This post is a summary of a user group presentation in Fremont on Jan 30th, 2007, hosted by Hurricane Electric, a Managed Services web host.

I’m live blogging from The Silicon Valley Web Builder’s second event focused on the “Beyond Web 2.0″

I’ve graciously accepted Bess Ho’s offer to be the moderator for the panel, we have Sean Ness Co-Founder at STIRR.net & Business Development Manager at Institute for the Future, Dmitriy Kruglyak CEO & Community Steward, Trusted.MD Network, and Harry McCracken the Vice President/Editor in Chief, PC WORLD.

This is a unique event, unlike other conferences that focus on current technology. This is glimpse into the future of web, technology, information, and how society will mix with it. There were over 100 people there, I polled the audience and many were software engineers, developers as the primary bunch. Met some interesting and intelligent folks, great crowd.

Here’s some of the predictions from the panelists:

Sean Ness

Sean’s 2007 Forecast

1. The iPhone flops
2. A presidential candidate drops out of the race early due
to a scandal hyped within the Web2.0 community
3. Second Life peaks and slowly dies off
4. A news stories causes the Internet to crash
5. Red Herring enters the magazine Dead Pool
6. Mobile walled garden persist
7. Twitter mushrooms as its commercial uses are adopted
8. OpenID is embraced by a “big player”
9. Reputation (RapLeaf) becomes a valuable online currency
10. The $100 Laptop is a non-starter

Sean’s 5-10 Year Forecast

1. Simulation literacy replaces computer literacy
2. Open mobile ecosytems…finally!
3. Sensemaking replaces sensing
4. Virtual Worlds (having learned from the SL slide) thrive
5. Tiny Data Servers, Huge Capacities
6. Broadband Networks Available Anywhere*, Anytime (*nearly)
7. Ambient Displays at the Human-Computer Interface
8. Tracking Physical Objects Made Easy with RFID
9. Data Mining for Effective Decision Making
10. The end of cyberspace

Dmitriy Kruglyak

Dmitriy’s 2007 Forecast

Web 2.0 term becomes dirty word
Cool makes way for profitable
Blurring of media and business applications
Solutions to real industry-specific problems
Web 2.0 meets enterprise salesforce & ROI metrics
Search for a model to reward social media contributors
A major Web 2.0 player implodes over trust or privacy issues
Category fragmentation finds its limits
Push for interoperability of identities & user profiles
Majority of users still won’t care about technology

Dmitriy’s 5-10 Year Forecast

Mobile devices in unforeseen form factors
Linux will become a viable choice on the desktop
Limitations of long tail business models will be well-tested
Social media integrates into the fabric of Fortune 500 businesses
New platform technology that does not exist today will be ubiquitous

Harry McCracken
I’m especially impressed with Harry who flew back from Demo in Palm Springs to speak at this event, then return the following morning at 6:30am. Thanks Harry

Harry’s forecast Beyond “Web 2.0″

Sophisticated Web-based applications
Community-created everything
APIs
Cheap Storage
Cheapl, rapid, development tools

Harry’s forecast on “Web 3.0″ (or at least 2.5)

See screenshots for details

Additional images from the event:

Update: see Matt Jaynes coverege of the event and his question over the ‘Web 2.0′ debate. Quite a prolific first post

Update 2: Colleague Irina and Eddie check out this small mobile device that exists today called the OQO, pretty interesting demo, and a nod to what lies ahead.

(Left: Scoble goes Johnny Mnemonic)

One of the interesting things about working at PodTech is how all kinds of interesting folks come into the office as well as interesting and unique products.

A few weeks ago, I showed you Chris Coulter’s Archos screen, here’s an interesting tool.

Thanks to Sam Levin who brought in his MyVu personal media player to PodTech. Interesting adaptation for mobile devices. He was playing video media from his iPod, the MyVu has a hardware device that attaches to the Video iPod.

MyVu Visor
The field of vision for the screen wasn’t too large, while not a ‘theater style’ it certainly let you do other things, such as moving about or pretending to listen to someone boring. I’m sure you could plug this to a PC, kick back in a lounger and do your work. It was an interesting experience, I’d love to play with this $350 toy on a plane ride.

The future of input and output devices for the web:
We’re starting to integrate video into the internet faster and faster, and IPTV could make a break for it in the next year or two.

I predict in the next 5-10 years that input devices to the web (today we use the keyboard and mouse) will slowly start to disappear and new technologies will figure out how to determine text from slight movements of your fingers, or watching your mouth move. I also expect that output devices (we currently use monitors and screens) will dissolve into glasses, transparent walls, and even holographic technology. I’m hoping a future technology will be able to embed an invisible screen (for a HUD) in prescription type glasses. Say good bye boring meeting! The internet (the name may change to something like the network or cloud) will become amorphous and ubiquitous.

Questions to be answered
How will we interact with the internet in the future? Will we continue to have visible devices? Will they become so small they dissipate and are barely noticable? Will the input and output devices be everywhere? Will we still have cubicle hell?

Love to hear your thoughts…

My friends that work at Yahoo and I agree that Yahoo is more of a Media company than anything else, so this announcement comes at very little surprise.

Yahoo has launched some interesting community platforms that aggregate content from a variety of their properties. Check out their Nintendo Wii platform site, it: Pulls in videos, social networking from existing yahoo profiles, there’s also message boards, FAQs, Content, ratings, trackbacks (a form of a memetracker) ecommerce modules, Q&A with Yahoo Answers, all with the feel of the branded experience of Nintendo.

There’s quite a few social aspects to this platform, where interaction with other real individuals is part of the core concept.

Now that Yahoo is doing the job of Nintendo’s Web team, what will those web professionals do? Oh yeah, play more video games. Since there is going to be 100 more branded websites launched in the consumer space, perhaps other web developers at those brands can take some time off.

Is this web development outsourcing a threat to web teams at consumer branded corporations?

Did the Nintendo Marketing department bypass the Nintendo Web Director to make this play happen?

To many, Jennifer McClure is one of those special people in the PR industry, she’s shared with me her passion for Public Relations, Social Media, and has helped to found a resource for our industry called the Society for New Communications. As well as the research arm called Society for New Communications Research.

They’re having a conference in Vegas soon, co hosted with Ragan PR, I recommend you attend if given the opportunity. I went last year, it was held here in Palo Alto and I had an enlightening experiences. A few months ago Jennifer and I spoke at Ragan PR in Chicago, I took notes of her session.

Jennifer Jones has interviewed Jennifer McClure on Marketing Voices. I recommend you listen in, here’s what you’ll hear an interesting discussion around: Building a Corporate Culture for Social Media, the discussion revolved around the topics of how Corporate cultures cultivate different deployments of Social Media, communicating within and outside of your company, and which industries are better at listening than others.

If you’re reading this in a feedreader, please access the player on the PodTech site. You may not see the embedded file below. This podcast was not paid for by Jennifer McClure or her associations.

If you’d like to share this video on your blog, forum, or website, please click the orange share button and grab the code and embed.

(Left: Thomas Hawk’s photo of Charlene Li)

Reviewing Charlene’s ROI of Business Blogging Research
Charlene Li sent me copies of her recently published Calculating The ROI Of Blogging from Forrester. It also included a PDF A Case Study A Look At The ROI Of General Motors’ FastLane Blog. Given my interest in the topic, she knew I’d give a fair review, and has given me permission to discuss it without giving the document away to others.

Previously, I’ve been very involved in this discussion, earlier this month I stated that corporations still require justification for business blogging (I’ve been talking to quite a few folks in corporations lately) in fact I even stated that you can’t measure the ROI of blogging until you can measure the value of other marketing activities.

How the formula works
Chalene and the Forrester crew did basic operations analysis and applied it to business blogging, it wasn’t too difficult. If you’ve figured out how to measure ROI around other activities at your corporation (such as that onsite cafeteria or dentist) then you should already be able to measure ROI for blogging. Dan Farber sheds some light on how this formula can be applied to any communication medium. (more discussions on techmeme)

Reservations on methodology
It’s not perfect however, as it can’t fully measure (and nothing can) the holistic goodwill and emotional impact business blogging can have to individuals. There are still some folks that throw caution into the wind, be sure to read KD Paine’s reservations and comments on scope of cost. I’ve had debates on ROI for blogging many, many times, and often while on stage.

My unbiased opinion
After spending time reviewing her documents, and based upon my interface with those that are deploying these programs at corporations, here’s my honest opinions on Forrester’s document. Depending on your situation, I recommend and don’t recommend the document:

This document is best suited for:
I recommend this document to corporate folks that need to deploy Business Blogging (like I did at Hitachi) only if you’re at an impasse to prove to upper management. For many corporations, $375 is a small amount of money to pay for the report.

You may not need this document if you have:
Already successfully deployed a social media program at your company, and it’s already deemed a success. Management is pleased with you, and you’re already obtaining more budget. If you’re already able to prove the success of your programs (without having to compare against costs) then you may not need this document, just continue forward. Even if you don’t need to bring to the table an ROI metric, you should still be measuring. Also, this way, if you have a change in management’s opinions, you can apply the measurement over the cost, and spend some time to obtain an ROI metric.

Focus on Social Media Measurement
PodTech’s clients are asking for this, so it’s toward the top of my interest levels. I’ve been very interested in this topic, as I was trying to measure while deploying in my previous corporate role. In my current role as a consultant, many of our clients are asking “what does success look like” and “how do we show this to management”. I’ve also been involved with Factiva and thought leaders from our industry for a roundtable. View all my posts tagged Social Media Measurement.

Thank you Charlene for sharing the report with me and letting me provide an unbiased opinion. Excellent work, Forrester has helped to move our industry forward yet again.

Last night over dinner, Kristy Wells (who is one of the founders of Social Media Club) and I discussed the usage of the term Social Media. I gave a lot of thought to that term before using it. Before, I was using the phrase Community Marketing as that is really the corporate end result that these tools are doing.

The biggest criticisms folks have against Social Media is that Media can’t be social, I first heard that from Dennis. I’ve thought about some other terms such as “Socializing Media”, but that just sounds odd. “Conversational Media” doesn’t work either, as not all of the tools exhibit conversational traits, some have unwritten gestures. To me, the term “new media” is even worse, as how long will any technology or trend be new? Help me come up with some better terms, but please, don’t say “Web 2.0″.

Chris Coulter has been giving me his thoughts on this in the back channel, hopefully he’ll jump in here and give his opinion, which is always welcome.

If you can come up with a better term, I’ll be happy to change my vernacular, I’m always looking to improve.

Update: Loren hates Social Media, but be warned he uses harsh language, and um, well is not wearing much. If you’re ok with that, watch his video.

Update 2: I wasn’t clear on my stance in this post. I prefer the term “Social Media” as I’m unaware of a better term to use. There are folks that dislike the term “Social Media”, so this is a post asking those that don’t like it to suggest a better term. If they can convince me, I’ll change my vernacular.

I’ve changed the title of this post from:

“Hate the term “Social Media?” help come up with a better term”

“Do you Hate the term “Social Media?” (I don’t) then help come up with a better term“

Update Feb 22: Doc Searls responded to Brian Solis (but Doc didn’t provide any useful nomenclature to replace Social Media) Scoble is feeling defensive.

Ben Edwards is an evangelist that I respect. He’s at IBM (a PodTech client) and been involved from the early days in helping to progress communications forward.

We talked about what it was like to help a culture open up using communication tools to reach customers. When I was building out my Social Media programs at my recent corporate employer, I often use IBM as a model for a large company that is progressive with communication.

Last week, I had the opportunity and privilege to speak with Ben on a panel on Business Bloggging. I was able to get a few minutes away and interview him regarding IBM’s social media strategies. They’ve deployed blogs, wikis, forums, events, and even have a few islands in SecondLife.

If you’re reading this in a feedreader, you can access the video directly by going to the PodTech site.

I’m starting to take my video camera with me to different tech events to interview folks, although IBM is a client of PodTech, this video was not paid for by IBM.

Customer Reference Programs to transform due to Social Media
This post is intended as a resource and a start of a discussion for those that manage Corporate Customer Reference Programs, please forward this post to the right person in your company.

This is an important intersection that required some light in a recent Customer Reference conference. Social Media (Blogs, forums, podcasts, social networks and other tools) impact nearly every arena of the corporate organization. I’m not part of the Word of Mouth organization, nor part of the Customer Reference industry, but I am a Social Media consultant looking in.

Value of Customer Opinions
Nielsen Buzz Metrics research indicates that consumers trust other consumers above all others. Other research leans towards word of mouth. Prospects value the opinion of a customer over that of the vendor.

About Customer Reference Programs
As a result of the value of network based customer opinions, Customer Reference programs were born to the corporate enterprise.

Having managed or helped to lead four Enterprise Intranets at large corporations over my web career, I know that deliverables from a Customer Reference program is an invaluable to the Sales Cycle.

The Customer Reference Program Manager is responsible to build a library of examples of how customers have deployed their products across different industries or environments. Often, they obtain these references by providing bonus services to customers, beta testing products or other incentives. Sometimes, sales teams are required to obtain customer references before a compensation check is issued to account teams.

These important references are captured, organized, and republished (from PDF, video interview, a phone reference etc). Many corporate websites make excellent use of these references, here’s a few great examples from EMC, IBM customer videos, Microsoft, SAP Webcasts, and Hitachi Data Systems.

It’s possible to quantify the actual return from customer reference programs.

Diagram 1: Traditional flow of Customer Reference information

Social Media Tools lower boundaries for sharing
The examples above are a good indicator of the path of least resistance for a prospect to find a detailed customer reference was from the corporate vendor. It’s widely known that Customer Reference Programs often filter, adjust, and select the content for the benefit of the company.

Now with easy-to-publish web tools such as blogs, forums, rating site, and social networks, individuals can openly and honestly provide opinions, thoughts and engage in discussions. I, and others like me, do this frequently for products we use. The barriers to entry are internet access and basic tool knowledge.

Social Media empowers anyone to publish their voice and to be easily heard, for negative customer feedback this is a disruption and opportunity, for positive customer feedback, this is an opportunity.

Future generations of workers and decision makers primarily rely on their social networks to communicate, known as the tivo generation, digitally native, and myspace generation.

Diagram 2: Social Media Transforms Communication

Disruptions
Customers and talk directly to prospects bypassing a corporations, marketing and customer reference programs.

1) Customer References Content is selective
Content from customer reference programs (like other Marketing materials) gloss the company in a positive light. When a prospect is evaluating an important decision (such as a tool that could impact their career) they are expected to obtain information to make a logical business decision.

2) Customers can easily publish their customer experiences on Social Media tools.
When I was the Community Manager at Hitachi Data Systems, I experienced how customers were talking about our products, (from evaluation, installation, performance and more) and there was nothing I could do to prevent them from publishing their raw opinions. (example of our flagship product review)

3) Google makes finding opinions easy
We live in a Google world, and blogs score high in search results due to their high degree of linking. Blogs tend to have specific niche content (long tail) which indicate a high results score on search results for specific product name. (example: search results, at one time, this blog was higher in the results than the corporate website)

While an overused example, at one point, Jeremy Zawodny’s post complaining about Dell Support was displayed higher on the Google search results than the actual Dell Support page. (it’s now lower on the results page) Be sure to read the many comments of folks that offered their opinion.

Both of these examples are disruptive to how traditional customer references were captured and share, the first being a positive mention, the second being negative.

3) How Prospects can find Customer Opinions
Here’s some examples of how prospects can easily find opinions of customers using Social Media tools, please note, some of these are as old as the Internet.

Social/Network Ratings: CNET is one of the early adopters when it comes to customer ratings and reviews. Also see epinions, yelp, and other sites.

Blog Search Tools:
Tools such as Technorati, TalkDigger, Sphere, and Google Blog Search.

Sentiment Mining Tools
Robert and I had a discussion on using the terms X sucks to find out customer opinions. Also try tools like “Google Fight”, see Intel vs AMD, HDS vs EMC, Google vs Yahoo, Also see Opinmind: An early version of a sentiment mining tool

Opportunities
Fortunately, there are more opportunities to make a customer reference program strong using these tools, here’s some suggestions to get started:

1) Partner up!
In many companies, a “Community Manager” role or “Social or Digital Media Manager” is starting to appear as a result of the customers talking to each other and talking back. As a Customer Reference Manager you should align with them. If your company has yet to recognize the impact of these tools on your company and brand, see this post on Corporate Blog Evangelism.

2) Start to Monitor and Listen to what Customers are Saying
Learn how to use Technorati, Google Alerts, apply them to your company name, specific product name, executives. Teach Product teams and support to do the same. There’s a lot to learn from the Church of the Customer blog.

3) Engage and Harness Customer Feedback
Customers that praise your products from websites and blogs will make natural candidates for your customer reference database. Reach out to them, and ask them if they’d like to participate. Of course, as you tell prospect about their opinion, you’ll want to indicate that they willingly and voluntarily provided this feedback without your coaching or being incented. Give consideration to using negative customers opinions to win a customer for life.

If you reference customers with blogs, they are already public information, so the process in getting customer feedback is that much faster.

4) Reuse these references in other ways
If you’ve already established a corporate blogging program at your company, encourage your bloggers to link to the positive references of your customers, as well as learn to deal with the negative ones.

5) Best Practices as Social Media
Now that you’ve started to understand how to listen, your company will need to figure out how to respond to raw customer opinions. The worst thing to do is to listen and do nothing. (See what happened to Dell) Learn how to turn negative feedback about your company into a positive. There’s been cases where a customer having problems with a product will publicly blog about it, the company will respond and fix it and the customer will become a brand advocate and defender. This art is a bigger discussion, but I suggest starting with the book Naked Conversations.

Anti-Marketing Marketing emerges. At Microsoft, Robert Scoble (now my colleague) was hired as a technical evangelist for Microsoft products. He became a living customer reference program by linking to bloggers who said positive and negative things about Microsoft. By leveraging both the good and bad feedback from real customers he became a trusted source to find customer and market opinions about Microsoft.

6) Customer Reference Programs to use Social Media
There’s some fantastic tools available at your disposal now. You’re not limited to only creating PDFs on your website. With little resources you could create use social media tools to harvest the voice of the customer, and share with prospects, here’s a few ideas:

A) Organize internally
Create an internal blog at your company that references all the instances of customers talking about your products in public forums, blogs, podcasts, social sites etc. I recommend attending a conference by the Blog Business Summit, New Comm Forum, or Word of Mouth Association.

B) Publicly recognize opinions
Create this an external blog and link to all customer references on blogs, forums or in podcasts in your industry. To build the most audience trust, both negative and positive. If you work at a company with a passion community, it’s likely some customers may have already done this. You’ll be able to save yourself some time by referencing public blog posts (perhaps from your own blog) which could reduce the time to getting customer permission. In some cases, public recognition is incentive for these natural references. Here’s an interesting outcome of a small customer getting the CEO of Sun Microsystems to listen and respond.

See what people say negatively about PodTech, and how we responded. Also learn about this panel I spoke on, the theme was “Negative is the new Positive”

C) Capture and encourage those voices
That lets real customers provide their best practice information, real feedback, and rants and raves about your products. Consider involving your practice groups. For many companies this is a safe approach as you can control which passion customers will be selected to attend this session. Here’s some interesting ways to generate buzz for your program, both internally and externally.

D) Video shares human stories
Customer References shouldn’t be limited to PDF or Audio. Video is a great way to convey the human emotion and display a deeper connection.

The Future
Customer Reference Programs will expand in scope or overlap with other corporate programs:

1) Expanded Scope
There will be an overlap between the Customer Reference Program and Community/Social media programs at many corporations over the next year.

2) Listening Toolset
Customer Reference Programs will use Social Media tools to find customer opinions.

3) Authenticity
Effective Customer Reference programs will integrate negative comments and opinions into it’s program for great trust and authenticity with the market.

4) Conversational Toolset to Publish
Customer Reference Programs will use Social Media tools to help tell the stories. Some companies will benefit from the interactive benefits of these tools.

Diagram 3: Future Customer Reference Information Flow

About
This post stemmed from a discussion with a PodTech client (see right nav for list of clients) whom I serve as a Social Media consultant. I frequently use this blog as a resource for our customers as well as be a resource to the network. I would be interested in sharing additional information at a Customer Reference conference, you can learn more about me on my profile.

Media 2.0 Workshop is an aggregation of voices in the New Media landscape, you can easily subscribe via one feed or grab the OPML.

If you’re familiar with my writing style and focus, you’ll know that I focus on how Corporations can benefit by using the web. The changes in power that Social Media provides the power to the participants. My frequent theme is letting go to gain more, and to become a participant. I’m most specifically interested in the intersection and collaboration of customer and corporate media to improve communities

As a professional, I grow by hashing out ideas, memes, and themes with folks that have similar passions. Friend Daniela looped me in with Chris Saad, and has asked me to participate in a different way. Chris is the brain child of the Media 2.0 Workgroup which basically is an aggregation (or Digital Magazine if you will) of the voices that focus on this topic:

“The Media 2.0 Workgroup is a group of industry commentators, agitators and innovators who believe that the phenomena of democratic participation will change the face of media creation, distribution and consumption. Join the conversation…” -Read the rest of Chris’s vision from his blog

You can view other similar voices and thought leaders in the new media landscape on the Media 2.0 Workgroup page.

While I’ll still continue to write about what matters to me on this ‘career blog’, I recommend you subscribe to this aggregated feed, (leave a comment below if you did) add it to your feedreader and categorize or put into a folder tagged “media”. This aggregated feed will save you time from finding common voices and adding to your own feedreader.

Thanks Chris Saad for setting this all up, I look forward to these conversations.

Tagged Media 2.0, “Media 2.0″

(Left: I took this picture of Shel Israel using my color selector feature my Canon SD600)

Last night during coffee after dinner, Blogging Jedi Master Shel expressed to us of his concerns with some situations of bloggers taking advantage of their power, or organizations fearing bloggers. When he talks, there’s usually great wisdom or a lesson to be learned, this was no exception.

These four instances of abuse of power by bloggers and those that were watching bloggers. I suspect this trend will continue, just as it does for politicians, journalists, and anyone who obtains power.

Blogger ethics call for being 1) Honest and fair, 2) Minimize Harm, and to 3) Be Accountable.

I would add that any blogger should try to add to the community, and give credit when appropriate. And yes, that means that A-list bloggers need to start linking out, interesting thoughts from Chris.

As we gain more power by having a louder voice, we need to maintain credibility, I remember last Monday at the Frost and Sullivan conference where one attendee told me “Blogs are just a bitch session”.

Today over lunch, I told my friends I’m careful not to blog about folks that might not already be on the web. What I say about them can quickly find it’s way up search results, impacting their personal brand. The same goes to companies that do wrong, a blogger with incredible page rank can quickly destroy a search marketing program. I blogged about him using his first and last name a while ago, and it’s the top search result in Google. Since employers are known for doing Google searches for new employees, this is power I must yield carefully.

I just created a new category called ‘ethics’, and this is my first post tagged to it, probably something I should have done a long time ago.

Last night, Robert showed his 60″ Sony High Def projection LCD while enjoying a glass of red to Shel our wives and I. Of course, Shel and I used this is a springboard to convince our wives how our lives are somehow incomplete without one. The clarity of the image is just amazing. Interesting to note that Robert has a Polk speaker setup (as do I).

We were watching Mark Cuban’s HDTV channel on Direct TV, Mark’s recently been discussing what should lead, Internet or TV. At one point the AVN footage came up from Vegas, since we were waaay to busy working at Bloghaus, it was interesting to watch from afar. Yes, really interesting. Not to worry, our wives were there to kick, pinch, slap us.

Quite a bit of Robert’s content is being recorded in High Definition, and with IPTV slowly peeking it’s beak out, I know good things will come. I’m predicting a marriage of the Internet and TV into some new type of tool that will have the benefits of all.

Of course, I teased Robert a bit about his post yesterday, I told him he had so many updates he “should have just published a wiki” so everyone could correct him.

I must add that Maryam is a wonderful hostess and cook, excellent salmon and chicken! I told her that her latest post was pretty funny. Shel brought a very nice bottle 2001 Cab over from Silver Oak winery, it was a great wine, had a smoky woodsy taste to it. The interesting thing is, he had stocked up on a few of those bottles before they became popular or expensive. This man knows potential when he sees it. We were also expecting the Citizens but they couldn’t make it, next time for sure.

Maryam, Robert, thanks for being great hosts, Shel, Paula, wonderful wine and brownies. It seems like we all run into each other quite a bit. I’ll be in Miami with Shel in two week at the WeMedia conference, we’re hosting yet another blogger dinner.

(I owe an apology to someone! I was not able to make another event, and I feel pretty bad. Sorry man, I’ll make it up to you next time!)

I just ‘casually’ asked my wife:
“Since Robert has an HD, and since we do so much video at PodTech we should probally get one for home. don’t you think?”

She said:
“Tell John to get you one”

Dang, I never win, ha!

Lunch 2.0 is about community.

It’s an open house of sorts for startups (and big companies too) to welcome the community that talks, influences, and communicates with each other using the web. It’s a great way to get exposed to new people, ideas, and products.

Meebo the ultimate Instant Messaging company was no exception. Nestled in hip Mountain View (an interesting city with free municipal wifi) on bustling Castro Street, Meebo hosted quite a few folks, catered in Thai food (as well as some ‘Thai pizza’) in their cozy abode.

For the most part, I’ve cut instant messaging out of my life, save for the computer reboots that auto start one of my five IM clients, and the immediate business need. If I were to jump back into IM, I would probaly start with Meebo as it aggregates all clients onto one page –literally.

I ran into friends Juan, Mark Jenn, Joseph Smarr, Noah Kagan, and finally got to meet Jason Calacanis (now hanging with Sequoia that funds meebo) who does a podcast with PodTech, have you heard the Calacanis Cast yet? Jason told me he reads my blog, and liked some of the posts I did on B2B Social media, sweet!

This picture is great, you can see my Asianness is rubbing off on Jason.

This video is of Andreas and Danny of Meebo, two of our hosts. I took that video towards the start of the event, by the time I left at 12:30 it was nearly double the crowd.

Video: Lunch 2.0 at Meebo

Click To Play

Thanks Meebo for being such wonderful hosts, pictures below (tagged “lunch20″).

Early Evangelism
This is interesting, I received this email today. To protect her identity, I’ve removed any personal info:

Hi Jeremiah,

If I remember correctly you were the one who first invited me to join LinkedIn, some time in early 2005. Is that correct? I just want to mention that I reaped a benefit from belonging to it, so I thank you. A recruiter contacted me about a full-time position, and I asked how she got me name, and she said from LinkedIn. Well, I actually got that job and started this week! This is a big career move for me. Since I was relatively happy contracting, I was not looking for a job, but now I think this was a good decision.

I was encouraging people to use LinkedIn during the early days, when the first web bubble was collapsing (realizing how important one’s network was) before LinkedIn was popular, I had a list of names and emails at Exodus on my personal website (now retired) in an image so everyone could stay connected. I guess I’ve always liked being a ’super connector’.

I don’t use LinkedIn as much now, in fact I don’t respond to most requests to accept, why? The folks that I want to find are already easy to connect to via their blogs or other social networks. Identies and profiles are everywhere, not just in LinkedIn.

Blog/Book Strategy
I told my wife that James Clark and Jason Cormier really made my week, he gets what I’m trying to do and summarizes with this wonderful post:

Jeremiah’s blog is his book, don’t you see?

I’m asked once in a while, “Why don’t you write a book” or “Let’s write a book together”.

I’ve given it some thought, but not much. I’m trying to connect to my audience using my blog and that seems to be working pretty well. Of course, if some publishers want to offer me a sweet deal, I’m open for anything. I also see that there are quite a few books being written around social media, communities, what would make a book standout from the rest? For those that are trying to establish thought leadership in social media, why write a book?

If you can’t tell by now, the focus on my blog is changing, as I hear from clients, I think it’s working and seek to always improve. As always, I’m listening, leave any suggestions about this blog, even if suggestive in, the comments or send me an email.

Update: In the last few weeks, I’ve been pushing out a lot of ‘how to’ content. A lot of this was locked up in my brain, and it’s more appropriate than ever to share it with my clients and the network. Now that I’m a consultant to many companies, I’m unleashing much of my knowledge as long as it doesn’t impact PodTech in a negative way.

I’m very grateful to be able to talk to PodTech clients about social media, so there will never be a shortage of content (keep in mind, I shield any confidential/competitive info). I’m hoping to try to identify the trends that I’m seeing when it comes to awareness, adoption, measurement, and successes.

I’m live blogging right now. I’m sitting at Cnet with over 50 people discussing the future of Mobile technology, identity, security, contextual marketing, and the impacts of social networking at the first Mobile Identity Workshop hosted by Internet Uncle Doc Searls and Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

I sense a lot of annoyance with traditional telcos, there’s quite a bit of sharing, it’s really more of a think tank, that’s why I love unconferences. An unconference is sort of a workshop where the agenda is determined by the participants, and everyone gets a chance to talk and share. Yes, a bottom up conference.

Windley is taking notes and comments on Doc’s stats at the opening of the day:

There were a few interesting points such as protecting one’s personal information while giving out preferences, sharing with others, deploying traditional media over mobile devices. In one session it was agreed upon that the password will be dead in a few years, and some other type of technology will be able to determine identity.

We also talked about the next generation of mobile users, Gen Y and somewhat X. The term “digital natives” was used to describe this generation. Mobile technology is more advanced in other cultures outside of North America.

Some folks suggest that one’s online persona will be an accurate reflection of their real life persona.

One of the more interesting sessions, we were throwing out ‘dream features’ for the ideal podcasting device, Dave Winer took notes. I suggested, easy to publish, on board real time mixer, ability to create audio ‘conversations’, and ability for multiple people to contribute to the podcast.

I had lunch with two cnet employees. What a cool company to host this event, they even provided lunch.

There were some other interesting conversations about the future of mobile technology, will be become so small that it’s pervasive. eTelepathy I like to call it.

Unconference: The attendees determine the agenda by placing the topics on the board, you can attend any of the tracks you want

Healthy conversations in every track

Deep thinking

Our gracious hosts, CNET

Technorati tag = miw2007

Jonathan Carson of Nielsen Buzz Metrics and I just got off phone. We discussed my focus and interest in the Social Media Measurement space as it will be important to corporate marketers.

I love it when top executives reach out to folks in their industry. A year ago, I blogged about Factiva and their CEO ( a blogger during that time) sent me a personal email.

We talked about how many Social Media measurement programs will be customized based upon the objectives of a program, a one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work. I told him how I suspect that marketers will need to achieve these three objectives: 1) Determine what is happening in the conversations out there 2) Measure the impact when they join 3) Be able to analyze data in a variety of ways.

CEOs are starting to reach out to folks that connect with others, both by using the phone, email, and now blogs. In fact, check out this list of CEO blogs that are starting to emerge. Last year, it was just Boeing and Sun.

Thanks Jonathan for the call, looking forward to meeting you soon.

Many Marketers
I’m very fortunate to be able to talk to many of the wonderful Corporate Marketers all over Silicon Valley (our client list) and beyond, and business blogging and social media still requires some justification or some ROI to higher ups. Shel Israel is right, much of the blogging will happen at the edges of the company, built up by grassroots efforts. Corporate Marketers tend to figure this out really early, or really late, many often don’t realize that their own employees are already blogging. (and I’ve shown them using Technorati)

Charlene Li has an interesting report that helps to define the ROI of Business blogging, she lists out quite a few variables to measure, but I promise you, that’s only a partial listing. Some additional examples could be reduced support costs, increased hiring opportunities, measurable brand influences, decrease in Marketing Collateral, and the time saved by a blogger that is now able to email the world, rather than small groups.

The dreaded Success/ROI question
Today, one Analyst Relations Marketing manager asked me about the Gartner report that says Blogging is slowing down. My response? Do you have kids? If so, how do they communicate? The next generation doesn’t read the newspaper, the TV is ambient, and they only use email when they have to. Please don’t forget that MySpace and Facebook have blogging features, and that’s just North America. That lead into an interesting discussion, and I think he sees the value. Recently, I heard that Gartner has silenced unsanctioned blogs, which makes sense given they sell intellectual property, are you surprised they would issued such a report? Funny how Charlene and Forrester embrace blogging.

By the way, for most of the clients that I talk to (well they are more sophisticated than that credit union in the mid west) they understand the importance of these tools, rarely do they push back, they just need to understand.

Today I was asked “How to you measure success of Social Media Programs” from a Sr Marcom manager. I told her I have two answers:

1) How do you measure the success of a conversation between your sales rep and a prospect in the early stages of a relationship? How do you measure the success of all your other marketing and branding activities, the formula would be the same. That’s a very silly answer to her question, here’s the practical answer

2) I recommend measuring the success of a Social Media program depending on the objectives, there is no cookie cutter way to measure success, it depends on the goals of the program, whether it be thought leadership, buzz, reaching to customers, managing crises, customer outreaches, etc.

I’m patient
Blogging has yet to normalize, so we’ll continue to have to justify something until ‘publish to all’ is a feature of Microsoft Outlook and other email tools, give it a few years.

(Update: The Normalization of blogging is a phrase I’ve been using quite frequently, I want to credit Blog Business Guru Shel Israel for first imprinting how it will flatten.)

Over the past week, there’s been a caged match about the Social Media Press Release (SMPR). Folks have been fighting both pro and against it as a viable tool for communication that could bridge both the traditional and ‘new’ social media tools for corporations.

Still on the fence about the Social Media Press Release ’till I get more info
For the most part, I stayed out of it, I see some of the faults, but I also see some of the benefits. I don’t have enough information and haven’t seen it deployed successfully to validate if it’s something I would recommend to clients. I’m still wondering if the SMPR is a tool primarily for the press and media

Street fight in the ‘hood
Sometimes the web industry can be a downright dirty mob fight. The first jab started from Stowe, a haymaker from Scoble. The defending team Chris extended a defensive parry blast, and Brian’s sidekick supported the SMPR. Oberkirch throws a haymaker (update: in support of hRelease), Shel slingshots a chicken with lipstick, followed by Jeremy with a flying drop kick, Chris double blocks back, of course, Hugh McCloud grabs his spray cans and paints the alley with yet more graffiti. Things turned into quite the brawl, and you can see the full effect on TechMeme a conversation tracker.

In my opinion, the debate has yet to be resolved, it’s not clear from an industry perspective if we embrace the SMPR as a whole.

Case study: Seagate integrates Social Media into an Announcement

I’ve started to pay more attention to press releases, and how they integrate with Social Media. A few days ago, Seagate (A PodTech client) announced their financials, and they did something interesting. In addition to the regular ways of telling the world via normal announcements, they had podcasting personality John Furrier (my boss) interview the CEO of Seagate and upload quickly on this podcast.

For some time now Seagate has links to Social Media directly in their press release, linking directly to the Seagate Channel on PodTech.net.

This is an interesting for a few reasons:
1) Seagate has integrated social media into the announcement
2) Seagate has integrated social media into the press release.
3) Seagate has not suffered from message decay (one of the primary reasons for the SMPR)
4) Seagate has done this without a formalized Social Media Press Release format or tool

Can Social Media integrate with a Press Release? Do we need a Social Media Press Release?
As Linda Furrier points out in Jeremy’s comments, there is room for both, it will be some type of hybrid. Maybe we do need a SMPR, it’s possible it’s not for the general consumer or community, but for the press.

Related Observations:

I’m proud that our Industry openly debates issues
During the debate, I sent an email to those that were deeply involved, at how our industry can debate topics in public, figure out what works and rebuild better and stronger. It’s a collective and global debate in the web industry, and it’s what makes us unique.

Applause for Brian Solis and Chris Heuer
I’d especially like to recognize Brian and Chris for really following Business Blogging best practices. They followed the conversation wherever it went (including a Google Group that I am part of) and defended their stance. They left comments, responded via their blogs, very professionally, they really kept their presence active and I applaud them for standing by for what they believe in and defending it. I wish I was a fly on the wall at the office on Monday, as you know Stow and Chris share office space.

My related thoughts:

I asked the community what they thought of the Social Media Press Release

Edelman release the Social Media Press Release tool ‘Storycrafter’ (I don’t get it)

Social Media Tools enables Storytelling at the Edges

If your website at your company doesn’t have Syndicated feeds on your website, please send this to your web team, I’m here to help.

What you should know about Syndicated Feeds for your Corporate Website
Yesterday, a respected PR professional asked me some excellent questions on Syndication deployment, usage, and tactics. Given her background is not web, this is an excellent question, and I’m glad she asked. This post is intended as a basic primer, and I’m going to avoid any technical discussions. As you hopefully know, I use this blog to answer questions that I get from prospects, customers, friends, and family about the web.

Syndicated feeds such as RSS, and Atom and other feeds are becoming increasingly popular primarily due to the blogging explosion, (Syndicated content is a default feature of nearly every blog) and is starting to take hold on non-blog sites as well.

How it works
Websites, blogs, and other tools offer syndicated feeds. Users can tell it’s available on the page as there are icons on the webpage, and some browsers indicate this (see orange icon on browser). Users can then subscribe to the feed from a feedreader or from their subscribe feeds section on the browser. This let’s the user be alerted when there is information changed on the website, and they can consume the content when they want, and how they want.

Why it matters
I already discussed how Web Marketing is not on two domains only (your website and google search results) the modern web marketer needs to start building the resources for users now that the information power is starting to shift to the users.

Adoption levels for those that are actively using a feedreader, but the adoption trend will continue to grow. Since the next version of Outlook (a staple of many corporations) it will have a built in feedreader in the Inbox. Feedreaders will be mainstream just like email, so please start your planning now.

You want your users to subscribe to your content, this means they are signaling they want more content, and an indicator they are a highly relevant, targeted audience, don’t let them down!

While at Microsoft, tech blogger Robert Scoble proclaimed some very strong remarks for Web Marketers that don’t have RSS on their site.

Modern Web Marketing is giving to users
If you run a website for a company or organization, I would encourage you to deploy an syndicated feed program for your site, it will give the visitors of your site the opportunity to subscribe (only if they want to) to your content so they can consume it when and how they please. In marketing, this is an opt-in model. For this to be effective you’ll want to keep the feeds updated.

Examples
The tech industry is often the testbed for adopting new technologies, and there are many companies that have RSS right on their homepage. You can see a prominent RSS icon on the Hitachi Data Systems site, and PodTech has quite a few.

RSS Strategies for your Corporate Content
Take a look at IBM, which has deployed RSS in a very advanced way, they’re providing a feed for what appears to be every product and offering in the entire company. Since different users have different needs, segmenting will provide a higher degree of relevancy and accuracy for the subscriber. It’s even broken down by language.

It makes sense to segment your content and cut it as many ways as possible, look for content that is frequently updated such as press releases, updated collateral, white papers, and even your email newsletter. Since it’s native to podcasts, blogs, and other social media tools, be sure to put all of these on one page, making it easy for users to select from the ‘menu’

Don’t have RSS on your Corporate Site?
It’s not hard to implement this, you can use a free blog (go to wordpress) and create this account. Then you can send the feed into feedburner which will provide you with metrics. Add the RSS icon to your homepage, and then populate the blog with updated content: news, new media, or to be as so bold as to blog. If you’re more technical, you can find an RSS generator which could be a way to deploy everytime your website updates. I’m sure all of the above recommendations are free, time and a bit of know how is all that is needed.

Costs
Deploying RSS on your corporate website, (say maybe one feed) should cost no dollars, it should primarily be labor, consult your developers for more details. Many of the tools I’ve suggested have zero dollar cost. Since content is already updated on your site (news, press, new collateral, etc) you don’t have to create new content, just use this as a vehicle for extended reach.

Getting Started
1) Get educated, I’ve provided some links below
2) Get a feedreader, There’s a ton here, I happen to use Google Reader, and have also used Google Homepage, MyYahoo, and Bloglines. My feedreader saves me time.
3) Subscribe to some feeds (start with mine)
4) Create RSS for your own site, test it out
5) Grow: Segment content, find better tools, make it part of your integrated marketing approach

What’s Next
I expect CMS systems in this year to be offering a wide multitude of RSS output features, and even create engines that allow users to create their own customized feed.

I also recommend you consider offering RSS on your site, as there are ’scraping’ technologies appearing that will take your content off your site and convert into RSS, even if you don’t want it to. This may not be ideal for you, as the content that it’s scraping may not what you want to serve up to your highly relevant audience. A way to subscribe to content will eventually be on every single webpage whether the creator likes it or not.

Learn More
If you want to know more about RSS, (and want to first impress your IT guys how much you already know) I first recommend you check out Robyn Tippin’s RSS Marketing Blog, there are a ton of great resources, you can check out Wikipedia’s collection. Or see this google results page on RSS Marketing. Last but not least, we should all recognize the most major contributor to RSS is Internet Uncle, Dave Winer, learn up on him at Wikipedia, then see other resources. If anyone else has any other suggestions, please leave a comment.

If you’ve never subscribed to a website before, start by subscribing to mine!

(Note: This is a repost from March 2006 when I evangelized blogs at my previous corporate employer. Early this week, I met quite a few folks at a Sales and marketing conference that will be undergoing this evangelistic process and want to support them via my blog. I wrote these tips while I was in the position, so I’m sure they are still relevant.

This was also on my previous domain, and it makes sense to bring it over here and tag it with ‘Web Strategy’, which I indicate as posts that I’m writing as a resource for the world’s Web Practice leaders.)

Depending on the company DNA, creating and growing a business blogging program may be an easy or a difficult task.

Evangelists have a tough job in front of them as the program requires high and broad corporate approval. Articulating a vision to adopt a two-way, informal communication tool is a challenge when the medium associated with ‘teens’.

Here’s some strategies that I’ve learned, not just from my experience, but from the dozens of other blog evangelists I’ve met at recent conferences as well as online.

1. Read Blogs
Certainly a ‘duhism’ (I met Guy last night, I guess he rubbed off on me) but you really need to know the communication style and medium that you’re attempting to enter. Read both popular blogs, as well as blogs in your industry. Learn how to find them using a variety of tools, listen to the conversation.

2. Start Blogging
Do a trial blog, it doesn’t need to be related to your industry. You need to be a blogger (even if you’re not going to be blogging on behalf of the company) if you’re going to give blog advice. You must understand the interaction, real time conversations, trackbacks, and how the blogosphere works. You don’t have to talk about your own market or products, and if you do it at home, no one will know.

3. Learn from the best
Either start reading, or befriend A-Listers. Yes, they seem intimidating but they’re not. A-Listers are a friendly bunch, and are Blog Evangelists themselves, they want you to become infected with blog-goodness. If you don’t have the time or resources, at least read their blogs and get their books. I know I’m the exception more than the norm as some of my blog friends included Rebecca Blood, Lynann Bradbury, Shel Israel, Robert Scoble, and now my new old friend Debbie Weil. Reach out to them, read their books, interact with their blogs, invite them to lunch.

4. Don’t accept blog advice from people that are not bloggers
In my experience, I’ve received radically different advice from non-bloggers, than from bloggers. Traditional marketers, advertisers, and larger media companies may have a different strategy from grass roots, guerrilla blogging. Unless they’ve been converted, they may set you on the wrong path –be very, very careful.

5. Get more focused in business blogging
Now that you’ve been reading about blogs, and have been blogging yourself, start immersing in the art of business blogging. Read business blogging books, attend blogging conferences, join blogging user groups, keep on blogging yourself. Learn some PR skills, writing skills, be able to articulate the difference between casual conversations from corporate communications. My journey started at the Blog Business Summit in 2005 and recently have attended the New Communications Forum. I’ve read Cluetrain, Naked Conversations, Weblog Handbook, and The Corporate Blogging Book.

6. Find a champion if your voice is not loud
If you don’t have a loud voice within your organization, find someone that does, ask them to be your voice, let them champion your plans. They are easy to spot, they are already passionate and vocal about customers –align with them.

7. Be able to articulate your vision
Likely, you’ll be asked to give a presentation, raise awareness, or provide a plan. It should at least include the following:

1. The web is important, and is used in most buying cycles, get stats for your market.
2. Customers trust other customer opinion above all others.
3. With blogs, customer opinion is easily published, and with search engines, they are easily found.
4. The conversation will happen regardless if you participate or not.
5. Even if you don’t participate, you must listen to the blogosphere.
6. Blogging is two-way communication, even if you don’t enable comments.
7. If you care about customers, then having an online dialogue will prove it to them.

8. Define the purpose for your blog
Clearly define what your blog’s purpose(s) is. When it comes to using blogs in a corporate situation it can be used in a variety of strategic deployments. I can think of at least one corporate blog that can match with each of the below purposes. Is it to:

1. Delight your customers (you better say yes)
2. Demonstrate corporate openness
3. Express goodwill
4. Thought leadership
5. Mitigate PR damage risks
6. Control the conversation in your market
7. Develop a product with customers in real time
8. Harness a rapid response tool
9. Casually release products and get feedback
10. Word of mouth marketing
11. Amplify a message
12. Competitive positioning tool
13. Delight your customers

9. Plan to measure these purposes, before you start blogging
I realize this is a controversial subject, but let’s get realistic folks, corporate blog evangelists WILL be asked “what’s the value”. Not all of your answers will include the ability to demonstrate numerical proof of improvement. Not every blog (see number will be tied to cost savings or revenue increase. What are you going to measure? Understand how to benchmark against each specific purpose. Unlike other mediums like print, the web makes it easy to measure instances, activity, feeds and blog resonation.

10. Have a vision, Stay the course, don’t give up.
Show passion, demonstrate successes, learn, and grow. I learned that at least during inception that Evangelists may or may not have followers. It’s going to take a few months, even years to get buy-in, marshaling resources where none existed, and then demonstrating success. The rewards are very great –believe in it.

When your customers thank you in your blog and theirs, you’ve know you’ve chosen the right path.

I’ve got quite a few other business blog tips. Many of them I’ve published here, but some I won’t publish for a variety of reasons. Leave a comment if this resonated with you.