Ok, I see this post by Dawn Foster at Social Media Today (where some of my posts are also published) asking the question if  More Companies Turning to Social Media in this Economy?

I like questions I can answer, and this one, I can answer - used Comscore Media Metrix because it already categorizes sites and has a Conversational Media Category in the Core Products.  The problem is that I can’t tell the difference between normal growth and accelerated growth due to the Econony using this approach.

Given the problems with the Economy began to unravel in the fall of 2007 and really excelerated this Spring - there doesn’t seem to be any evidence Social Media is being used more, just now, because of The Economy.   Too bad - but hey, that’s what the data shows.

I’m attending the  Wharton Interactive Media Initiative Modeling Social Network Data on January 28th and 29th, 2009 in Philadelphia, PA.

Some of the content may be more on the data modeling level - but I’ve found that I can take in the basic points well enough and I’m keen to learn if there’s a way of organizing social network data that I might be able to tap into via the Analytics accessible to me - or just finding a new way to look at information.

On another level, I’ve been to several conferences this year, though I’m not going to SES Chicago or LeWeb3 08 (wish I could but fact of the matter, LeWeb3 is all out of pocket and last year, as a member of the Press, I was treated OK, but would have liked more access to events surrounding LeWeb, and that didn’t happen - for me to go now I’d need to know it’s really worth it - given the Global Recession and all - and I got the impression from what I’m seeing around me, this is not the time to take trips that don’t yield a definite return - and Paris would just be a repeat of Museum visits to the Louvre - but I’m not sure I need to go back just for that - just now), so I might as well attend a conference that is somewhat different and fairly close by - therefore, inexpensive for me.

Here’s the information about the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative Modeling Social Network Data :

Please note, registrants must be invited to the event and students are admitted only through special arrangement. Space is limited.

This conference will be the first to convene leading experts from industry and academia to help define, build mathematical models for, and provide ways to better utilize data arising from social networks. More specifically, we will focus on:

(i) leading-edge methods for building, comparing, and evaluating models for analyzing data,

(ii) discussing approaches for the subsequent monetization via improved prediction and resource allocation, and

(iii) helping practitioners develop best practices to explore network value and establish standards. The conference will be comprised of presentations of new research papers by top scholars, as well as panel discussions featuring leading practitioners.

Join this esteemed group of speakers as we dig deep into the meaning of data generated by this global phenomenon.

Confirmed Speakers include:

Asim Ansari, Columbia

Michael Braun, MIT

David Godes, Harvard

Wes Hartmann, Stanford

Raghu Iyengar, Wharton

Dina Mayzlin, Yale

Vishal Singh, NYU

Andrew Stephen, Columbia

Olivier Toubia, Columbia

Catherine Tucker, MIT

Russ Winer, NYU

In addition to the live presentations we will build a repository of research papers in multi-media formats.

I hardly make it over to Philadelphia - last year I stopped by for a few hours on my way back to NYC from Washington, to see a friend - yet Philadelphia is pretty close to NYC, relatively speaking.

I’ll also be going to see The Barnes Foundation sometime in December - haven’t been over to The Barnes in a long time and it’s time to go again, for a visit to Marion, PA.

Eric T. Peterson wrote an open call to President Elect Barack Obama today, asking the new Chief Technology Officer of the United States, when he or she is appointed, to push for use of First Party Cookies on most Governent sites.

In much the same way that President Obama has to give up his Blackberry upon taking office next month, due to privacy regulations that are difficult to update, so is the Federal Goverment inhibited from using data analytics for insight gathering.

But there are certainly arguments for allowing data collection for insight that does not violate privacy and, I believe, it’s doable.

In fact,this is an area where The Wen Analytics Association can help, by enforcing Peterson’s Open Call (we’re on it) AND creating frameworks and guidence documentation satisfying how data collected can be used while not invading privacy issues (and we need to do that, as well).

Why now, and not before?

Because, the new administration has a much more progressive agenda, is more open and technology savvy, and is likely to try moving forward on making web technology and tracking a way of listening to what citizens want.

And I feel, as web analysts, we could support this progressive agenda by providing firepower for it, via framework documents.

Just a thought on this Wednesday in November.

BTW, this post was created on my IPhone, no hyperlinks and limmited spell/grammer checking, but otherwise a great way to blog.

Image via Wikipedia

I was thinking about my own issues about a Board I’m currently on and this post by K.D. Paine on The value of transparency.

Besides K.D. Paine’s story of her friend Nick Ashooh, I’ve read about the Yahoo! Board of Directors care of Carl Icahn, who is on Yahoo!’s Board, and the Board Politics are all too familiar.   Though I haven’t been on but one Board in my entire life - I must say,  is there any instance where a Board, any Board, embraced transparency?  Lip service, yes, transparency, no.

I expressed my own feelings in my post on Difficult days for Social Media a few days ago, which was also picked up by Social Media Today, as I hope this one is, as well.

I know in Business, and life, in general, your expected to be putting your best foot forward - that is the conventional wisdom - on an interview, for example, you present the “best you” even as the interviewer tries to find out what your not saying - kicking the tires, as need be.

In Business, due to all kinds of legal stuff and the need to raise money - the image that’s presented to the world is often not what’s really going on behind the scenes - and, we might not really want to know all the gorey details, anyway.

However, Boards have a more fundamental issue because the fragmentation of responsibilities magnifies inefficiencies and reinforces a need to be nontransparent.  And then, there are even cases of Boards that are renegade, that nay sometimes act against the interests of the organizations they manage, and that certainly seems the to be the case with Yahoo!.  Now that Jerry Yang is stepping down, - see Yang: ‘Time is right’ for new leader on CNET let’s hope their Board get’s it right, ongoing.

In fact, according to the Guardian - Microsoft-Yahoo could be back on cards now that Yang has stepped down.

But getting back to this idea of Transparency, and why Boards don’t seem to be able to be transparent, even when they try to be - it gets even worse when your talking about Non-Profits.

Actually, I’d be interested to know how K.D. Paine measures the “Trust” level of Corporations and the Boards that help run them, as well as the non-profits; here’s what she says about the AIG Board and how they got it wrong:

“…In reality, companies ultimately have no choice but to be more transparent if they have a prayer of restoring the public’s trust in their institutions. It’s not just that AIG was idiotic in trying to cover up its role in the conference, its that in doing so, AIG further compromised whatever trust the public, and its elected officials, may have had in the organization.
I haven’t done a formal measurement of their trust level, but I’m guessing from the comments I’m reading that its dropped even faster than AIG’s stock price. So my question is: When will the C-suite wake up and realize that people will only regain trust in these institutions if they are utterly open and transparent. (I know, only when they fire all the lawyers) But seriously, do the math. The cost in reputation, failed relationships, lower trust, and now, government support, far outweighs whatever perceived cost that transparency may entail.”

I think it takes courage and leadership to be transparent - it may be both are lacking on many Boards; but more often I think Board Directors are trying to do the right thing and they just don’t know how, or can’t - they’re too worried about losing control.

Fast Forward to my last post on YouTube Video Search gradually replacing Textual Search? and add the rapid growth of user generated content, especially video and audio content, on just about any subject, much of it interesting, and we come to the death of privacy - there is no room for opaqueness in life ,or the Board Room - but the Board Room hasn’t realized it yet; because transparency means sharing control, and Boards don’t like sharing control, I’ve observed.

Today, people automatically equate non-transparency with having something to hide.  If you have nothing to hide, then you can afford to be transparent.  In the past, before Social Media, hiding stuff was pretty common, the Government did it, Business did it, people did it - but now …… it’s different - times have changed.

I do think we need to be our own “curators” much as Brands need to be curated - but that’s more a function of moderation, not hiding things.

In fact, the new Branding does involve having Brand Managers act as curators and that has come up many times over the last two years at the conferences I’ve attended since YouTube, Facebook and MySpace have become some commonly used.  I would say the same thing holds true in the Board Room  - instead of trying to hide the dealings, we ought to act more like curators - making sure the information appears in the best context, but not hold back - to the extent that’s possible.

One more factor was brought up by K.D. Paine, who I’ve met several times, and that is Speed - Speed of the transmission of information - it’s so fast that transparancy within 24 hours or less, when a major issue comes up is a necessity - and that’s something almost no Board can handle - they simple can’t respond quickly enough.

Corporate has Public Relations people for that function - but Non-Profits probably don’t respond quick enough, and the Board of a Non-Profit might be clueless for weeks - though usually, there is a silver lining - a Non-Profit probably is not engaged in anything scandalous - but then again. .. you never know.

At any rate, what all this tells me is that we need to think differently about what we do - what is actually required of us might not be the same things we think are required - but that’s for another post.

I read Is YouTube the Next Google? in Read/WriteWeb tonight (the title is somewhat misleading as YouTube is owned by Google so it’s not really the next Google, it is Google - but YouTube’s search is much different than Google’s textual search) and the post reminded me that, at times, I searched YouTube and was surprised how many of my typical search queries had user generated videos that existed and were tagged for that phrase or a related phase.

Earlier this year I had a client that ran an OCD clinic in London and wanted to create videos for Google Video Ads, and found several OCD videos in YouTube.   It worked for travel too - even in some details of places - perhaps even unfamilar hotels in a foriegn city that I might book a room in (if such were available); but it never went beyound that.

However, it appears that younger searches are using video search via services like YouTube almost as a replacement for Textual Search that Google normally provides.

True, Google has put Universal Search in place that includes videos and images into the mix, but at the end of the day what might emerge is textual search will eventually be replaced by visual and voice search (the new Google iPhone Voice Search was just released today in the iTunes store - though I can’t seem to find it yet and download it).

According to Read/WriteWeb

“….. he mentioned that his son accesses the web through YouTube. At first, I didn’t get it and thought Ian was making a joke. But then I realized he was not. Whenever his son needed any information, he would open up YouTube, type in the search term and then just watch the videos that showed up as matches. He never Googled anything; he never went to any other site; his entire web experience was confined to YouTube videos. It was rather puzzling.”

Since I have access to Comscore Media Metrix, I figured, if it’s really true that younger people are replacing textual search with video search, then the demographics profile of YouTube.com of October  07 compared to October 08 ought to show some marked differences - and they did!

October 2007  YouTube.com Demographics

Then I did the same thing for YouTube Demographics October 2008

Usage of YouTube by pre-adolescents 9-14 jumped by roughly 500% over that last year - kids between 2 and 11 years jumped up even more!

Now, you have to wonder - are kids of 2 years old using YouTube? I don’t know, but, somehow, ComScore thinks they are.   Hey, maybe we should call them “eKids” or “eToddlers”, and they probably aren’t as likely to use textual search as video search, or image search.

Also, notice the % Reach has gone up quite a bit, as well.  For example, % Reach is calculated as the the # of Unique Vistors (000) / Total Internet Audience for a Category - Comscore takes care of the Categorization and maintaining all of that is part of the hefty pricetag.

But ……. if YouTube is getting more youngsters searching on it - shouldn’t Google Textual Search get less, or at least, grow less fast, relative to Youtube?

Google Search Demographics - Comscore - October 2007

Again, I ran the same report for October 2008 and ….

And sure enough, there’s not nearly as much growth - for kids 9-14 there were 8,019,000 Uniques in October 2007 and 11,707,000 in 2008, an increase of 45% vs. the 497% growth of the use of YouTube for  the same age group.

Now, I didn’t look if there was differences in usage based on gender, but I’ve seen enough to be convinced that younger people, the future - is in video search and not so much textual search.

If that’s true, it has profound implications, as Search continues to evolve.

Further on in the Read/Write Web post Is YouTube the Next Google?

” … Ian said that his son frequently searches for episodes of Bakugan, which come up perfectly. Another likely search for a 9-year-old, Lance Wataru (a Pokemon character), works well, too. More specific searches, such as Donkey from Shrek, work even better.”

All I can say is ha, ha, ha …  so as more content is generated and placed online, search results for Video will get richer and richer and that can only mean textual searches days are numbered (but we don’t know the number yet).

In the RWW post it’s mentioned the main reason for textual search is hyperlinks work better - but that’s gradually being replaced by hyperlinking images

“…The main reason that text rules the web today is because of hyperlinks. Linking pages via text links is what makes the web possible. Hyperlinking videos would be a harder thing to do. Not impossible, of course, because you can link objects and insert text in videos, but it’s just not as elegant as text. Besides the linking issue, not everything would be an effective video. For example, a research paper could be made into a video but would not be as easy to follow as the text.

I agree, not everything is meant to be turned into video or audio content - and honestly, I bet if we took brain scans of searches using textual vs. voice search (ie: Google’s new iPhone Search applicaton with Audio Search) we’d find different centers of the brain being used in a textual search vs. an audio search - and we might as well extend that to video and image search as well.

And if we do that - we’ll see the queries themselves will differ in subtle ways, between what we’d write and what we’d say, when entering the same query to a Search Engine.

Is it far fetched to say the newer generation is evolving past textual search …. ?  I don’t think it’s that much of a strech.

You know, my friend, Sebastian Wenzel, told me just the other day, how helpful Gary Vaynerchuk has been for him, moving him to make better decisions, and I think Gary has helped me a lot too.   Having met him two weeks ago, he’s exactly, in person, what you see in his videos.

Executing on your DNA - being who you are and backing it up with Content and Results - Networking in whatever way works for you - what Gary says, well ….. it stuff the Heart knows, but the way he says it …. touches just the right note.  Watch Yelling vs. Whispering. Introvert or Extrovert.

Some people just “are” in a state of being “inspiring” - almost doesn’t matter what Gary Vaynerchuk is going to say, maybe he doesn’t even know half the things he’s going to say when he talks, but what comes out of his mouth, the way he conveys it - we get it - the message.

I want to say that I’m going through a difficult decision with a professional organization I’m part of - and it’s tempting to think that if I just were “different” and didn’t make waves, that everthing would be better.

But like Gary Vaynerchuk, who accepts his DNA, I need to accept mine - perhaps my role is to give the some of the organizations I belong to,  some soul searching ….. and what Gary teaches me, is to accept it - don’t try to please what someone else wants you to be - be yourself.

I guess that is what much of what Gary Vaynerchuk says, boils down to.  Yet … just like eating Chicken or drinking Wine, is more or less the same thing - there’s thousands of recipes for roasted Chicken and thousands and thousands of brands of Wine (gee.. Gary knows all about the Wine part).

Anyway, Being You is all about Content and Results.

I’m not sure which of the mini interviews in this online video Wisdom Trailer of an upcoming Book by Andrew Zuckerman impressed me more - I know it was pretty engaging just to watch about http://www.wisdombook.org/.

I’ve been hearing about the Social Media Storm Spreads as Motrin Ad Angers Moms, that Social Media Campaigns for well established Brands, like Motrin, should always  be run by someone who knows the Brand very well AND knows  how  Social Media functions, well - and, evidently, that didn’t happen, as referenced by B.L. Ochman.

This Motrin ad about moms who wear their babies in a variety of slings has set off a fire-storm on Twitter, where #motrinmoms quickly became the topic of thousands of angry tweets, and in blogs from mothers and lots of others, like me, who find the ad condescending. A Facebook group of moms who find the ad offensive quickly followed.

Clearly, nobody at Motrin, or its agency, was paying attention today, Sunday. And by Monday, you can bet that you’ll hear about this on the evening news and in dead tree media. Sure, Motrin will respond, or take the ad down, withdraw it from its rotation, etc. But the damage to the brand, among the very large and vocal niche they were targeting, is done.

Lesson to Motrin: any company that wants to participate in social media and use the tools better know how to walk the walk.

Sounds like the Social Media Ad that got lots of Mom’s in pain protest was just another Ad Agency “manufactured” Social Media plug, that didn’t work - people see right though that kind of stuff now.

“…I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: an ad agency the last place a company should go when it wants to use the tools of social media. Before you venture into social media, hire creative talent that has already created successful social media marketing campaigns for major brands. Everyone and her dog says they’re a social media guru. That’s just not true. Don’t believe the hype. Look at the track record instead.”

But this goes back to another idea that I wrote about today, but in an entirely different context, at The Analytics Guru - about Detroit’s Dilemma and lack of support from Republicans due to their relience on, what I called, the Reptilian Brain - I wrote about the Reptilan Brain a while back in Power of Pervasive Subliminal Advertising.

Why does Social Media require transparency?  Think…..   In order to process peer to peer community information, genuine feelings, there require more complex brain functions that can’t be faked - where as primitive, two dimensional thinking can be faked and gamed -and often has been.

Just going and hiring an Ad Agency to do your Social Media for your is a mistake - they’re just hired contractors, doesn’t matter if they’re experienced by virture of creating other campaigns - they aren’t you - they can’t be genuine because the agency is just a hired contractor - perhaps a partner, but still, not you.

In order to be genuine, and to be worthy of trust, you have to real, open and transparent, and that’s something you almost will never get by just going out and hiring an agency.

By the way, the Reptilian Brain, is both the problem and solution to a lot of different things we’re facing - and I brought it in to this context because Motrin, took a passive role, it appears, by just hiring an agency to do their work for them instead of making it something more grass roots.

Honestly, with all the people that legitimately use Motrin and find it works, including Moms, you’d think they could have gone out and found real grassroots support for a Social Media Campaign.

By the way, I haven’t even talked about the measurement of this Motrin campaign - which would have been a whole different post.

Just a thought on this Sunday, at dusk.

Sometimes, on difficult days, like today, or was it yesterday, now, I just feel like throwing in the towel, on Social Media.

I haven’t given up, won’t. Still, there’s a lot of obstacles to overcome, and can be difficult.

Even as Barack Obama begins the first YouTube Presidency, you’d think there would be recognition of the vital role of Social Media within professional, member driven organizations. Particularly, in Web Analytics, because it’s the Web Analysts, who, by nature of our tools and focus on online and marketing data analytics, are best suited to evaluate the success of Social.

Yet, for all the potential, before us, the path to it, is too often, blocked, by ignorance.

Where would Barack Obama be, today, if he believed, and those around him believed, that social media wasn’t important? Vital.

You’d think that now, especially just now, would be the perfect time to ramp up on social media as it’s one of the least expensive and most effective ways of reaching people.

But some people don’t see it that way; it’s like, they are not on the same page.

You know, I was speaking to a friend recently about the most effective source of traffic to her site; she used Google Analytics custom segmentation and found out that Stumbleupon was 1500% more effective than any other other source of referral traffic …and it’s a well known site that gets several million visits a month.

And yet …. You’ll find plenty of organizations who believe Social Media is not particularly important. I bet John McCain did not think much about Social Media, and look where he is, today.

Actually, I’m glad McCain and Palin didn’t focus on Social Media; I didn’t want them to win.

But in other cases, you’d be surprised; I know, I was.

Recently, I asked Eric T. Peterson, author of Web Analytics Demystified, what he thinks Analytics Organizations ought to focus on.

Peterson said, an Analytics Organization, in this case, The Web Analytics Association (my question to Eric was what did he think the WAA ought to focus on regarding Social Media); in that context, Eric mentioned the WAA should focus on Social Media Metrics (which, we actually, are, and will be publishing social media standards next year).

Eric asked me to make this correction, and I am glad I did, since I left out, from my earlier writing, on this post, the WAA’s work on drafting standards, the beginnings of which, started through my efforts via the Social Media Committee, which I built, from scratch. Social Media is now the largest committee of the WAA, with 76 members, by the way , about 8% if the entire WAA membership.

I also asked him if Special Interest Groups, or SIGs, would be useful for this purpose.

By the way, I noticed the recent EMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit that I attended, in Alexandria, VA, had an entire Tract (3 solid days of Social Media sessions) dedicated to Social Media Metrics.

That had never happened before at a Web Analytics Conference; found this encourging, and the speakers were great.

Too bad that focus isn’t actually carried into the organizational level more often.

I would imagine, and suspect, Social Media, really needs more of a focus in most organizations than it gets. Perhaps, that is also true of Online Marketing and Analytics Associations.

In fact, some of the best uses of Social Media, and some of the best presentations this year on Social Media, came from Panalists who worked for or with Non-Profits.

It turns Non-Profits tend to be willing to try things they think work and won’t cost much money.

Anyway, this is a long, rambling post, written entirely on my IPhone, hense, no hyperlinks or grammer, spellchecks.

I’ll be at MobileBarCamp, over at Microsoft Headquarters, in New York City, on Saturday, along with Sebastian Wenzel, WebAnalyticsBook.com; it will be a welcome change, attending this Mobile Analytics grassroots gathering, with Sebastian, who also happens to be part of the Web Analytics Association, the same one whose Board I currently sit on.

On the other hand, this Friday, for me, was a tough but interesting, intense day; Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNowInc and Grokdotcom.com, Jared Freedman of Code4Software.com, Eric T. Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified Inc, and Jesse Harriot of Monster Worldwide, are some of the best people I connected with and spoke with, today, and Bryan, Jared, Eric and Jesse really helped me to make up for misguided individuals who also cross my path. These individuals acted like the Egyptian God, Osiris, banishing another, Seth, associated with the Underworld in Egyptian lore.

Often Myths have their basis in some fundamental truth the myth symbolizes.

And, my conversation with Bryan Eisenberg, who talked me into running for the WAA Board 2 years ago, Bryan has been particularly helpful today and he was sick as a dog, with a bad cold, yet he spoke to me, and shared wisdom and insight. Thanks Bryan!

Again, I’m actually hearing, in my mind, the lore about an Egyptian God, Seth, Replaced, by another, Osiris. One could say ….back in the day.

Perhaps, the mythology of how Seth, God of the Underworld or Nearherworld, gets removed, replaced by Osiris, relates to the month of April Where Spring begins.

What we nead is renewal and the right focus. And maybe, we need to drill for that focus, or Oil, in Texas (ops! Solar Panels and Green, Renewable energy, please).

We really nead is Wisdom focused on Social Media and Web Analytics, and, too often, it has not happened.

Yeah, Seth, God of the Underworld being replaced by Osiris, of light and renewal, in April; God Willing, the sooner, the better.

Ok, time for bed, this has been a long, long day.

That’s going to be interesting … I mean …. this …. Google Is Taking Questions (Spoken, via iPhone); whatever you want to say about Google … they keep innovating Search - they just pushing the boundaries.  The other day they released data showing how Google Uses Searches to Track Flu’s Spread and just yesterday Google Exploring Old Rome Without Air (or Time) Travel.

I haven’t seen the iPhone application yet, it’s going to be available today.   It’s hard to say how much I’ll use it - but the fact they pulled something like Google Is Taking Questions on the iPhone is fantastic - beyond the scope of what anyone else could do.   Even the Google Earth for iPhone application is a stunning interface.   From The New York Times:

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.

The ability to recognize just about any phrase from any person has long been the supreme goal of artificial intelligence researchers looking for ways to make man-machine interactions more natural. Systems that can do this have recently started making their way into commercial products.

And there’s been other innovations that I haven’t checked out yet, not so much from Google, but what Microsoft is doing where Microsoft Beats Yahoo and Google to Social Inbox 2.0

Thursday, Microsoft announced a complex new version of the Web sites and PC software that use the Windows Live brand. Over the next two months, the company will introduce dozens of upgraded features involving its e-mail, instant message, calendar, blogging and other services. It will also add some entirely new functions, including group collaboration and photo sharing.

A lot of the effort has gone into weaving the functions of social networks throughout many of these services. For example, the service has a “what’s new” feed, modeled after the Facebook news feed, that can publish short comments by users as well as links to when they take certain actions, like publish new photos. The feed will be displayed on the instant message client and on new profile pages for users. And after you send an e-mail to people who use the new feed, you will see their most recent updates.

Microsoft is also reaching out to draw in information from other sites.

I guess, what I’m saying is that Search is getting interesting again - no so much for the act of searching - but how one can search and also receive information - a lot of innovation happening - it’s almost like that innovation is coming in waves.