Just reading Erick Schonfeld‘s Top Ten Digital M&A Deals For 2010 on TechCrunch and don’t think any of them are  going to happen – plus there’s no comparable post from about 2009 or 2008 M&A predictions to compare.

First, I don’t think Google will acquire Roku (never heard of Roku till this minute, so I might be wrong) but Google might come out with their own set-top box.   I’m sure someone at Google considered building vs. buying.  The issue is YouTube isn’t be monetized well enough – but could it ever be, since there’s more and more people uploading content every minute?

Second, while Cisco might do well to acquire LinkedIn I’m not seeing why LinkedIn needs to be acquired, anymore than Facebook needs to be acquired.   Since MySpace was acquired, it’s gone down, down, down, though recently it’s showing signs of life with API access and Collecta deals.

Fox /MySpace might want to acquire Pandora – I give it 50% chance that might happen, and I’m sure there will be some M&A activity this year – so if any of these predictions from Erick come true, maybe this will be one of them.  By the way, didn’t hear much good feedback from Fox/MySpace acquiring Immem recently.

Fourth, seems to me Twitter would have to be going on an aggressive acquisition path to be picking up Twithawk, TweetMeme, Skout, etc. Why do they need to?   Maybe what Twitter needs to do is buy FourSquare, that makes more sense to me.

I really don’t care about NetFlix or Flixster, don’t use either and have no idea NetFlix is going buy or should buy Flixter, but, as it’s mentioned that Fox might buy Flixter – maybe someone ought to.

Sixth, Ticketmaster buying Eventbrite?   Why? Don’t they have Evite now?   Buying companies because to the audience they have online doesn’t always work out that well as people switch easily, from one to another.

Seven, DirectTV buys Blip.tv – isn’t Blip.tv much, much smaller than DirectTV?  I don’t know enough to say anything more – but I do see Blip.tv a lot around NYC, more at events, though.

Eight, Bing/Microsoft acquires Bit.ly?  Seems like everyone is coming up with their own Url shorteners – could they just not create one of their own – and put metrics in it, etc?

Nine, I don’t think Microsoft will acquire FourSquare, I think Google will – and if that doesn’t happen, Twitter will.

Ten, LinkedIn acquires Yammer – maybe, feeling that LinkedIn doesn’t need to buy Yammer, though, since it can just do the same thing with Yammer that it did with Twitter and Facebook, and enable communication – so, maybe a partnership -  not so much an acquisition.

Most of the predictions people make either don’t come true the way they were predicted, or are impossible to compare to the previous year’s predictions (in this case with TechCrunch) or do come true, but there’s so much other stuff that happens during the year, that the original prediction seems like more of a side note.

Last night, I posted about How people feel about Health Care Reform and the Public Option – Updated – Crimson Hexagon & Alterian/SM2/Techrigy,  and since I don’t yet have access to Crimson Hexagon’s much more powerful Opinion Monitor; and, I wanted to see what I could pick up on my own, without it.

Before going forward, reading my post – I started out, thinking I would just write a post examining Crimson Hexagon’s analysis of Obama’s speech last night – but as I wrote – other thoughts unfolded and my post takes an entirely different direction – my writings  can be “tangential”, at times, (as can my speaking) I’ve come to see I need to balance, yet value that quality in myself.

This post, isn’t so much, it turns out, about Obama’s Speech, as the technology and cultural changes allowing Crimson Hexagon to analyze Obama’s Speech in near, real time, and where Crimson Hexagon might go next with it, or not.

Crimson Hexagon used Opinion Monitor to analyze the reactions to Obama’s speech last night to Congress, and it was written about by Mashable tonight in a post titled – Obama Health Care Speech: What Did Twitter Think? by Ben Parr. I was told by Melyssa Plunkett Gomez at Crimson Hexagon the article was coming out tonight (and was looking for it much of today).

A couple of thoughts -

• The analysis of Obama’s speech was done within 24 hours after it took place.

While a focus group, or say, a Harris Poll, could have polled 1000 people within the same time frame, Crimson Hexagon didn’t have to - all the data needed for analysis was already present in the Twitter data stream that was analyzed.

The implications, I think, are that within 6 months to a year, analysis cycle Crimson Hexagon uses can be even quicker – perhaps, between 2-6 hours.   The quality of the information provided by Crimson Hexagon was better, in my opinion, than a Harris Poll, the responses came from the Twitter data itself, instead of questions being asked by Pollsters.

Looking at the Crimson Hexagon report - I liked it – the analysis had a level of detail impossible to obtain with any of the tools I have available to me, today (Crimson’s Buzz Monitor is not capable of producing the chart, below, nor are Radian6 or Alterian/Techrigy/SM2 able to, at the current time).

I entirely agree with Ben Parr‘s analysis of the information suggesting  slightly more than a third of the “audience” was happy with Obama’s speech and the positions on Health Care he expounded on.

On the other hand, Crimson Hexagon’s data shows a deeply divided, and polarized, public on the Health Care issue (and many other issues, let’s face it) – and there many for whom “Black is White and White is Black” – typified by those who “feel Obama lies” (~6 to 12% – when you consider the 3% error rate in dividing up the pie chart – not bad, actually) and ~16-22% who feel “otherwise negative”  about the speech, and the strength of the positions Obama expressed, suggesting at least one third of the audience, Obama is never going to be able to win over, no matter what he does (even if Obama could “walk on water” it still not be enough for about a third of the audience).

Now, here’s where my post becomes more interesting and takes a different turn – and how Crimson Hexagon could play into changes coming up in technology during the next 6-12 months.

First, Obama’s challenge – and it would be very interesting to observe Crimson Hexagon tracking this, is to ensure that 1/3 of the audience who hate him, does not get much larger, because, if it does, Democrats are are going to have a much harder time maintaining control in 2010, after the midterm elections (not that Republicans are offering anything better), nuff said.

From an analytics point of view, I hope Crimson Hexagon expands their polling analysis service out, past a boutique Social Analytics firm into  real time analysis political campaigns, political positions (strategic health care – over time is one example)  local politics and governance using a self service model.

Here’s why I say this  – it goes back to some of the conferences I attended recently and what I heard people saying – and what I personally see happening.

Continuing on where this post is going, second, I attended the Personal Democracy Forum last June,  I found out that many political campaigns use cafeteria type services such as Election Mall to run almost every aspect of a candidate’s  campaign sites, including staffing, fund-raising, campaign promotions, community advocacy, communications and merchandising – but actionable polling data in campaign districts is noticeably missing (not to mention real time polling data). Consider this one leg of chair that needs to be built.

Since the Personal Democracy Forum, the energy has speed up even more (I noted it at Social Good Conference Thoughts – Part 1) where social media platforms that were simple, in and of them selves, are now, quickly being recombined to create much more powerful platforms, for Social Good; and the mash-ups I described below happened in the last 3 months – that’s how FAST things are moving:

” … the tools of social media, while not rocket science, have evolved to the point they are easy to use, available to almost anyone, and provide a platform to build even more sophisticated platform for charities -(for example) – Energy Action / Get Local that now maps to congressional districts and a companion micro-site customized to the district and group, ties into Facebook, volunteer recruitment, dynamic maps that find groups near yours.

– One Sky can allow cross collaboration between similar groups, suggesting a new generation of Social Networking platforms built ontop what exists, but utilized Professional Organizers that can now mobilize against Professional Lobbyists fed by big, corporate bank vaults.

Another leg of the same chair, I noticed while attending a panel on Search and The US Presidential Election at SMX East, last fall, where Google and Yahoo failed to provide accurate search targeting capabilities down to campaign districts  during last year’s Presidential Elections- and local polling at a district level is almost non- existent, as far as I can tell.  I recall writing in my post that …

… a question came up about bundling to the District level, did come up and Google and Yahoo, while they allow custom maps of  [District] Geo-Targeting, don’t actually facilitate that level of targeting.

….. Also, Google and Yahoo haven’t yet offered geo-targeting on District Level but….. They are not, as yet willing to set up that specific a level if targeting yet, but are studying doing so in the future.

The third leg of the chair that needs to be built,  comes with Twitter’s immanent implementation of the Geo Targeting API,  with full consideration of how real-time geo located data changing our lives by offering us more real time choices  and vastly  improving services like FourSquare (see my post of foursquare team + sense networks team + hotpotato team & more = location +30 Meetup this week in Brooklyn) – a unique opportunity lies in front of   technology services like Crimson Hexagon, an a few other platforms such as FourSquare,  to use the new capabilities of  Twitter Data to vastly improve what these platforms can do.

In fact, at the meetup this week, a few examples were discussed such as

• online dating services using geo-location can tell users where to go, on the fly to meet their next date in real time (that’s one of the examples I remembered) or tell someone – who is already on a date, a better one is at the bar across the street (the audience laughed at that – but it’s not funny – that’s going to be possible to do in 6 months).
• As TechCrunch pointed out -  imagine if a service like Foursquare was able to send your actual location to Twitter alongside the name of the place you are at. That would save the people who follow you on Twitter but don’t use Foursquare the hassle of looking up the location of the place you are at if they want to meet up with you. It’s potentially powerful stuff.

The last leg of the chair could be Crimson Hexagon, to  analyze Twitter data in near real time and mine for Opinions and Sentiment  (along with other structured data like blog, forum, video and Mainstream media) to do analysis similar to the  Disney/Marvel merger, but along the lines of district, city, state and government, as I described, earlier, adapting their technology and patents into tapping the Twitter API Geo located data and using services like Sense Networks -  if they  leverage rapid changes taking place in the next 6-12 months.

New companies like LiveScribe (with their Pulse SmartPen) platform have vast opportunities to expand technology (for example – that “Smart Pen”, I own one, can be made to do a lot more, or, it can remain an interesting niche tool - used by people like me who want to remember what people say when when I’m taking notes.

And, interesting conceptual companies like Wild Divine – , 8 years ago, had state of the art, inexpensive biofeedback device fully able to interface with computer games and medical devices to promote education, transformational healing, but ended up becoming a niche game hardly anyone knows about – could have tapped into the Internet, could have powered a whole generation of laptops and mobile devices with thousands of applications – but never outgrew a few computer games, wonderfully done though (in my opinion).

As Jeremiah Owyang noted in his post on Salesforce Pushes Social CRM Technology –But Don’t Expect Companies To Be Successful With Tools Alone -

Despite Salesforce’s technical announcement, this doesn’t mean success for their customers. Technology is only 20% of any enterprise change, the other 80% is culture, process, roles, and strategy change –key requirements that Salesforce is not equipped to provide.

As a result, don’t expect customers that don’t have the right program in place to take advantage of these technology offerings –instead expect vendors with a heavy professional service offering to empower a company to truly embrace customers in the social web.

…. requires strong CIO leadership in coordinating data, business process, and metadata integration strategies.

I might add, the same issues Jeremiah pointed out are also present in taking that technology and harnessing it for Social Media CRM, for Public Relations, and in levering Social Media for Large Corporations – the technology isn’t really the main barrier – it’s  inability of many organizations to merge technology with current business processes (which actually can transform both).

I’ll stop here, with one last thought.

As a Web Analyst, and a member of the Press, due to my blogging here and now writing for Entrepreneur.com, I have held down an web analyst job at IBM.com and Monster.com  (responsible for delivering insight to stakeholders – hands, often deep into the data) while I also spent much of my own time, going to conferences.

The reaction to my conference going and socializing was varied (and I do enjoy going to conferences and socializing, which is why I go) – but, often people who actually “do the work” don’t get to travel much.

I’ve managed to straddle and find a middle path, rather than striking out, on my own (often I’ve wondered what stops me – maybe it’s fear that I won’t be able to carry it off – not sure).

At times I’ve had to struggle with wanting to be into thought leadership and strategy , but not being able to go all the way with it, like a Steve Rubel, or Avinash Kaushik, to name a few, who can travel and speak, more or less, as free agents of Edelman or Google, or themselves, evangelizing their personal brands with the Corporate brand, as Steve Rubel describes in PR 2.0 (see my post on Using Social Media to promote your brand- Steve Rubel (Brand All Stars). (this is something I am aspiring to).

Sometimes,  even, in my own team, both at IBM and Monster, where I would take my own personal paid  time off (PTO) to go to conferences (where I got all those press passes) I would get reactions like “where does Marshall get the time to do all this stuff and still get work done” (and my work was always done – in fact, often, I wasn’t fully utilized).

Many of my teammates at IBM are now out of work and many people at Monster.com were part of layoffs, and more probably will go in the future – no doubt.

Then I would look at my own job security and realize the only thing I had, that I ever really had, career wise, was me – my blogging, and  those “conferences”,  the relationships I built, and the ability to deliver on what people expected of me, while still going to conferences, through my work at the Web Analytics Association (when I was on the Board of Directors and ran the largest committee, Social Media, at the WAA, and now, my relationships with people at SEMPO, where I’m on the research committee).

Still, forget other people, even I sometimes wonder…. what’s the value  spending over an hour a day reading my RSS Feeds on my iPhone (on my way to work) of reading  hundreds of blogs a day, of going to SMX East 08,  Personal Democracy Forum, Media Bistro Circus, Affiliate Summit East 09 and the Social Good Conference ?

Whats’ the value of writing two or three blog posts a day?

Well ….-if I had not done all those things (maybe half that I’ve been to this year)- I could not have synthesized that information and written this post – nor would I have a job right now.

I don’t know if my path is right for anyone else, but it’s right for me – what I’ve had to figure out is how to find balance in all these things.

Time to go to bed.

I was at Buddy Media’s Summer Tweet Up Wednesday night which also had an appearance of Gary Vaynerchuk, who now sits on the Buddy Media Board of Advisors (this was announced Wednesday night).   Here’s a video I took using my new IPhone and the information about the Tweet Up:

“…. Buddy Media has some big news to announce. To celebrate we’ll be hosting a Summer Tweet Up on Wednesday, July 22nd at Hill Country. Buddy Media will pick up the tab for your first two drinks, and Hill Country will also provide exclusive drink specials for our guests throughout the night! Also, as is par for the course with Buddy Media, we have some prizes to raffle out that we think you’ll enjoy.

The entire Buddy Media team will be on hand, including CEO Michael Lazerow and COO Kass Lazerow. We’re also super excited to welcome special guest Gary Vaynerchuk <http://garyvaynerchuk.com/>, the “Social Media Sommelier”. The Wine Library TV host and partner of Vaynermedia.com has joined the Buddy Media Board of Advisors and will be talking about how you can use social media to grow your business.”

The big news was the launch of Buddy Media’s Twitter Client for it’s own clients that can be used for Brand Measurement, and from what I heard, it looked good.  According to Nick O’ Neill’s post at Social Media today:

“…. Some of the features to be included in Buddy Media’s Twitter Management system will be the ability to measure and identify various Twitter trends around your brand, as well as the ability to track your performance and trends across your Twitter followers, other mentions, and retweets. The Twitter Management System will also track basics, such as volume and frequency of click-through rates from links posted on Twitter. Other services include the option to schedule tweets and create profiles for brand families, which breaks down to multiple-Twitter account management.

As far as analytics goes, you’ll be able to monitor what Twitter users are saying about your brand. Layer in all the other aspects of peripheral Twitter activity that’s being accumulated through the Buddy Media Twitter Management System an there’s a good amount of data to work with. Brands are ken to hone in on this data because it offers real time reflections on how a brand is doing. Line up real time feedback from consumers with a particular event, such as a product launch, and you can begin to see one way in which brand management specific to Twitter can be of importance for a marketing campaign.”

The only issue I have with Buddy Media’s new Twitter Metrics Platform is that I need to be a Buddy Media Client to use it.  Ideally, I’d like them to release a version of the Twitter Management System that anyone can use, and maybe, they can find a way to monetize it, or, at least it will bring Buddy Media a lot of Social Capital from users who’d like to have such a system to monitor a diversity of their own sites.

By the way, I did get to speak with Gary for a few minutes about his new Blogging Platform/Service and need to follow up with him via Email.