My latest post at AllAnalytics.com was just posted this morning - Mining for Terrorists (or Tourists?!) which you might want to check out there.   There’s plenty of writing still to do – and I’ve had my hands full trying to keep up and this article was planned for last month, but I didn’t get down to write it till a few weeks ago.

You can read the rest of the post, along with the comments, here.  Feel free to leave your comments (you may have to register at AllAnalytics.com) there or here, at WebMetricsGuru.com.

Spoke at the Social Media Analytics Summit earlier this week in San Francisco; the conference was packed and pretty good, most people I spoke with were happy with the content.  My presentations from April 16th evening session and April 17th morning session are downloadable PDF files, in case anyone wants to view them, and both were well received.   My general impression, based on the sessions I listened to, were …

• Attensity and NetBase were the big winners at this show (but both also had booths)
• Attensity made a case with several enterprise clients speaking who moved off of other platforms and onto Attensity, such as EMC and Nieman Marcus, that Attensity has  moved to focus on businesses who were more mature, and who needed a partner who could integrate all their data and address it through the same data stream.
• Attensity and INattensity/Carasoft  are two separate companies, INattensity was spun off to deal with mostly Defense contracts and business – I have seen some of the the government facing work INattensity has done last year for the UK.
• Netbase seems to be evolving fast, especially with it’s partnership with CRM vendor SAP, though the connection today is mostly Netbase Data going into SAP – I am looking forward to playing with a NetBase instance that will be set up for me to view political themes in Rhode Island.

It was also great seeing Gary Angel for dinner (Semphonic) again and meeting Pete Mannix from Venuelabs.  Chase McMichael from Infinigraph attended the Summit and filmed my presentation on the 17th, hopefully I’ll have that footage soon – Chase was also invaluable as a second set of eyes on both presentation, so I got another perspective on what the audience at #smas12 would respond to – and when I can get expert advice, as I did here, I snap it up – and it was very, very helpful.  As a result, my presentations went over very well with the audiences, both days.

Was also able to visit the folks at ReTargeter and get a updated look at eCairn on this trip.   There’s also an outside chance I’ll make a last minute trip to XChange Berlin (if I can work out the logistics) late next month.   I’ll also be in Norway in Mid June to meet with Integrasco (who many of my readers are familiar with from my book).

Upcoming speaking and attending

• I will be speaking at La Boule de Cristal on May 15th in Montreal
• I will be attending the Sentiment Analysis Symposium on May 8th (and possibly May 7th evening session) in NYC

Thoughts I had over the last week

• Return on Investment may be the wrong lexicon for B2B Social Media, but the right one for B2C – this may account for why people are so confused about SMROI.  Was thinking back to a conversation I had with someone from Attensity earlier this week – the work they did and do with Whirlpool and now EMC didn’t really focus on the concept of ROI, it had more to do with business process improvement (which is also a return of investment – but not always expressible in currency).
• I gave a chat for Bob Tripani last Friday on Social Media ROI where I crystallized my thinking  that ROI that is currency based needs an apple to apple comparison between money invested and money gained/lost.  If the effort going into the equation can not be fully evaluated in terms of money invested, then the ROI calculation one would make will be inaccurate – perhaps better avoided in favor for a different lexicon or description of value of efforts expended.

Web Journal links I liked this week

• I was at Anthony Gemma’s announcement last Sunday – he is running for RI Dist 1 US Congress
• Check out this new Solar System Application 
• One of my Rutgers students for Social Media of the Arts created a Social Network for Desi (check it out)
• Google’s new Brand Metrics attempt to measure if an Ad was actually viewed - check it out.
• Google + turns out to be popular with Photographers (and there’s a conference in May in SF just for it).
• Semphonic continues to innovate with the a new framework for digital marketing – check out Gary Angel’s post.
• Social Media Monitoring for Photographs - interesting approach – check it out.
• Interesting study that shows the cities that influence music the most – and they are different than the one’s you’d have thought.
• Tim O’Rielly on why he liked Captain America but not John Carter.
• Coverage of my own appearance at #SMAS12.
• Treato looks interesting - a friend thinks it will put a few Health PR companies out of business (sooner the better).
• Need this new 3D App for iPads (hope it works on the iPad 1)
• Need to take a closer look at this Text Analytics Platform.
• Klout launches Brand Pages and gives to Brands what PR firms were unable to deliver, well (biased point of view, of course).
• Interesting new iPhone cases (this is a kickstarter project from one of my students at Rutgers) – I need one, my case went kaput in SF this week.
• The Internet at 30,000 Feet
• Guidance for Artists who what to use new media - this was done for my Rutgers students by Susan McDonald (think she did a great job).

My Global Search Engine Marketing [Book Review] is up at Search Engine Watch – go take a look – and remember that International Social Analytics Listening is the another side of the same problem as Global Search Engine Marketing.