I really owe it to you to continue to live and work as transparently as possible, this is after all, what I preach. It starts with me first sharing, so here goes. The last month has been a whirlwind, I’ve traveled from SFO > Boston > Chicago > SFO > Boston with a quick trip to NY met hundreds of people, even more photos, and I’m just getting started. I’ve officially been an analyst for 31 days, and it’s time to take a look back, here’s what I’ve learned:

1) I’ve a lot to learn
I was in training for three weeks, (well I missed most of the second week at a conference) to learn some very rigorous methodology, meet people, and absorb into the culture. I even had a meeting with the CEO on my first week. I was amazed at the organization that a company of 1000 could have. I’ve made a lot of new friends with common interests in the firm, and I’ve come to learn that many are now blog readers who comment from time to time *jeremiah waves*

2) Evolving communications a challenge
A big part of my training is to learn how to communicate effectively and succinctly. I’m already starting to feel this change in how I write, speak, present, and think. Check out the large binders we received in training, they are a desktop reference and I’m using them frequently. I recently tweeted that working along side Charlene is like getting a masters in business.

3) New incoming pipes
There are a LOT of inputs in this role, from vendor briefings, announcement briefings (It’s easier to glance at techmeme and tell what will be reality in 24 hours and what won’t be). Another major input is the problems and challenges I hear information from many clients. I’m even listening to trends from the press (they have many inputs too). Most importantly it’s amazing to have access to hard core data and research from the firm. Overtime, I’m hoping that my analysis will move up a level so I can start seeing macro trends, in addition to the small changes, I’m not quite there yet, but hope to be soon.

4) Helping clients succeed fires me up
I feel good inside when customers are happy as direct result of my actions. In addition to the time I’m spending inputting, a great deal of my time is spent helping clients in advisory sessions and creating reports. On a related note, A CEO of a startup recently contacted me and said that other startups in the valley don’t understand the influence that analysts have, nearly everyday I’ll be recommending vendors to look at. (By the way, the best way to get my time and other analysts is to do a briefing, not send me an email)

5) Time management has become more important than ever
Compared to previous jobs, this role is incredibly more time demanding. I’m rigorous on how I structure my time (such as avoiding IM as much as possible). I read and research and blog for two hours in the morning (I sleep in 2 three hour shifts at night, and am up right now at 3am to blog) as I really believe in paying myself first. Learning how to manage all the input and output time (and time spent writing reports) around travel and speeches is going to be a challenge, maybe I need a lesson from Tim Ferris.

6) I’ll continue to blog and share
Many people are wondering if I’ll continue to share online as I have in the past. Speculation if what I’ve learned and know will be sucked up behind the “paywall” for clients only. Part of why I was hired was because of my blog, so that’s not going away, and I’m a believer in walking the talk. Since I’ve started, I’m still part of the conversation, have been very active on Twitter (add me), and continue to experiment with social media tools. What do I not share on my blog? Research and reports that I work on in the day job based around data that I would not have had access to if I wasn’t an employee. Also, giving advice from a blog is far too generic. Each client has a unique culture, unique market, and is at a different stage in their social media strategy, there’s no way a blog or any other dispersive communication tool can be successful in delivering true value.

So what did I learn? I learned I have a lot to learn! So if you can’t tell, I’m undergoing a metamorphosis right now, and I want to keep this cocoon as opaque as possible, so stay with me, let’s grow together, and thanks for all your support!

If you have any experiences to share about how you’ve smoothly (or not) moved into a new role, I want to hear.

Update: I just learned that a white paper (PDF) I wrote 2 years ago with Dennis McDonald was seen by a client, and they requested my involvement on the account. I’m a believer that one thing leads to another, it’s just amazing that it can take nearly 24 months for work to come to fruition. Then again, the white paper is on IT and Business for social media, it’s just now becoming relevant. At the time, I wrote this as I was frustrated with my own IT department not understanding or supporting the social media program.

Big Update: You can subscribe to this digest tag only, which filters only these type of posts. I’m confident I’ll earn your trust, deliver value and you’ll visit my blog anyways.

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly summary, it’s great to send to busy executives.

I’ve created a new category called Digest where you can start to track and access these going forward. The hope? To make it easy for a web strategist to quickly scan the activity in the last week. I strive to make headlines on items categorized and succinct.

Need to make decisions about your web strategy? I’m here to help: subscribe to my blog, sign up for emails (right nav), follow me on Twitter, or add me on Facebook (I’ll add you back for each).

Web Strategy Summary
The big news? Microsoft invests in Facebook and gets access to it as a major advertising platform. Now, Meebo has launched as a platform, and Google is expected to release a Facebook competitor tomorrow. This is the move movement I’ve seen since starting this series. Sadly, there’s not been too much news produced on other social networks.

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Partnership: Facebook and Microsoft in Bed
There’s sure been a lot of speculation, and regurgitation about the deal, but let’s boil it down to what it means. Advertising opportunity for MS, expansion of software on the ‘web platform’ access to all your identities. For Facebook, it means: larger than life valuation, a hold out for growth, until potentially an IPO. I participated in this article from Cnet which gives a good starting overview.

Platform: Meebo launches platform
The web based IM aggeregator, Meebo launches a platform encouraging developers to expand on top of it’s instant messaging community. What’s the biggest difference between Meebo and Facebook? Facebook has rich user profiles, whereas Meebo does not. I predict this will influence how the same applications are used on top of each.

Money: Facebook’s Stock options not that rosy?
The NYT questions if the stock will be a good play to retain talent, the potential problem? Diluted value of stock for new employees, among other risks. But who cares? Facebook is a hot company, there were loads of people going to Google over the last yearish (nearly doubling in size) under the same climate…because it was Google.

Enterprise: How do social networks impact the Intranet?
I participated on a panel hosted by Visible Path, where we discussed how the social graph of our work lives can be harnessed and captured to improve sales, recruiting, and communication. The big takeaway? We’ve yet as an industry to really leverage the power of people in the enterprise although some tech recruiters are starting to get savvy.

Community: Rabid fans and votors assemble on Facebook
The new ‘vote’ has become an affinity joining Facebook groups. It first started with Barack Obama, and now with Stephen Colbert beating him out…in just one day. Despite the rabid popularity, the quality and topics of Facebook apps appear to be ’strange’ and silly.

Money: Myspace touts it’s value
MySpace can tout it’s virtues if the runner up can score market valuation of 15billion, in fact there are claims that myspace could be worth, but in reality, the numbers are much less.

Rumors: Google to launch Facebook Competitor
The rumors are circulating that Google is to launch a platform to compete with Facebook decries Techcrunch: “OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:”

Rumors: Facebook to launch new Advertising product
More speculation on what Facebook could be releasing: “Not the deliciously moist kind, but the kind that keep tabs on your whereabouts while surfing the web. The goal is to combine all the information collected within Facebook user profiles with users’ web surfing habits to deliver targeted ads via Microsoft.”

I use a variety of techniques to find this news, and as an Analyst it’s good practice for me to stay on top of my industry. If your boss needs to stay on top of this digest, be sure to send it to her, and subscribe to this unique feed.

I posted one Tweet on Twitter and recieved about 50 back in return. I now have a pretty good idea of how my network (my community, the web strategy community) communicates.

From who? From the pebble people. What’s a pebble? They’re often first generation adopters. they are followed by swimmers, surfers and others.

Most of the people in Twitter fall into one of those three categories, they’re early adopters, tech influencers, and what Forrester calls “creators”.

I tweeted this question: “@everyone quick, count the many tools you’ve communicated over today. Twitter, FB, blog, email (personal and work), phone, cell =7″

Two hours later, I had quite a few responses (nearly 50)

I’ve removed any private tweets (at least 5), all of the following are public. And no, this is far from the methodology at Forrester, this is just a segment of MY network. No, I’m not going to use this information in any other way than to understand how my network of pebbles works. Since it’s just my network, this is completely biased.

It makes no sense for me to tally or average them as people counted the same version of tools multiple times. What’s clear is that we are communicating with each other using so many multiple channels. We’re easy to access, easy to find, and easy to talk to.

It’s pretty safe to estimate that between 5-7 communication mediums are being used by my community.

John McCrea who works at Plaxo suggested that a unified communications platform could fix this, but we’ve got to first ask, is it a problem?

Here’s how my community responded from my one tweet:

Mark Twomey Storagezilla @jowyang - Twitter, Blog, Email, Forums, Mobile Phone. 5

Lee Aase LeeAase @jowyang I’ve used Twitter, land line, cell, SMS, Facebook, 2 email accts, personal blog, work blog = 9

Mukund Mohan mukund @jowyang, @astrout email (gmail, work), Twitter, IM(Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN), Phone, Cell, Voice, FB, Blog, Text Messaging, WEBEX - dang

astrout astrout @jowyang — sorry, missed blog. That makes 8 or maybe 9 for me.

Wade Rockett waderockett @jowyang: 5 - email, blog, Twitter, message board, IM.

Krish krishnan @jowyang Twitter, Facebook. blog, IM, email, phone (in that order)

astrout astrout @jowyang — face2face, cell phone, voip phone, text, trillian, twitter, FB and e-mail (7 if you combine voip & cell - 8 otherwise)

GiGi iad2la @jowyang Twitter, TXT/phone, FB, AIM and MSN messenger via Trillian, GTalk, Gmail, Outlook (oh the agony)

Christian Burns™ ChristianBurns @jowyang Gmail, twitter, Jaiku, Utterz, outlook web portal, facebook, cell phone, txt msg sms, gtalk

Alex de Carvalho alexdc @jowyang GTalk, MSN, Twitter, GMail, FB, phone, cell, Flickr, Scrapblog, Orkut, Basecamp … and the ol’ fashioned face-to-face

Luis Suarez elsua @jowyang 16! Can list them if you would want to …

CSP missusP @jowyang - @CreativeSage reminded me - yes, also LinkedIn - that makes 12 today.

karl long karllong @jowyang twitter, pownce, text msg, phone, email, blog post, blog comment, message forum, FB =9 a

Jason Preston jasonp107 @jowyang twitter, AIM, e-mail, phone, cell & (plans for blog & FB!) = 5

Cathryn Hrudicka CreativeSage @jowyang: Landline ph., Twitter, Facebook, primary email, LinkedIn, Flickr, blogs, Pownce (feeds going to other socnets).

Will Pate willpate @jowyang: gmail, twitter, basecamp, highrise, aim, msn, skype, conceptshare, mobile, facebook, google docs, adium, blackberry PIN about

Kyle Flaherty kflaherty @jowyang facebook, cell, blog, twitter, email, gmail, flikr, SMS, ning=9

Doug Meacham DougMeacham @jowyang: landline, cell, blog, twitter, wk email, Yahoo Mail, GMail, Face to Face (do people still do that?), Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr=11

Tete TeteSagehen @jowyang (twitter, IM, home phone, blog, Faecbook, e-mail)

Ian Wilker iwilker @jowyang: yeesh… 8! (adium, FB, email, cell, voip, IM, twitter, blog)

Andy Beal andybeal @jowyang cell, email, twitter, facebook, IM, skype, blog = 7

Marcel LeBrun lebrun @jowyang email (2), twitter, FB, office phone, cell phone, Gtalk, MSN & BB messenger about

TedC TedC @jowyang Twitter, email, seesmic, phone, ms communicator, icq, blog = 7

Lee Odden leeodden @jowyang For me it’s: email, facebook, mybloglog, twitter, pownce, blog, linkedin, cell, landline

John McCrea johnmccrea @jowyang: work email, webmail, mobile, blog, Plaxo Pulse, Twitter, SMS. I guess that’s 7 for me, too.

Arek Dreyer arekdreyer @jowyang Twitter, email, ichat, phone = 4

TDavid TDavid @jowyang - email, IRC, blog, Twitter, phone (work+personal), Skype = 7, not ordered

Clay Newton tastybit @jowyang SMS, vmail, mobile, email, landline, twitter, Fb, blog, IM = 9

Suki_MHC05 Suki_MHC05 @jowyang “in person” and skype=9 plus all those you already listed.

CSP missusP @jowyang 11: phone, email, IM, blog, Twitter, FB, WBEx office, BBerry, fax, Ezmo, Sosius

KayDub kaydub @jowyang 5 5

Thomas Han thomashan @jowyang twitter, FB, blog, land-line, iPhone, emails (3), SMS, IMs (several platforms) = ~12

Jeff Greco jeffgreco @jowyang twitter, facebook, aim, gtalk, email (personal + work), cell, work phone, tumblelog = 9

Jeremy Pepper jspepper @jowyang - recounting, then, if you want email and IM separate (or as one, even if it’s Hotmail, GMail and corp mail)

Shashi Bellamkonda shashib @jowyang 3 email accounts, pidgin( AIM, GTalk,Yahoo IM) , phone, 2 cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, utterz, blogs, Google reader, Jaiku, Pown

Jeremy Pepper jspepper @jowyang - 5 (counting meebo as 1 for all my IM systems)

Shea Gunther sheagunther @jowyang 9 communication tools today for me- twitter, blog, FB, email, Vonage phone, cell phone, text message, Ning, StumbleUpon

Kami Huyse kamichat @jowyang I have used 10 tools: 3 e-mail accounts, Twitter, FB, SMS, Blogs (mine and others), cell phone and land line

Mike Keliher mjkeliher @jowyang …and chatting within Scrabulous within Facebook.

Evan Hamilton evanhamilton @jowyang: twitter, gmail, hotmail, outlook, cell, AIM, Messenger, iChat = 8

Jess K escapetochengdu @jowyang I have one more to add to that list: instant message (via gchat)

Christopher Gilmer chrisgilmer @jowyang 7, same set as yours.

chrisgilmer @jowyang 7, same set as yours.

Mike Keliher mjkeliher @jowyang Cell phone calls, cell phone text messages, regular phone, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Ning site, blog comments = 8 + face to face.

Connie Reece conniereece @jowyang for me it’s 6 communication tools today

LisaBarone LisaBarone @jowyang Twitter, FB, blog, work email, home email, cell, Skype, IM, Webcast = 9. All before lunch!

Jen Cardew jencardew @jowyang 8 myspace, fb, sms, phone, email, webct (course discussion board), email, & twitter … and counting o.0

Len Edgerly LenEdgerly @jowyang - 6

Erica OGrady ericaogrady @jowyang: Twitter, Cell, Facebook, Email, Virb, Blog, GTalk = 7

Craig Cmehil ccmehil @jowyang 17 including various IM tools

Yndy:(Update) @jowyang - tools today so far? Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, Network54, Wordpress, cell phone, email (x4), Digg, various other boards (9?) 04:12 PM

If you weren’t in on the fun and still want to contribute, leave a comment below.

Update: I know a lot of Marketers what would be thrilled to have 5 responses to 1 tweet, or even 15, but 50? How to do it? Become part of the community, (not yelling at it) and join the conversation. The world is moving smaller, faster, and distributed, but most importantly it’s trending towards opt-in.

Update: What better way to kickstart the conversation by using my real voice? Listen in.

It’s planning time, and many of you have submitted your strategies, budgets and resource requests to management, how do I know? Because I get tons of emails, facebook messages, and formal emails at work requesting advice and guidance.

Recently, I posted a question to Ian, who’s the CEO of an internet marketing firm in Seattle:

In his response, He’s broken it down by type of company . Ian lays it down, while some may find it dangerous to suggest how to invest before discussing the business strategy and needs, this is a good starting point for a conversation.

I realize the sensitivity in posting specific numbers on a public blog, so I’d love to hear your process in budgeting (or a best practice). Do you work at an agency? How do you encourage clients to spend with you? On the client side? What are some ways your prioritize?

Update: Mukund (A VP of Marketing) has listed out his budget allocation, wow thanks for the transparency! Interesting that 15% of his resources are to reach people like me in my day job yet 2% is spent on reaching me as a blogger (Social media), so does that mean I would get 17%? I also attend events (industry and social) so there’s other allocations that may cross over to me.

I spoke at Visible Path’s (client) Corporate Social Network Design Council in San Francisco today. The panel, moderated by Anneke Seley Founder & CEO, PhoneWorks, included Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM, Ross Mayfield of Social Text, and Matt, the program manager of Motorola’s Internet and Collaboration Technology.

Highlights of the discussion:

-Initially, when the web was launched, it was estimated that business folks were separated by 7 degrees, now it can be measured at nearly 3 degrees
-Ross suggested that every brand will have a wiki associated with them. Take for example “lost” which has a handful of wikis, both from corporate and the fan base
-The big question of how do personal and professional networks become both a private asset to an individual as well as be shared by the enterprise.
-How many social graphs do we need? Is there conflict as they cross over? (I suggested there are four social graphs on average: public, work, friends, and family)
-Motorola is already experimenting with internal social networks and wikis, with success.
-”Sales 1.0 is about lots of reporting, and sell less, Sales 2.0 is about less reporting and more selling”
-The future is focusing on the people, and their relationships
-One HR manager had concerns as legal and compliance need records of how candidates are found, and sometimes this process happens in hard-to-track social networks.
-Ross has two strategic questions he applies to the enterprise: 1) How do you make programs more transparent and 2) How do you make them more participatory.
-Ross had the best line: “In school, sharing was called cheating, but in the workplace it’s called collaboration”

I shared the edgeworks concept and how the web, marketing, sales and recruiting is distributed on the networks.

It was held at San Francisco’s beautiful Olympic Club, I didn’t realize it until I was stopped by the guard by jeans weren’t allowed. Being a techie, I’m so used to wearing jeans to social media events (Ross was wearing jeans too, thank god I wasn’t alone). My visible path hosts were so nice to fetch me, I apologized of course. How is this a good lesson in understanding online communities and social networks? One should always research their community to understand their culture, behavior, and norms before joining. I’ve done other embarrassing things in public, and learned a lot from them.

I created this Utterz (short mobile audio) from my mobile phone while driving up to the event. Social Graphs, identity, relationships and how we communicate is at top of mind. Here’s the post I was referring to.

If you click on the “click for more” on the utterz player, it will go to their site where you can see more conversations, such as Christian who left me an utterz response. We’re having a mobile, audio, asynchronous conversation online and via the cell. I can even listen to his messages while driving, and respond.

The summarized videos from the recent Forrester consumer forum conference in Chicago are now up.

The videos are choppy (update: go for the high speed options for best viewing, it should stream smoothly) , but the content is what to focus on, so turn ‘em on and listen, and glance at the slides while you multi-task. Richard Edelman was insightful from the top of the mountain, Christie Hefner delivered powerful examples of virtual worlds and social networks, Christina Norman of MTV pushed energy into her polished presentation.

The Zefrank, Jeremy Allaire, and Pud panel is the most entertaining, but if you’re thinking of implementing a social media strategy, listen to Charlene’s presentation followed by Josh. I love blogged the event, see my day 1 coverage, and day 2.

Leave your feedback on the content, which speakers dropped some ‘gems’ of knowledge?

Summary
The need for a social graph is very clear as social networking features will be present on nearly every website. Because of it’s pervasive nature, I assert that the browser should be considered as a tool to display and render a social graph regardless of what site you visit.

Situation: Social networks features to be ubiquitous
What’s the problem? Social Networking is a feature of a website, and may happen to every site.

Pain: Managing friends and networks is inefficient
We’re tired of adding new friends and existing friends to each website that we join. Because of the sheer minutia of the task, we may inadvertently forget to add friends from one network to the next.

Enter the Social Graph
What’s the social graph? It’s a concept/theory that will soon be implemented by companies like Facebook and SixApart that let users transport their entire social networks from one website to another. It was first pioneered by Brad Fitz, go to his site to learn about his vision and the technical ways it’s being approached.

Browsers: A tool that could render the Social Graph
I’ve been experimenting with Flock, a social browser and have noticed that they’ve already launched features that look like the starts of the social graph. Through the features in the browser, you can login to websites like Facebook, Flickr, Wordpress, and Twitter and access network information in the side nav, it saves times and centralizes.

Why Browsers?
Browsers have some unique attributes that could be a social graph platform.

1) Browsers are the one tool that we use across all websites.

2) Browsers (like Flock) can present an experience on top of websites: they can add additional features, drop downs, and side bars that help you to navigate information from a network of people, not just the raw information of a website.

3) Developer communities already exist around some browsers (most notably, grass roots Mozilla) and they can naturally build, extend, and improve the experiences.

Challenges
Yet, there are a few risks when relying on a browser, in addition to just listing the risk, I offer a few suggestions, this is a work in progress and I’ll update it base upon your feedback.

1) Users have multiple browsers and multiple computers so the graph will not work on stand alone systems. Secondly, in cultures (like Asia, and some places in Europe) users go to internet cafes and may not ever use the same computer twice.

The fix? The ‘data’ of the graph will need to centrally located and transferred to browser to browser via secured login, likely Open ID as suggested by others.

2) Full browsers not supported by most mobile clients. I’m not sure if this is a serious risk yet, by a scaled down version of the browser (or a plugin) should be able to work on a mobile device, so one can quickly find out what a friend is doing across the whole network.

3) Fear and mistrust of Browser vendors. This will always be the challenge, trust is a real issues for many users. Browser vendors will need to ensure information is not being gathered in an inappropriate way that would misdeed the user.

the vendors include: Microsoft (IE), Netscape (Navigator), Mozilla (Firefox), Flock, and Opera are all vendors of browsers. There’s some usage and adoption stats worth comparing. Users generally are bearish about giving identification and control over their browser, Read Write Web has some very ideal principles on ownership of said graph. I’d also like to mention Plaxo’s pulse which may have a play here with a plugin for any of these browsers that could also deliver this same functionality.

Future Information Architecture: Render by People
Flock organizes the content by website, so if you click a tab it shows all the content in that network (example: see all Facebook friends and status, or see all Twitter friends and status).

In addition, the future should organize the information by person or by people, so if you click on them, you’ll see all their information and aggregate all information for every single network they’ve given you access to. (example: if I click on Teresa Valdez Klein, I’ll see her updates from twitter, flickr, myspace, youtube, digg, her blog, utterz, and whatever comes next)

Impact of the Social Graph on your Web Strategy
My focus is on web strategy (how companies use the web) and clearly see this will someday impact corporate sites too. I predict that social networks will become a transportable feature that will exist on many if not all websites. The web will be distributed and amorphous, so corporate websites will need to adapt. Early adopters will include social networking features on their website and connect to the social graph. Users of the website can share, create, and modify information around their network and interact with the website. I’ll bet social media web leaders like Dell, GM, Sun, IBM, Microsoft, to lead the way.

Playing with Plaxo, hanging with Seth, the community manager of Mozilla yesterday and watching the following video were the inspiration for this post, talk back in the comments. I suspect I’ve not figured out all the problems with the suggested implementation.

I just created my first utter, a new mobile web service. What is it? yet another form of MicroMedia (a phrase that I coined, and it’s taking off, see Steve Rubel and Scoble).

What is Utterz? An audio version of Twitter.

Here’s how I did it (with a time breakdown):

1) I went to their site and registered (2 minutes)
2) Dialed the phone number, listened to greeting messages (1 minute)
3) Recorded it, reviewed it (and took a second cut) and confirmed (2 minutes)
4) Saved the number to my phone so I can use it again (15 seconds)
5) Refreshed website and was amazed to see it was instantly there. (30 seconds)
6) embedded on blog and wrote this post (5 minutes)

Looking at the breakdown analysis by time, blogs are long form, and perhaps a richer and older form of social media. I could easily embed a twitter and utter feed in my blog, and let it self update, saving me time from writing these longer formats.

Are you prepared to embrace the media snackers? A few days ago, I started the media snackers meme, and tagged a few people, asking them to share how they respect media snackers, it’s now taking off (see all incoming links to that post, and what the mediasnackers team is tracking).

Communication is moving faster, smaller, and hooking into mobile, are you prepared?

I’m becoming a fan of Kara Swisher, who writes Boomtown. She’s a case study of how traditional newspapers (Wall Street Journal) have embraced social media. I see a lot of other newspapers who use blogs and podcasts and rss, yet they don’t really engage and be part of the experience of social media –they just report on it. It’s more than being an embedded reporter, she’s interacting with the ecosystem, I’ve been noticing this more and more.

Kara’s blog posts are punchy and stir up the issues, her videos irreverent, she keeps them fast, brings us the experience and pushes her interviewers with challenging, and sometimes almost leading questions. In many ways she’s picking up on Scoble’s beat, by bringing a first person human look to the industry.

I’d be interesting to see how other large newspapers (who are having a hard time staying relevant from the internet and the changes it’s brought) adopt and try to learn from her. Likely there will be some Kara copy cats, but I think she’ll innovate.

What I’ve been reading and think you should too:

Jason did some searching on the top Measurement firms and discovered that the Web Strategy Blog was on the top search results for the term Social media measurement. Thanks Jason for the wonderful feedback, but keep in mind there are folks that are smarter on the topic than me, the sad think about Google is that it prioritizes the content that is most popular, but not the most accurate.

Ken Kaplan enjoyed hosting the Social Media Club and is really digging into some of my recent posts and presentations, thanks! (Oh, and most people don’t get the joke of “Jeremiah the web prophet” it’s a play on words and homage to one of the first biblical prophets, my namesake)

Curt sends a great white paper from Universal McCann on Social Media, fancy layout, good data.

David Armano ran a poll asking if ‘Digital Agencies’ should blog. To me, it’s an obvious answer, read the comments to see a polarized view.

Beth Kanter has a great presentation on slideshare on the topic of Social Media Measurement, we had a brief strategy discussion at a meetup in Boston and she integrated part of it in her presentation, I love how our industry works together to collectively grow, great job Beth.

I’m listening to Marketing Voices on my iPod, the quality consistently stays high, I recommend you subscribe for your walk (I listened to five this morning). Jennifer is a good friend of mine, and I’m going over to her house this week for dinner. She’s one of the live long friends I’ll be keeping.

Click To Play

Editor in Chief (I flubbed the intro) of PC World Harry McCracken (personal blog) loves Flock, so much so that he gave me 2 minute of his time to tell me why. If you want to read his full review, it’s on PCWorld. Previously, I was unconvinced there was room for three browsers in my life, but downloaded it and gave it a whirl. The jury is still out, it takes me time to see if it will really integrate into my lifestyle. I received some feedback about it on Twitter, such as Dennis Howlett tweets “you realize Flock’s OPML import is utterly borked, rendering it almost useless?” amid a mixture of other responses.

One of the best part of the experience is the truly human experience, it’s so common that large and small companies are so visibly unhuman in their website experience. If you’ve any questions about flock, or need quick answers Evan Hamilton the community ambassador (who stepped in after Will Pate moved on) is available. Next time I see him, I’ll get him on video to find out how he’s enjoying being a community manager.

I met up with Harry at Eastwick Communication’s halloween party in Santa Clara, had a great time, met a lot of folks, pics are in flickr of the party.

Have you tried the latest version of flock? It has social features that hook into Facebook, Flickr, Blogging platforms, and Twitter.

Although filmed a while ago, Jason Baptiste and I get together at Miami’s WeMedia conference, and discuss the future of the social press release. There are several PR firms that are adopting and implementing them, although there’s been some criticism about it. (Brian has a lengthy counter)

Upon further inspection, Brian Solis has a guide on the SMPR, but sadly, I don’t see a very clear one sentence definition.

I realy enjoy speaking with Jason from Publictivity, he’s clear, articulate and knowledgeable on his topic area, thanks for the patience on posting this video! I’m meeting with some potential folks who may publish my archived videos, stay tuned.

Today (Saturday) I’ll be headed over to the soldout Play Conference being held at UC Berkeley, I’ll be on a panel with Google, Yahoo, and Mozilla discussing Asian internet strategies, I’ll be pulling what I learned from the many interviews I’ve done with CEOs, entrepreneurs, developers, strategists, and even analysts.

Monday, I’ll be at Visible Path’s event discussing how the social graph can be used to improve enterprises, knowledge sharing, and networking. Our panel “How to Apply Social Networks in the Enterprise” will include: Matt Beveridge of Motorola, Anthony Lye of Oracle CRM On Demand, Ross Mayfield CEO & Co-founder, SocialText. I’ll be applying my experiences running an intranet, it’s all very related.

I like Ross’s definition of a Blogalyst: “What’s a Blogalyst? Part blogger, part analyst and part catalyst.”

I was recently quoted for being bearish on an upcoming ’scripted’ reality show that is to appear on MySpace. Scripted or ‘forced’ authenticity isn’t always successful on the web, what happened to the lonely girl show after it was found out to be a set with actors? People can sniff out authenticity quickly, the filters are set to ‘high’. I’d rather see an existing popular show start to integrate social features in it, rather than it coming the other way.

Next week is Nokia’s mobile mashup event on Thursday, although my schedule is filling up, I’ll try to swing by. The problem with living in the valley is that there are just too many events. Exactly how many? I started this list of just ongoing events in the valley.

Sometime next week, I’ll let you know about an upcoming webinar I’ll be on with the talented Seth Godin, stay tuned!

A few hundred million is a steal for your identity, they’ve got plenty of money.

Microsoft and Facebook are in partnership, but what’s at stake? Three things:

1) Facebook knows who you are: your name, your gender, where you live, your martial and political status, sexual preference, age, where you work, the list goes on. The funny thing is, you’ve voluntarily given that information up.

2) The Graph: They also know who you connect to, who you talk to, and what you say to them (you don’t own those private message ya know).

3) Gestures: Sure, up to one third of all profile information is bogus, but what about those unsaid gestures: What people do is more important than what they say. What apps you use, how frequent, what and who you click on.

Great, but why does it matter? Because the new partner likely will have access to this very precious data.

Are they mining this information? With Facebook being a company of about 700 folks, it’s hard to imagine that they will. Their new advertising partner, (experienced pros) have the tools, process, and sophistication to do this.

Does Microsoft have access to all this information in day two after the deal? Not likely. But will they? Here’s a few reasons why it makes sense: Advertisers are all about margins and accuracy, the more accurate the ad, the less waste and more efficient the spend is. If Microsoft can target these ads right down to Jane in Santa Clara who is conservative and likely to buy X gidget then it could work.

How else can the data be used? For Marketers there’s a bunch of clever things they can do, if their community is in Facebook, why would you ever have them sign up for a registration form again? Just friend them or create an event page. What if you had the ability to export your network contact list via CSV?

Google still relevant?
What about Google? The killer in online advertising and search. There are millions of people using Google, and yet the Facebook audience is much smaller, and North America focused (for now). What matters is growth curves, it’s taking off near vertically.

What’s the next generation of online advertising look like?
What will these ads look like? At first, it will be the traditional forms we know, the banners, skyscrapers. Then they’ll move closer to the newspage, then the sponsored groups. The biggest untapped opportunity? Microsoft can bring the big name advertisers to the geeky kid in the garage who created that popular food throwing app. Geeky kids lack the sophistication to manage a big name advertising relationship or negotiation, but MS can.

Upside to users
Ads could become very targeted, very relational, and very social, the savvy brands will let go of the ads, and let the control move to the users. We’ll embrace them.

The takeaway
While the internet has rejected ‘forced’ identity systems from big brands, we willingfully (and often unknowingly) hand over incredibly detailed information about our precious identity. We’ve never seen an advertising system as potentially as sophisticated as this one. There’s many opportunities for the web to become more targeted, more accurate, and more relevant, but with that comes the risk of giving up some control.

Update:
Harvard’s Berkman center fellow Doc Searls has responded to this post, and gives a very user-focused perspective. He points out that Facebook’s users are not it’s customers, and that we should review the 7 rules of identity. Great to be all user-focused, there’s got to be way where all parties can work and benefit. Movements happen at the consumer level and most are sheep.

Click To Play

I was in Vancouver last month at the VidFest conference, I was able to attend a regular meetup with the local social media folks, people I really relate to. Over drinks, they told me about the unique web culture in Canada, in my usual form, I whipped out my camera and was able to get their opinion.

What’s the difference between Canadian and US web cultures? I asked them that too, see related video. I’ve traveled a lot, and it’s amazing to hear how culture, (beyond language) impacts web usage, the web is truly a representation of people and the culture they relate to.

In the spirit of Micromedia, or Mediasnacking, I keep these videos short and tight.

The raves are coming in, the community likes the weekly social networking digest I put out every Wednesday. What is it? A fast summary of what you need to know about the space. Here’s all the recent ones. Organized, prioritized and succinct it delivers the details of this industry that you may need to know about…and what I’m covering as an analyst. If you’re working at a company in this space, this is a good way to get into my head and poke around.

If you’re a mediasnacker, and just want this weekly digest without the rest of my blog, (although I wish you’d subscribe to the whole thing, I realize it’s a lot to consume for the busy person)

Thank Amyloo for the feed URL, she let me know that one of the default features (a hidden easter egg, really) is that wonderful Wordpress can provide a feed for ANY category or tag. How? you just add “feed” at the end of the URL of the page that renders all the tags/categories.

What’s another way to get snackbytes from me? you can find me on Twitter (I’ll add you back), which has become a chat room, and I often link out to what I’m reading in near-real time with commentary. Don’t like Twitter? you may side with David, who I just had this podcast debate with.

Communication on the web is getting faster, smaller, more distributed, and mobile.

I’m following the Facebook and Microsoft deal closely, this really hammers home a few ideas

Industry confirmation
It’s for real people, finally, Microsoft is putting some skin in the game for the new web, other than the corporate only social computing programs they’ve put together (like Channel 8,9,10) as marketing tools this is the first deployment for the social media tool set. Secondly, this triggers confidence in the social media space as the future of communications, this is for real people.

Why this deal makes sense
I have the pleasure of sitting next to Charlene and we’re bouncing ideas of each other, her predictions (from Sept 24) on why this make sense were spot on 1) The experience and ability to execute online advertising is Microsoft’s strength and 2) For MS, a platform company, this is a key play to bring their slew of developers to now build on the new platform, the web platform. A concept I’ve been discussing for some time.

Why else does this deal make sense? 3) The application development can go both ways, utility widgets (not food fights) that glean information or bubble up network data will be prime suspect to be reused on existing internal apps for Microsoft. Such as desktop widgets on MS Vista, or widgets embedded nicely into sharepoint.

4) Identity: Next, imagine fluidity between enterprise collaboration tools. We already know that many Microsoft employees are using Facebook, and this is becoming an identity tool that Microsoft has always wanted (remember Passport?). Microsoft will experiment with connecting Facebook, looking for alignments to daily work and personal lifestyles, and combine where appropriate.

What the VP of Sales and Microsoft’s Advertising group is thinking
Ok, back to the primary reason why this deal works, it’s because of the advertising. I’m going to do the VP a favor and kick start her (or him) new sales book, here’s how I see the new additions:

Intelligence: User and Network Data from 42million opt-in members. Sure about one third of the profile information may be incorrect, but what we can learn from what they do is invaluable. Google doesn’t have this level of granularity, that’s why we’re more accurate. Your marketing and advertising dollars will be better spent with us

Demographics: If you’re trying to reach the educated, white collar, engaged, interactive, and growing segment of North America, Middle East, part of Europe and Asia then you’ll go with us. We can also segment by band or market to isolate and make your marketing spend effective. Need to reach a male in detroit that is conservative and single, yeah we got that.

Community in a box: Tired of trying to kick start your own community? Building those engaging social communities on your own web domain is a challenge, who wants to deal with IT or go through the motions of getting users to come? We’ve got an instant community you can interact with and engage with.

Brand Experiences: Advertising not enough? want to build true interaction around your brand and get customer and user feedback? We’ve got that too, you can purchase a sponsored group in Facebook for 100k, which is just a drop for most advertising spends at the Fortune 1000 level. You’ll get your own branded community, and we will cross promote from other areas in Facebook. Users will be engaged, self-identify, and get closer to your brand, and yes, you can deploy an eCommerce application in the group.

Flexibility: With the smallest flyer, to a branded sponsored group, we can custom tailor any marketing initiative to correctly fit your needs, and those of the Facebook community.

Data and Reporting: By far the most important thing for you is to prove the value of your advertising and marketing dollars, by using our platform we’ll tell you who you are resonating with, when, and by how much. You’ll be able to course correct any campaigns in real time. Google doesn’t give you the personal and network data. Numbers are safe, and we know your boss is risk averse.

Holistic Strategy: Already deployed advertising campaigns on the web (maybe with us) we’ll help from a strategic media partner sense and take a look at your entire holistic strategy. Work with us to deploy on Microsoft properties, our search engine, affiliate partners, and Facebook.

But what are the risks?
With any shiny object the cool kids get on it first, play with it and the adoption process starts (read the theory on the personas of early adopters), over marketing and too many branded invasions (MySpace may be suffering from this) causes the cool kids to move away –with the platform provider unaware or not caring while cashing in– taking their groups with them. Over advertise and destroy the experience results in a ghost town of billboards, popups and targeted ads.

Although I’ve been quoted by the press before, today is a milestone as this was my first quote as an analyst in this Bloomberg piece answering why this deal makes sense, and nicely positioned at the top of the article.

Do you need to learn more?
Thinking of deploying in Facebook? then first read What the Web Strategist should know about Facebook. Also, I publish a weekly digest of the Social Networking industry (I add my insight as well), stay up to date and read these every Wednesday. Also, I’ll be keynoting this upcoming Facebook conference in December in Seattle, hope to see you then.

Click To Play

I interviewed Maneck Mohan (who works for Recruit.net, an Asian job aggregator) to find out what skills are needed for the technology industry, his perspective, from Asia and specifically Hong Kong. Are you surprised by his answer? I’m not. How do people find jobs, and what would be more efficient?

I know I’m a rare case, but I’ve got my two last jobs primarily from blogging. Social media impacts the recruiting process, I saw a stat that indicates that 35% of all employers do an online search about their candidates. I know I do and encourage everyone else to “Google them” and see what comes up. You can learn a lot (aside from the personal stuff), how do they think, how do they write, how do they interact with others, how do they self-represent themselves and their employer.

The conversation took a sudden turn in the comments of my recent post: ” The Challenges of Social Media in the Enterprise, why Business and IT need to align” I was attempting to highlights the danger of IT being separated from the business. (Please read this post to get context)

I really enjoy the conversation points, and they deserved to be highlighted then here, because this is a real world issue we are all dealing with. To be fair, there are voices from the web strategists on the business side, folks from IT, IT consultants, IT vendors, and there is even at least one CEO I know of that chimed in.

Here’s the highlights from the comments in the previous post:

IT should manage infrastructure only
Ian Laurie:

“Don’t you think IT has needed to align with business for a long, long time? I’ve seen search marketing campaigns, web site launches, PR initiatives and more derailed by stubborn or overworked IT folks.”

The truth is that, in most cases, IT should be managing infrastructure, not web sites. The smart marketer or strategist puts their site somewhere where they can control it, or gets a dedicated IT resource, or screams until the do.”

IT may not want to evolve
Jennifer agrees with Ian (and she’s posted about it on her blog):

“I want to believe that joining together is an option and I always offer them the opportunity to be involved, but at the end of day they either don’t want to be involved, refuse to open their minds to new thinking, or just don’t get it. The IT departments I’ve worked with just aren’t ready to take on websites because they’re still trying to get infrastructure right, so in that sense I have to agree with Ian”

IT is Business Support
In the comments, Jake McKee poses some very strong questions about roles:

“As mentioned above, IT (as a general “thing”) is primarily responsible for infrastructure. They’re the group that keeps the phones on, the internal mail servers functioning, and the firewall secure. They’re not, by default, business support. The same group of people dealing with firewalls shouldn’t be be designing Web sites and activities. The marketing people aren’t calculating production line times in their downtime; the in-house lawyers aren’t taking customers service calls between writing briefs. Why do we expect something different from IT?”

IT not resourced for this change; third parties may be needed
Dennis McDonald, an experienced IT consultant relates from his perspective:

“In many large companies it is precisely because corporate IT departments spend so much of their time and money maintaining infrastructure technologies that they are shortchanged when it comes to being funded with enough staff to support agile and business-oriented responses to rapidly changing business needs….

…It’s a vicious circle that in some companies has led to so much IT outsourcing that providing support for new technologies can’t happen without the involvement of outside contractors.”

From the IT perspective: “we think bigger, do you?”
Nik Butler shares from the perspective of the IT pros:

“First of all IT Departments, Heck IT any Support guys dont like clients carrying out random acts of software delivery and implementation because its the very same IT guys who are reached for when it stops working or wont share or wont export or wont do a whole host of things which werent considered when the “New and Shiny” product is implemented.”

IT: No lust here, business doesn’t see full costs
Wade Rocket acknowledges the desires of IT:

“Your typical IT guy does not “lust” to work on the sweet new Web site you’ve been inspired to create. He just wants to be sure that nothing awful is going to happen that will require him to sweat over the damn thing for hours (or days).”

One solution: develop a corporate plan, but who owns it?
Josh Maher gets strategic and suggests a sensible plan, but the ownership still isn’t clear:

“Any organization actually looking to deploy social media technology needs to have the IT department support them. Not doing so would be a waste of time, money, and resources. If you can’t get the support than you are selling the wrong people.

Step 1. develop social media concept
Step 2. implement pilot on your own time
Step 3. sell your management on the idea
Step 4. leverage you management buy-in to develop corporate strategy
Step 5. use corporate strategy to get funding and prioritization for IT
Step 6. bring project to IT for company wide implementation”

Len also draws upon his experience in his day job and how he works with his IT department, a must read coming from a technologist at a very large IT company.

Culture and relationships will vary in every company, on one hand if IT is too stubborn to provide or support social computing tools…the business will adopt them on their own, and there’s little IT alone can do about it. Banning the tools won’t work, especially if they involve customer communications.

On the other hand, if social media tools aren’t going away, IT has an opportunity to step forward and lead the tool selection and deployment for the business, these tools impact every business unit. My new CEO told me that IT should be renamed “Business Technology” and I think he’s right.

I hope I’ve represented the select quotes well, I spent at least 30 minutes reading and pulling this content together. For what it’s worth, I’ve worked in both IT and on the Business side of web projects.

So where does IT start and stop? Do they have a role here? What’s at stake for them not to step up to the adoption of social media by the business units?