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.

Can’t sleep -maybe I’m thinking about London and Monitoring Social Media 09, next week; perhaps, I  was thinking about a post read earlier today on how Good Bloggers Make Good Neighbors, in ReadWriteWeb, based on a Pew Internet Study suggesting  “geeky” people (similar to the type I met at the Singularity Summit last month in NYC), especially if they’re bloggers, are more socially well adjusted and  ..

…almost 80 percent more likely to do small favors for their neighbors than other groups, and they’re 84 percent more likely to help a neighbor care for a family member, e.g., offer babysitting help.

…… Bloggers and mobile phone users are also 72 percent more likely to belong to a local group or organization such as a charitable organization, a youth sports league, or a religious group.

I think this study shows people who are internet savvy, particularly if they are regular, active bloggers – are more likely to be interested in the world around them, and what’s going on locally.

Social Media, also, can not only help us be more socially adjusted, it can also, according to a Gizmodo post I read today, keep someone out of jail -

“….Rodney was arrested on October 18 as a suspect in two crimes. He declared himself innocent and Robert Reuland—his defense lawyer—found the key to free him: “Where’s my pancakes?“

That seemingly inconsequential Facebook status update proved crucial when the Californian company confirmed that someone wrote it from his father’s Harlem apartment computer, using Rodney’s user and password at around the time of the alleged crime: Saturday October 17, 11:49am.

…. The most interesting thing in this case, however, is that this seems to be the first time in which social networking has been used to save the ass of someone, rather than nailing a really stupid thief.

But then, I’m wondering if something totally unrelated, such as a recent study mentioned in Brain and Cognition shows that Performing horizontal eye movement exercises can boost your creativity

…  Elizabeth Shobe and colleagues have provided the first evidence that creativity is boosted by an intervention designed to increase hemispheric cross-talk.

… The key finding is that on their second creativity attempt, strong-handers who’d performed the horizontal eye movements subsequently showed a significant improvement in their creativity, in terms of being more original (i.e. suggesting ideas not proposed by others) and coming up with more categories of use. Staring straight ahead, by contrast, had no effect on creativity.

…. overall, the mixed-handed participants performed better on the creativity task than the strong-handers, thus providing further evidence for a link between inter-hemispheric interaction, which mixed-handers have more of, and creativity. But it also turned out that mixed-handers didn’t benefit from the horizontal eye movement task.

Now, I’m going to be doing my horizontal eye exercises alot more often – they’ll probably help my blogging, analytics insight, and painting (when have the time and inclination to).

Rambling on to another subject – as I begin to feel sleepy – recalling a post I read earlier today on Top Rank Blog on how major Vegas hotels are using Social Media, presented at PubCon, day 2, that is putting me to sleep …

“…prominent brands on the strip have stepped up to the plate and are actively engaged in social web participation.”

” …While not everyone may check their emails in Vegas, many of them still check their social profiles while traveling. “

“…. have a “toys for Tweets” promotion that will bring awareness to the fact that there is a Hilton in Vegas in a positive light.”

“….The MGM Grand was late to the social media game compared to competitors on the strip – we finally joined for a few reasons.  The effectiveness of our email marketing was beginning to degrade a bit. ”

It’s encouraging the hotels at Vegas are begining to take Social Media seriously – but they seem so uncreative – I feel like telling all the panelists to do horizontal eye exercises for a month – then do your social media – maybe it’ll be different!   Ok, I digress.   Sounds like I didn’t miss much at PubCon this year (haven’t been to a PubCon since 2005 in New Orleans).

Then again, maybe Todd Defren at PR-Squared – is doing his horizontal eye exercises – as he said some good stuff in his post on THE FUTURE OF MARKETING (which reminds me of my slideshare presentation on the Future of Social Media Monitoring(see below)

and he has a nice graphic which I’m adding to this post, similar to one I put in my presentation  ..

I like how Todd says …

…. Facebook and Google will be the long-term winners: it’s not just the fact that they have critical mass, but that that critical mass comes at a time when Social Networks are not just destinations (a la the old AOL and MySpace), but are becoming integral to the holistic Web Experience.

….When we surf and when we search, beyond the Social Network sites, we’re going to be taking our Friends with us; we’re taking our known online activities with us.  Sites and search engines will re-orient themselves dynamically to match our identities. The entire Web experience will re-architect itself on-the-fly based on where we’ve been, what device we’re using, what we’ve looked at or purchased in the past, who we are friends with, what offers and content our contacts have been sharing and purchasing, etc.

That’s an interesting observation – all this stuff is poised to happen – but still hasn’t because the semantic web is still in it’s infancy – and a lot of the automation to make it happen hasn’t evolved yet – ie: Microformats.  In fact, if you read my Slideshare, above,  one thing I left out, is the reason why Alterian and Radian6 can’t geo-locate well – their tools, and the rest of the Social Media Monitoring tools, for the most part, were built, as Bill Hunt, pointed out to me recently, by marketing people looking to track Buzz, and not so much, for the kinds of analysis we really need.

However, even if Alterian/Radian6/Cision/Scout Labs, etc, wanted to – they could not get the precision needed to tell me where most of the content they are monitoring on the web actually originates from, or do topic/sentiment analysis well – that is at least a few years away – and needs the Semantic Web in order to become more accurate and useful.  That’s what I left out (maybe I would have put it in if I were doing my eye exercises).

The rest of Todd Defren’s post is worth reading … but now I’m really fading – time to go back, maybe work on all the nice things going on in London next week, including Monitoring Social Media 09, and London, that I haven’t visited before.

Of course, I’ll be missing Web 2.0 conference, here in NYC – but I had to make a choice on where it was more important to be.

I was looking for some trend today, that stuck out to me, as prescient, and found what is quickly emerging is Augmented Reality – with a post on TreeHugger on ‘Build Paris on Paris’ & Other Good Ideas for Growth- while the post doesn’t actually mention Augmented Reality – the context upon the changes  that are cited, strongly  suggests it.

….. New plans for both London and Paris hope to address similar problems by enhancing and linking emerging areas of urban concentration to create “polycentric” cities that minimize transit needs (and thus environmental impact). Anticipating an influx of 800,000 new people between 2001 and 2016, London hopes to contain that growth on already developed land within its existing greenbelt by increasing density around a network of public-transportation hubs, said Richard Rogers, the chairman of the London-based architecture firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.

The site of the London Olympics is just one example of a plan to improve a city through retrofitting and connecting. Artist’s impression via London 2012.

I noted, in my Facebook page ,, wonder if this visualization of the future of London – for the 2010 Olympics – is something that could fit into an “augmented reality” application. That’s one way to both sell the improvements AND – the pitfalls of the growths – and show planners the possible future layered over the current present.

Filing that away, I noticed the New York Times has an article today on Preserve d with Lasers – about a team in Scotland using laser technology to visualize objects in greater detail than ever before – this project is getting a lot of attention in Scotland, by the way, according to the Times article:

A section of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, captured in minute detail with laser scanners – NYTimes.com

…. The technology isn’t brand new or unique to Scotland, but the Glasgow team is on its cultural front line.

Earlier this week an article appeared on how the New York Times and others are experimenting with augmented reality.

” …Young and his team of technologists at the Times have been looking into AR to help with such location-based journalism as restaurant reviews (point your phone at the restaurant and get its details and ratings), real estate (see how many apartments are available and what floor they’re on in a given building), and even historical data overlain on weekly architecture articles by Christopher Gray.

One recently revealed app for which it’s easy to imagine multiple journalistic uses lets you point your handheld and get an overlay on the screen that shows how bailout dollars have been spent in your neighborhood. The startup Layar, which produced the app, used Recovery.gov for the data.

And here’s a video clip I found on YouTube that explains what I just wrote about, above: