I had a problem to solve around a campaign whose buzz I attempted to track – what is total number of Twitter Followers for individuals that are tweeting about a certain event (like a Diet Soft Drink launch that happened earlier this month, in Brooklyn)?

Well, none of the tools that I had access to publicly, could tackle that – I could get a list of people who tweet about an event – but how about the total number of twitter accounts those people have following?

Radian6, as it turned out, collects that data, and was able to provide me with insight that 115K followers (who could have seen a brand message).  Sure, there’s duplication of followers (some Twitter accounts of people who tweet about the same event might share a certain portion of the same followers – and some people tweet more than once about the same event in a specific time period).

Not withstanding – I thought Radian6 has done an excellent job of pulling together data from disparate systems outside itself, such as Twitter, Compete.com, SalesForce.com and WebTrends, along with Social Graph.

While Radian6 has a lot of room to grow, I appreciate being able to work with their product.

I think, doing Social Media Tracking for Public Relations events – requires more focus on aggregating data than any platform has yet done.   For example, if a bunch of YouTube videos about a product launch took place, say 20 or 30, I want the software platform to go in and count the views of all of the videos and come up with an aggregate number – say ….  500 views from YouTube videos across 20 videos posted (average of 25 views per video).

In a way, the data is already present by most of the platforms, it just needs a little more work to make it usable.   Just a thought on a sunny Wednesday in August.

Is it possible to make money on Online Video?

Turning out to be a great panel tonight at Ultra Light Startups At Your Imagination on W. 27th Street.

Even as I smell the “sweet” aroma of Pizza just arriving I’m think about just how happening our New York Tech Community is.

I’m enjoying hearing many of the one minute pitches, which seem better than what I’ve heard, overall, in previous months when I’ve attended ULS.

That reminds me, I’ve thought about what makes a successful business, startup or established brand, and I’ve come to believe the answer is tied to amplifying, simplifying and organizing existing primal needs.

Almost any new businesses I’ve seen is based on something we already do (Flicker, organize, post, share photos; PayPal, move cash easily; FreshDirect, deliver groceries of great food, ETC
).

A really good panel (see ultralightstartups but since I’m on my iPhone, I can’t type the names easily.

Zak – landscape of online video change in last 3 years. Level of interest and specific content that is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Lady from ComScore – how to translate video streams into something meaningful for Metrics

fYi – success depends on 6 factors, advertising, sponsership, merchendizing, subscriptions and pay for view and custom content. But not everyonce can do it.

Monetizing online video using methods of television doesn’t work out, better to increase value of each interaction.

Video Standard Metrics (how is a view measured?) but much of the structure to monetize is based on laziness and the mechinism to buy smaller isn’t yet working that well, it’s not really a Metrics problem.

How valuable is your audience? You have to put up 30K to 50K on the table for advertisers to take you content seriously, these days.

Online video viewership and relationship is based on a difference from offline and viewers want to tell you what they want and content providers produce it. That’s much different than how content had been produced and sold till now.

Are people content creators or advertisers? Content may be sitting in several different buckets.

The idea of “eyeballs” is becoming useless as consumers multi task and hardly anyone is going to give undivided attention, therefore, the returns from TV Ads are rapidly dimishing.

How do you define engagement? Content placed on sites related to the content and visitors spend time watching.

Bootstrapped Video Content – there are a few people who make 100K a month by achieving “scale”. However, smaller niche online video shows can be successful if the niche audience is considered valuable to advertisers.

Is it that we’re too early on in this to monetize online videos?

Based on the audience, hardly anyone in the audience left after the intermission and pizza, it’s obvious people are captivated by online video.

And now, I’m sitting and at the Dewey Flaterion bar with my friends hatching a new and exciting project, more, later.

BlogHer is presenting at this session.

Blogging a daily part of life, blogs are mainstream. BloHer – people are spending less time watching TV and reading blogs, instead.

Definstion of a Blogger is changing and Social Media has fundamentally changed the way we communicate.

Why are people “there”? Social Media, which used to be just a set of tools, now have changed how we communicate.

Also, most people in the Blogosphere consider their online friends as real friends. Many BlogHer bloggers blog for their children, to record the story.

If you look at most bloggers that are successful they are “driven” and they feel need to say what they are saying regardless of what they are paid, or not, and they’d write anyway; Heather Gold added, that is why people are interested ( Boing Boing, TechCrunch, Beth Kantor – who I recent met at Emetrics Summit DC ).

The Power to be Heard; The Evolution of Community. We still trust People.

How can you be TrustWorthy?

How you can represent youself as a person and still represent your Brand.

Fleishman Hillard – Blog Relations Case Studies

– Tamiflu case study – a blogger who was also a contending for American Idol, came down with the Flu and was offered TamiFlu and blogged about it. Target person who already had the flu.

– David Beckham RAZR2 Campaign – you need to offer not just the blogger, material, but their readers, too, so they can particapate and voice their opinions.

– Purdue Perfect Portions case study. 1.5 million consumer impressions, 59% of interested bloggers requested coupons, 50% wrote positive reviews. One blogger produced 2 videosinvolving cooking Perfect Portions with 2000 views on YouTube.

My Takeaways – this is another good session suggesting you need to think about bloggers readers, indentifying influential bloggers for a subject first, but thinking about the end goal, all the while.

What criteria do you use to identify influntials?

I came up with an idea of a method by which you identify a community where the blogger is in, then do additional research to find out how influential a blogger/blog are in that community (that might require offline data).

Fleishman Hillard uses Collective Intellect, Radian6, one other tool I can’t recall the name of, and a inhouse tool that rates a keyword against it’s use in an online community.

While writing this post, my thoughts go back to Radian6. I got an email on Sunday, that was very untransparent, not well explained, offering to cleanup free accounts, including mine. No reason or advanced warning was given, though one could guess, the reasons might be tied to new partnerships Radian6 just entered into, which might suggest they no longer wanted or needed blogger feedback …. But they did not explain any if that (the real story, in my opinion).

So, until this week, I had access to Radian6, and while it was a good product, Radian6 didn’t really provide data to me in structured way that could be most useful to a Web Anslyst.

Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the 6 months, I had use of it.

Yet, one thing does bother me about the Radian6 “cleanup” of accounts, and to me, it’s somewhat representative of many Social Media firms, who, while they claim to provide excellent tools, including Radian6, still don’t communicate well, openly, honestly and are not as transparent.

In the case of my “account” and their “cleanup”, Radian6 didn’t explain why they were doing it, if it applied to all of the free trials they set up, or just some of them, or what the criteria was, in order to make those choices. That bothers me.

It means, as far as I can tell, Radian6 failed to practice openness, that they designed their tool to “monitor”.

I’m my case, Radian6 allowed me to use their platform to monitor other people’s conversation, but did not
have time or organizational will, to have a conversation, with me. I see that as an unfortunate oversight, a mistake.

Compete.com made a similar mistake, several months ago, but once they realized it, quickly changed course.

Compete engaged in conversation, and, they listened.

Providers of the new social media platforms and tools, sometimes they fall into talking the talk, without “walking the walk”, they are not transparent about motivations or communications (with Bloggers?). Compete got it right, so far, Radian6, didn’t.

But in Social Media, should not a Social Media platform provider be good communicators too?

It appears not to be the case, all too often, but then, you could say the same thing about Web Analytics providers, and even the WAA, whose Board, I sit on.

And, Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Perhaps the old saying “the first will be last and the last, will be first” applies here, too.

I believe, we (and I include myself here, as a WAA member) who provide the “tools”, who embody “the way”, we need to also practice openness, transparancy AND, in the case of Web Analytics, the ability to “measure” and provide “insight”, that our audiences have the right to expect of us and hold us accountable for.

Enough said, missing the next session while expressing myself on this one.