On Reading Finally delivering the Social Media playbook at BrandBuilder, today,  I feel (felt) somewhat skeptical, but upon listening to Oliver’s video about RedChair (which I liked), I’m interested in seeing what he and his partners will actually deliver.

To be fair, no one really owns this space, today, but many people would like to (own it, or parts of it) and are staking a claim on it now, even a friend of mine, Gary Angel in his post on How do you Measure Social Media ROI? – whose webinar  I’ll try to attend, and Jim Sterne is now writing his next book on Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment which will be out next May (I wrote a short blurb for it).

I have a lot of respect for Jim Sterne’s work and his first book on Web Metrics was largely responsible for getting me involved in Web Analytics – and he has good track record – I know him well – so I believe his book will be an excellent resource for Social Media when it’s published.

Last June, Steve Rubel spoke at Mediabistro Circus about Brand All Stars (I wrote about it and was in the audience – Using Social Media to promote your brand- Steve Rubel (Brand All Stars) on what I think, most of what Olivier Blanchard is aspiring to promote with his  RedChair, though Oliver’s vision is larger and involves the underpinning and surrounding parts that Steve Rubel didn’t specifically address.  Still, at the end of the day, I’m not sure about what is actually being delivered.

I think one of the main sticking points for me with Oliver’s premise, for me, – there’s only a few people in the world who can execute on a social media program and all it’s parts – and then suggests, his group is one of them -  ….. I have an open mind – or will try to.

I mean, he has an excellent team – and Jacob Morgan, seems to have a lot of good things he writes about – and just the other day came up with the real cost of implementing a social media program (see his presentation on Social Media ROI – see slide 18), which I read about while I was in London last week – and he gave prices and timelines in slide 18 – and I was very impressed- that he was willing to come out and publicly admit what the real time line is, and what the real prices for a social media program would be (200K+ and over a year to get results – measure them – not for the faint of heart).

The reason I’m thinking back to Steve Rubel – at the time he talked about PR 2.0 and Brand All Stars – I thought about how nice it would be to go into companies and teach them how to do Social Media by identifying their “stars” or teach them how to create their own “luminaries” and then, inject them into relevant conversations and monitor the results – but it’s yet my thing to go around and actually train companies to do that – maybe I’d like to but just don’t know how.

Still – I’m seeing how much of what I’ve done, from a measurement, and, also, strategy part, become one of the next areas that is being “staked out” with a lot of people now wanting to “own” social media – who want a piece of the pie, along with the web analytics community, the PR community – well … just about everyone.

My only advice is to look at track record – see what people who want to teach social media have actually done ….. and judge them from there.

I know Gary Angel pretty well from the Analytics field – I’d trust whatever he comes up with on a measurement perspective – same thing with Eric T. Peterson; I’ve seen their work and know what they’re capable of – they have good track records, as far as I’m concerned. I know K. D. Paine pretty well – I trust what she says.      Oliver .. I just don’t know enough – I havent’ seen anything really, yet, besides the presentations – and I was underwhelmed by the delivery, outside the fluff – but that’s just me – maybe with a little more time …. I’d see more and could express my own opinion based on what I’ve actually touched.

The main “hook” with Red Chair – is that few people can deploy Enterprise programs from within large organizations – but (and I have worked in many of these “large organizations” myself, so I have an idea of what Oliver is talking about) is not so much they are frustrated – is that they are largely  SILOED – and could not execute a Successful, Authentic Social Media program, even if they wanted to!

Weather RedChair can go in and suddenly teach some enterprises to do it now – will depend largely on the corporate culture and will that current organizations have towards Social Media – when he goes in there – and that’s hard to predict.

I don’t blame anyone from wanting to “stake out” a piece of the pie of Social Media – that’s what’s business is all about – I just think results ought to stand on their own - and the best endorsement of your brand is other people praising your brand for you.

Anyway, last week I noted a post from Marketing Pilgrim Cup of Joe: How Not To Go Viral and Look Like an Idiot thought it was good as it pointed out that good social media for a large brand (if it’s not original – needs to be really, really, really GOOD) – and when RedChair goes into large organizations and teaches them Social Media – I wonder if he is going to deal with that Pink Elephant – the one that says – you better be really good if your not going to be authentic – but if you are authentic – you don’t have to worry overmuch on your presentation as your content will carry the rest of your message for you.

I got to look at V-Buy, a virtual world system for selecting and purchasing virtual (and real) objects from Code4Software.com this morning; right now V-Buy is selling sound packs connected with http://www.Soundking.net but I see the potential for it to sell many other things – and track 3D and 2D transactions, including IP Address, Cookie Values and Avatar Name.

I realize Read Write/Web has a good post on Cross Reality – which is what this new development I’m writing about appears to be – along with privacy concerns.  However, running a virtual world behind a firewall and taking security precautions along with full disclosure of what information can be collected and how it might be used, will go a long way to addressing privacy concerns.   And it’s known that consumers are willing to give up some privacy in return for discounts and other benefits – that’s what your Barnes & Noble Discount card is all about – or the Duane Reade Discount card when you go buy products and the drugstore.   The post at RWW goes on to say …

“….. The more data that is exposed online about a person, the more personalized their media experience will be. This appears to be the most compelling argument for allowing your movements and interactions in the real world to be recorded and uploaded to the cloud. As long as there are privacy controls in place that allow people to opt out at any time (even for just a short period of time, e.g. if they’re having a private conversation with a friend), then the pay-off of a much more personalized and contextual media experience seems worthwhile.”

Don’t you think that B&N and Duane Reade are learning all about you?  But do you care that much – and if you do – don’t get a discount card.

The other intersting thing about V-Buy – it can be used in conjuctions with HTTP-IN and Nebraska (Virtual World behind the firewall technology) as I mentioned earlier this week in a post on Exciting Developments in Virtual World Tracking and Analytics (this post was viewed quite a lot and drove a spike of traffic to my site last  Monday).

My feeling is V-Buy could, potentially, be used to provide 3D Virtualization and Metrics for almost anything – could be computer vitualization (like going to a store to try out laptops before buying them – with metrics) or finding about and promoting a movie (with full metrics) – remember this not Second Life, anymore, you can run your 3D Virtual World from behind the firewall and it can be anything you want to be – and work with your 2D Website and track the same session – which is revolutionary – no one else has been able to do that before.

Here’s an example of a session that was tracked when I used a 2D Webpage to select as “soundpack” to play which was then tied to the 3D private workspace where I could listen to the sounds I selected.

In this case, my Avatar just listened to a sound-pack and that information is totally captured – the ip address capture allows geo-location and the ability to tie in an Avatar name, provides the kind of metrics advertisers want (the V-Tracker / Ad-Soft system should be consulted on Code4software.com for more details) while Nebraska (or Virtual World behind a Firewall and IN-HTTP)  provides the mechinism to easily update the 2D Web via the 2D web (and who knows, perhaps, vice versa).

Again, I suggest looking past the application shown and visualize a trading system that’s 3D, or a Military Simulation that is updated this way – or even a Movie Website with a 3D Simulation and full metrics, better even than what Omniture can provide.

In fact, visualize Web Analytics in 3 Dimensions – or Facebook friends – in 3 D, but with full control and the ability to track metrics and engagement.

An interesting thought to start the weekend with.

Through my association with Jared Freedman and Code4software.com I found out about two new developments in Virtual Worlds Analytics that have been flying under the radar but could have far reaching impact, down the line, to many other fields.   Some of my readers may remember that the metrics developed for IBM‘s Second Life Business Center, the metrics strategy which I helped craft, was the most advanced in the world in 2007 - it probably still is (merging site analytics, questionnaire data, Virtual Analytics and in house databases in one report).

First, Linden Labs released HTTP-In and LSL Communications on July 7th, which allows “…allows LSL scripts to respond to http requests made by other servers – or even other LSL scripts”.    As Jared Freedman explained it to me, yesterday, it is now possible to pass query string parameters directly to objects within as Second Life Sim and have them respond, individually.  Here’s an example:

http://sim3536.agni.lindenlab.com:12046/cap/c975e835-1c6d-c8b7-39be-1dc63a088e5d/?foo=bar&some=thing

As each object (say a jar or kiosk in a Virtual Sim) has a unique address – the object can be updated from a web browser.        The capabilities haven’t been released to the entire Virtual World community in Second Life, yet, but soon will be, and it appears to be working very well.

Why would that be important?

Because Second Life has a visualization and interactive capabilities that are superior to most of what’s on the 2D web, the problem is that up to now, Virtual Worlds didn’t tend to scale well.   Think Omniture writing a Web Analytics Visualization to a Sim in Second Life, or a Social CRM application that wrote changes to a “Virtual Room” which the most important changes being closer to you – concepts and information that are difficult to verbalize but can be represented pictorially and in 3D Space.   The applications for Medicine and Education are abundant, but also exist for Marketing and Social Media.

Up till HTTP-In and LSL Communications it was much harder to update Virtual World Sims with 2D web information – bandwidth wise – it required continuous polling – it wasn’t easy, in other words.  Recently, it was said that Social Media is succeeding because it’s easy to do – (at least, it’s easy to participate in Social Media), and the “ease” part is what makes this development particularly interesting, as it could have been accomplished before, but with much more effort.

But the problem remained – a lot of companies don’t want to share their data with Linden Labs – much the way many people now share their analytics data with Google (via  Google Analytics); corporations like IBM want Second Life Visualization capabilities, but they want it behind their firewalls.   Well, now, that is possible, and it’s different than the “open grid” that has been in place for the last year or so.

Code named “Nebraska” Second Life Lives Behind a Firewall was first announced a few months ago (last April, to be exact) by Linden Labs

“…. Today, we’re pleased to share that the stand-alone version of Second Life solution is currently in the alpha phase. We have nine alpha installations in the field at organizations such as IBM, Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), New Media Consortium (NMC), Intel, and Northrop Grumman. And, we’re planning to go into a limited closed beta phase this summer with general availability later this year.

Yes, this is a server solution that is completely disconnected from the main Second Life environment with all of the rich functionality in the box.”

The two developments, HTTP-In and LSL Communications joined with Second Life Lives Behind a Firewall now make it possible to build easily up-datable and interactive visualization, virtual worlds, under control and with full ownership of a corporation.

Here’s some possible applications.

Individuals:

Your own virtual world that gets updated with information you collect via RSS, Friendfeed, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, continually.    Your friends can visit your space and interact (even when your not “there”).

Healthcare:

Hospitals can have their own virtual rooms for patients that are updated with their medical history – since it’s behind the firewall, no problem with privacy.   Teaching can also be done in the same way.

Marketing:

Corporations can make their own virtual rooms, behind their firewalls, and customers can interact, via Social Media, using a Web Browser, without actually having to enter the Virtual World Sim.     Concepts are hazy as yet as I’m wrapping my mind around the possibilities.

Analytics:

As mentioned earlier, the visualizations created by Omniture Discover 2 and Visual Sciences, along with Coremetrics and Google Analytics, are rudimentary compared to what virtual worlds are capable of .   Using an open API, Analytics packages could easily write data to a private visualization of site analytics running on a clients’ site – again, behind the firewall, so the data is protected.   Because of the nature of Analytics, having a two way dialog with the data might be possible and easier using a Virtual World interface than a static, 2D web interface currently used on all platforms.

Social Media

I recently published a post in Entrepreneur.com titled “Track Your Tweets” talking about how easy it is for businesses to track their twitter traffic and how they should – but the visualization part could be far more developed in conjunction with a Virtual World Sim – Social CRM and Social Data-mining can best be visualized in a 3D Virtual World – see Unbound Technology – Social Media mining interview with Brian Killen.

It’s also true that People with Passion fuel Social Media but they want more interaction than what Second Life had to offer, which as it was mentioned, was very “lonely” – but with Nebraska and Http In, updating these worlds is going to become much easier and more accessible from the 2D Web, in ways that we have yet to develop, but soon will.

” … Second Life, which would have benefited from a few more boundaries (virtually geographically speaking). Second Life offers so much space there simply aren’t enough people to occupy it, so it becomes very lonely very quickly. Really, there’s nothing more depressing than wandering around an enormous Second Life mall and being the only one there.

Public Relations

I think it’s fair to say you can create campaigns for customers like Coke, Pepsi, Dell, American Cancer Society, etc – that are in Virtual Worlds and get much more “engagement” out of it, from visitors.  TechCrunch wrote recently about the valuation of Linden Labs Second Life – Does Anybody Still Use Second Life? And If So, How Much Is It Worth Today? where it was said…

” …. In average time spent per user per week, Second Life in fact trounces all other MMORPGs, including World of Warcraft and Civilization IV. In another testament to the service’s apparent stickiness, the number of hours users spend on Second Life has been increasing steadily and is currently at historic highs, totaling approximately 124 million hours in the first quarter of this year.

More importantly, Next Up says in-world transactions have recovered after a significant drop in September 2007 – when gambling was banned in the virtual world – and has been steadily increasing ever since December 2007.”

Suppose, with the new capabilities of HTTP-In and LSL Communications paired with “Nebraska” or  Second Life Lives Behind a Firewall these campaigns become much easier to do, much easier to update, and with metrics capabilities pioneered by Code4Software and advertising capabilities (with full metrics) available in the  Code4′s AdSoft package, you could fully update and track total visitation and engagement in these Virtual Sims that ran behind a firewall.

Mobile Marketing and Social Networking

Right now, my friends at Communities Dominate Brands believe Mobile is the 7th Mass Media, they’re probably right, as we all do more on our mobile phones now, pretty much, than on our laptops, and the trend will only continue.   What’s not considered is how well all of this “interaction” is visualized in an actionable way.  Right now, it’s possible to interface Virtual Worlds to Mobile Phones -and even, possibly, run clients for some of them, from say, an iPhone.    But what about updating the Virtual World from an iPhone – a private world – a private social network, a private room?

Sure, it could be done – but it was too hard ….. not any longer.

The next steps are to start seeing the practical applications of these new developments – my goal with this post was to raise awareness of them in the analytics and social media communities.