life.    And I know IBM is putting major bucks into Second Life, and they're not the only one doing so.

Now that I got done with AlwaysON NYC - while blogging at a Brooklyn Cafe near my studio, I came across Jason Calacanis's post about the TechCrunch 20 conference he's helping to put together with TechCrunch. 

I began to wonder if the companies featured at AlwaysON, esp the new companies, had to pay in order to present at the conference:

"….It's wrong on so many levels (as a lot of folks have pointed out).

First, the best companies would never be able to afford that fee. This means the most promising companies who need the exposure the most–and who the audience would most want to see–never make it to the stage. When Kevin Rose started digg he was broke–he could NEVER have afforded demo. When I started Weblogs, Inc. with Brian we were really broke (in fact Brian had taken a second mortgage to build the company!)–we could never have afforded demo. I suspect that most of the great and up-and-coming Web 2.0 companies wouldn't have been able to cut that $20,000 check (or $12,000 as the case may be). I don't think a YouTube, TechMeme, Blogger, StumbleUpon, or CastFire could afford the ticket when they were starting up.

Second, even the good companies that make it to the stage have to spend around $20,000 to pay for their six minutes! What a rip-off."

Until I read Jason's post I had not even given it a thought - but maybe companies that are presenting at a conference need to pay for that.

Anyway, TechCrunch also announced the TechCrunch 20 Conference tonight - wish they were doing it in NYC (maybe they will down the line); seems there are several comments already.

One of the commenters said: "…The startups that are likely to be picked will probably be those of the well-connected entrepreneurs who know you or Jason personally (oh, wait, you call it a “committee”). So don’t make it sound like you are catering to the little guy in the garage ".

So, there's a concern the selection process will be biased.

I'm glad I went to AlwaysON, and that I got a press pass to cover it.

I walked in on an the session after it already started.  

You need to know how the web analytics services collecting the data.  Most of the data collected in "opening the door" and for Publishers, is not interactive.   The data published also favors the big media companies (according to a questioner).  

10:30 am – 11:15 am: Workshop: Harnessing Web Analytics to Your Advantage
Are you confident that you're making the most out of your web analytics? Do you know what analytics can drive your business advantage? This workshop will show you how.
        Moderator: Burt Helm, BusinessWeek
        Howard Kaushansky, CEO, Umbria
        Greg Stuart, President, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
        Brad Silver, President, Brandimensions

How do you understand that you did not miss an opportunity to present your brand?  Well, there's metrics that inform industry and affect rates and those that don't.

The adoptions of standards is something the IAB should lead -and Publishers should ask themselves to be "audited" for ad effectiveness (if I got that right) and it's something that is not just "happening" - Marketers have to push it.

As a measurement device, Web Analytics is a long way away from definitive measurements.  Greg Stuart, President, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
 questions the value of demographic measurement services and thinks that Geo-graphics is much more predictive of buying behavior than demographics.

There are problems with measuring the success of your online activity and is your online activity driving offline activity.  Have what you seen online affected your impression of the brand offline?   Is the online activity moves the "needle".  Ad Recall is not necessarily that useful because you can "juice" it - and does not measure the effectiveness of the ad campaign. If you can measure the impact of seeing a campaign in behavior - that's measurable.

What do you  mean " we spend a 100 million dollars and we don't know what it does"? - according to a story that Greg Stuart related about a major automotive CEO who asked his top marketer the question at the beginning of the paragraph 5 times and got different answers.

Just got here - a lot of well known people here but I decided not to speak to anyone yet.  After getting breakfast I listed to Rob Crumpler of Buzzlogic. 

As readers might recall, I asked for a Demo of Buzzlogic about 3 months ago - and was sopposed to get into the Beta Program.  Since then - nothing much happened.   I did not care for the way Rob Crumpler spoke - it seemed too artifical - like Buzzlogic is going to solve all your PR and Buzz issues - but I know it's not like that.  

In fact, I think Buzzlogic has the potential to give BrandPulse a run for the money (and there's probably a couple of other platforms similar to it)- and anything that gives Nielson a headache is a good thing in my book (since they're suing every analytics company that uses any of it's patents - at least, that's the way it seems to me).

In fact, I'd say that something about BuzzLogic reminds me, in a tangential way, of Eric T. Peterson's engagement score - just follow me here.   What Buzzlogic is trying to do is find the authorities - the people who really matter that are blogging or just talking about your company.  I believe, perhaps, that engagement might be a quality that goes with "authority".  If that's the case, Eric might have, without realizing it, defined an algorithm for determining authority - or a part of it.  Read  Eric T. Peterson's  post in detail to find out more.

I guess having BuzzLogic as part of the AO 100 makes sense - since the technology is disruptive.  More likely, if they become really all that disruptive, Nielson will just buy them out.

9:30 am – 10:15 am: CEO Showcase: Web & Blog Analytics & Research
        Rob Crumpler, CEO, BuzzLogic
        David Soskin, CEO, Cheapflights
        Amar Anand, CEO, eTIMEisMONEY
        Brian Magierski, CEO, Kalivo
        Benno Wasserstein, CEO, Box UK
        Demo Review by Industry Experts:
        Chris Fralic, Partner, First Round Capital
        Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRweek
        Brian Kelly, Partner, Manatt, Phelp & Phillips

Ok, I did not pay much attention to David Soskin, CEO, Cheapflights which seems like it used some analytics (but I did not catch what he said).

I spoke to Amar Anand, CEO, eTIMEisMONEY on Monday night at AlwaysON NYC, he's in NYC so I may interview him later.  I like Amar's way of speaking and his platform of making time into money and has a module for Bloggers to legitimately monetize their blogs.  eTimeisMONEY sells time and there's a commission on the time sold on the site.   It looks like a pretty good platform and he's launching today.

Brian Magierski, CEO, Kalivo is a platform for marketers that has a "listener" which crawls the internet and picks up relevant content and allow the marketer to respond to it.   It sounds to me like Kalivo has a nice way of categorizing what's happening in context to the what the marketer cares about - which might give it an edge; I like the analytics, based on what I can see.

You an even focus in of the type of Blogger platform (ie: WordPress bloggers talking about iPhones - and also categorizes conversations based on importance - and you can then interact with those sources - a very nice feature!)

ClickDensity ( I think it was Benno Wasserstein, CEO, Box UK  presented) is really presenting a standalone heatmap program that, while is fancy to look at, is not really much different than what most upper tier web analytics platforms provide in some form or another.  I like that each click on a page also includes the time spent on the link (page).  However, there are segmentation capabilities in ClickDensity - more how people react on the page (how quickly a visitor, on average, click on a link of the page).  It's not a replacement for your regular Web Analytics - it supplements it.

There were also 3 panelists that just came on the stage - Chris Fralic, Partner, First Round Capital, Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRweek and Brian Kelly, Partner, Manatt, Phelp & Phillips.

I think what the panelists/analysts above liked was the ability to know what the blogosphere is saying and interacting with it (as well as the attractive pricing).  The analytics seemed more intuitive - drawing a box around all this unstructured data in a visual way.   But the panelists want to know how the analytics here really work - and which one is better and why.   ETimeisMoney is also liked by the Panelists - they think it's a good direction to go. 

Anticipating issues rather than just being reactive.  But the Panelists think it's all about Google - Google dominates the conversation even though they are not, in away way I'm aware of, present at this conference.

Well, that's it for this session.

Last session for Tuesday - can we use the blogosphere for buzz marketing?

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm: Panel: Can Brands Get Away with "Buzz Marketing" in the Blogosphere?
        Moderator: Jeff Jarvis, Blogger, BuzzMachine
        Rich Murray, president, me2revolution
        Gordon Gould, CEO, ThisNext
        Barry Reicherter, SVP, Director of Persuasive Technologies, Porter Novelli
        David Weinberger, co-author, Cluetrain Manifesto

You can't buy Buzz, Buzz is owned by the people.  I wrote a post about a year ago titled "Dell Sucks" - made a big deal.  Jeff met Michael Dell in Davos, btw.

If you got a good product/service you can get "buzz'; but there are a lot of great products that won't get buzz because they're not that interesting. 

You measure Buzz -(no one figured out for sure how to do it) and 5% of the population who are influencer (have 75 or more friends) - go after them.

There is no direct ROI on conversation and are interested as along as the investment is small.  You can't buy your way into a conversation, you have to engage in to a conversation.

Buzz Marketing is all "exceptions"; 99% of what's out there is pure crap.

What should people do who want to brand?  The stuff you do online needs to be tied into what you do offline (Coke/Mentos) - you do an offline "tour".

This is one of the sessions I wanted and planned to cover:  What are we going to be measuring "Next".

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm: Workshop: How Does the Internet Change Media Metrics?
        Moderator: Ridgway Hall. Chief Strategy Officer, Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)
        Jonathan Carson, CEO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics
        Joe Davis, CEO, Coremetrics
        Paul Donato, SVP and Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Media Research
        Dick Costolo, CEO, FeedBurner

Jonathan Carson, CEO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics - we're in the business of measuring consumer generated media - gather info from 40 million blogs / message boards and then using textual analysis software to understand that traffic.

Intuitively, marketers have always known about WOM but it was never treated as an internet channel and that becomes an important part of the overall media mix. 

One of the big things that will play out in the next few years is how the silos will brake down.

Advertisers are becoming more interested in measuring the online activity and buzz effect.

We're most interested, as a new metric, in citations - mostly blog citations and we spend a lot of time thinking about the structure of citations and linking - it also creates Google Juice.

Joe Davis, CEO, Coremetrics - Our business is mainly retail (60%) but we have we have broad representation and we need to measure everything.  The agency model (right brained) but what we're trying to measure is now more left brain.

We tend to go after depth in a site and time spent - and the basic assumption is that more time spent on site and the deeper they go (more pages viewed) the more they will buy.

Paul Donato, SVP and Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Media Research - a traditional media, TV, is reacting to the internet and we had services we had offered 3 years ago and could not sell that is now the hottest thing.

Everyone ultimately believes in Convergence.

The foundation will always be - did my ad get access to the target audience - but having said that - it's much more complicated than that. 

Engagement has been around for a while - picture yourself doing a campaign across multiple channels and so far, I haven't seen any good examples of cross channel marketing.  It's so different going forward than what we did before and it's probably the best time to be in media since 1985.

You need large sample sizes to analyze data for engagement.

Dick Costolo, CEO, FeedBurner - As more people view content away from the original site it's up to the publishers to track it; the more things you try to measure the more questions you get (more like quantum physics).

Your hearing more and more the desire to measure "engagement" - and if you ask 5 people how to measure engagement you'll get 5 opinions.  You can get more answers but those answers will lead to more questions.

People are going to prefer to spend where there is measurable ROI but every answer you get generates more questions (IE: traffic from Digg - spends a couple seconds vs a referral - will advertisers begin to not want pay for traffic from Digg but will for a referral - that's the kind of issues we come up with in the new metrics measurements).

Was not planning to go to this workshop but decided I did not want to move myself to the main room and then move it back again - so I'll cover this one instead.

3:15 pm - 4:00 pm: Workshop: Walking the Copyright Tightrope
        Moderator: Stuart Meyer, Fenwick & West
        Andrew DeVore, Partner, Manatt Phelps & Phillips
        William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google
        Gaby Darbyshire, Director, Gawker Media

Andrew DeVore, Partner, Manatt Phelps & Phillips - one of the core issues around Copyright is based around reproduction and now, in the internet world, copies are the backbone of the internet model - and now we're confronted with what you do with this situation:

fair use

DMCA

A lot of our attention is focused on getting right on fair use and DMCA. 

In light of Gamester and Napster decisions, while problematic - is much easier to figure out than Google Print - and what's the purpose of the service and this is all tied into fair use.  It's a much harder in the Google and YouTube to give guidance.

If you went to congress right now and fix the copyright laws you might end up with something worse than we have now.

William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google - I work for Google but I've had a checkered past - doing a number of legal jobs - and I don't think the Copyright system works well today.

In 1992, I helped authored the law on this - Digital changes everything because you can make perfect Digital copies.  The idea was there's a new idea - Digital, and it's going to replace other forms of media.  We ended up using terminology used at the time and it made it much harder to apply to new technology which is somewhat why we're in the mess today that we are.

I think we've expected quite a lot from fair use and we used to be able to figure out what "fair use" was pre-internet.  Now we have an issue on how we make are laws predictable, so we know what we have permission to do, or not.  Without that ability to figure out the benefits and objectives - the law is not fulfilling it's objective - and we're asking fair use to do things it was not design to do.

Most rights can be contracted away but your right to get back your copyright is not transferable - no matter what you agreed to give away - you can still get the copyright back.

Gaby Darbyshire, Director, Gawker Media - Predictability is a major problem - and our business at Gawker is about commentary on material that already exists and these issues come up and there's no predictability.  It's hard to start businesses on the online world when it's not clear what you can and can't do.

Certainty is crucial.

Moderator: Stuart Meyer, Fenwick & West - when you talk about Copyright law and as technology moves on it becomes difficult to sort out and reconcile as technology changes.  XM Radio dispute - record song on your device by pushing a button - court ruled against it.

If you don't like the laws now - consumers can generate their own kinds of protection like Creative Commons.

All this was really beyond me at this point as I'm not a lawyer - but it was interesting to follow.

After a very long lunch, and having missed the IM Panel in the main room, I listened to Bridging The Media Divide

2:30 pm - 3:15 pm: Workshop: Bridging The Media Divide
        Moderator: David Kirkpatrick, senior editor, Fortune
        Dr. Saul Berman, Partner, Global and Americas Business Strategy, IBM
        Carla Hendra, Co-CEO, Ogilvy North America
        Doug McGary, President, The Media Group
        Denmark West, head of Operations/EVP, MTV

Saul Berman talked about IBM's contribution (and there's a paper) and then Carla Hendra (Carla Hendra, Co-CEO, Ogilvy North America) spoke and said it was bold for Oglivy to have picked her to be Co-CEO as she came from a database background.    there's been a giant acceleration in the last year - the way we've been doing it for the last 50 is not working for us now - and everything new is experimental and there's not proof any will work.

We had to get out of the world of Demographics and developed the concept of a "personal circuit" including blogs, personal websites - you have to map those and see what the influence.   Clients want our services but they want something new, different.  It's an exciting world but one that you have figure out.

We've seen a definite migration shift out of television buys and into many other options.

We have an example - not a 5 million dollar ad but a 50,000 ad for Dove Evolution that got downloaded several million times.  50,000 dollars is not a lot of money to spend but then again, I don't know how we're going to make money on that spot.

Doug McGary, President, The Media Group - money is being shifted across media buys.  Interactive Video on Demand - we have a 3%-4% take rate on 20 million households that have access (that's 3%-4% take rate of those who are watching).

Denmark West, head of Operations/EVP, MTV - we still see a significant amount of our revenue coming from advertising but it shifts but the demand does not go away.  We do have "virtual worlds", including Metropolis, and virtual world have proven themselves as a business model. 

Virtual Laguna Beach - network and connect with the brand and talk about it with their friends and meet on "the beach".

David Kirkpatrick, senior editor, Fortune - we just fired 300 people even though we're making a lot of money because Wall Street wanted us to invest in the Internet (not sure I got this right , home I did).

Dr. Saul Berman, Partner, Global and Americas Business Strategy, IBM - we have to invest in  areas that have the promise to grow and take away money from Cash Cows.

Carla Hendra - no one knows what "social media" actually means. 

Facebook actually has security.

Google - is it a media company?  The nature of media is changing and if you change description then Google has entered the value chain and continue to grow bigger.

We're in a big "de-siloing" exercise currently and it's messy still. 

To a large degree, you need to tailor and change your model as you move from platform to platform, etc - often meaning, today, that different people need to work on the campaigns for each platform.

Ok, AlwaysON has a ranking algo - lets see what it is:

11:15 am – Noon: Workshop: How We Pick the AO Media-100 Winners
        Moderator: Ezra Roizen, strategy consultant, The Roizen Report
        Ryan Brenner, AlwaysOn
        Brian Kelly, Co-Chair Venture Capital and Technology Practice Group, Manatt
        Ed Lambert, SVP, Bridge Bank

First, let's get companies off the list and get it down to 250 companies - year around interviews - talking and meeting CEO's year round.

We also use a set of selection criteria and then do our own research. - once we do that, we cut the list down to 150 companies.

Once we're down to 150 - we have to really cut it fine to get it down to 100 companies.  And then we figure out the top 3 companies.

We are trying to look at companies on

1. innovation
2. market potential
3. degree of commercialization
4. media buzz (where are they getting attention)
5. stakeholder value creation (how is value created and see where it will go).

We try to think about companies that are innovative - look at new models for doing things - some of these will be stand alone companies.

Selection Committee - we bring a lot of brain power to this selection process.  When you go through all the companies on the list - what do you spot as a trend - is that the AD is embedded into the experience.  Also, Viral Marketing, Digg, Buzz, with the right message - so how do create content that message.

Diagram - new idea in the left and consumers on the right of the diagram.

Panel Question: Community - has does this fit in?

The new world order of marketing is you trust your friends more than your advertiser. One panelists wonders what the effect of taking online video and posting it for the world to see.

The real impact of all this stuff (IE: and elections) that are determined by what shows up on YouTube, etc.

How do you compete with competitors that are much bigger than yours ("punching beyond your weight")?  There is a window for Rapid Growth - and if you are a small company that wants to get big fast, there's a way to do it - and that's what AlwaysON is about - and it's in AlwaysON Magazine.

Stayed in the same room and, not sure what I planned to attend - but this sounds good:

10:30 am – 11:15 am: Workshop: Managing Your Online Media Buy
There's more to buying ads online than choosing which adwords to buy. Join the CEOs of startups with successful new buying approaches for publishers and advertisers.
        Moderator: John Rose, Director, Boston Consulting Group
        Curt Hecht, EVP/Chief Digital Officer, GM Planworks (Starcom)
        Brian Quinn, VP, Advertising Sales and Marketing, Dow Jones Online
        Penry Prince,  Director of North American Sales, Google

Stickiness and how you move from the current advertising model to where you want to be?

The Marketing Infrastructure is built around 30 second spots but when you take that into the digital media (ie: landing page strategy, what are you trying to drive, what outcome are you seeking?) you need other types of talent than what you often have in house and organized on your teams.

What's the difference between a Newspaper and Online Media?  Newspapers are mostly about analysis - not braking news (you already know the stories now) - Dow Jones Online.

Metrics - a big issue and challange - what's succssful and what's not.  Different campaigns have different Metrics - and every action should have a reaction and it should be measurable and quantifiable - Perry Prince - Google.

Macro Measurements - ie; buying intent - very difficult and problematic to measure, still.  How do i rectify the how my total campaign is doing vs. what the cost for a lead is?  That's what the EXEC cares about.   Marketing Effectiveness. You are going to see more of the Senior Management think about these issues.  It's really early for Marketing Measurement on the Web - Curt Hecht, EVP/Chief Digital Officer, GM Planworks (Starcom).

Digital Experts on the Client Side - do Agencies have the right resources to do the job?

Google is working very hard to figure out how to measure all of this - take a very analytical approach -what is the data that marketers are looking for on a campaign level and try to deliver it back.  What you do offline has a lot to do with online success and we need to get better and measuring offline demand, online.

Demand - your creating demand but if your not there to meet the demand (IE: with the right advertising, etc) THEN YOUR CREATING DEMAND FOR YOUR COMPETITORS.

Where do I shift the dollars from?  Google wants to have a profitable relationship with all our advertisers.  If we believe that media will become more accountable - the budgets and available dollars will multiply.  If we can figure out metrics you can re-invest and make more money - not just shift spend.

A better Video model will be a better driver for more online marketing dollars.  More Marketers need to think of themselves as publishers.  For the most part Marketers have thought out putting ads out and not about the whole experience.

We're thinking that there's more experience that can be added to Video that will enhance it.

Google - we haven't figured out a monetization policy for YouTube yet. There's no pre-rolls but we are thinking about post-rolls.  We do think people are interested in Premium content and would accept advertising around that because they want the content.

MyCadallicStories - Joan Jett - (I saw those ads on my own blog, btw).  Google - Sight Based Advertisng (what they see - develop technology to measure what people see but that your not aware of).

In Game Advertising (my question) - to Google .. what are your plans?   Google - it's not confirmed yet and yes, we're looking at it and think there's' a lot of opportunity there and we're excited by it.