Above: Over 1000 developers attending Facebook’s F8 Conference, picture above the developer showcase, photo from Brian Solis use with attribution by creative commons

Facebook’s Developer Conference F8
I attended Facebook’s F8 developer conference in SF last week, and met with many of the application developers on the floor, or at their booths. First of all, for those that had booths, it was expected they were demonstrating success within Facebook (who allowed them to showcase). The event itself was a real production, from food, drinks, sessions, panels, the night ended with a private conference from Thievery Corporation, a popular down tempo artist. I also recommend you read my take on what Facebook Connect means for corporate websites.

[”Applications are the Microsites of Social Networks”-Social Media Employee]

Opportunities for Brands
Corporations want to reach communities and customers where they currently exist, and many realize that they are gathering in social networks. Brands have several options, but among them include using widgets (mini-applications) to reach them, there are two main ways: 1) Build their own application (or work with a developer 2) Sponsor, advertise, or latch on to existing successful ones.

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Overview of Widget and Application Developers at Facebook’s F8 Event
I talked to as many vendors as possible, to understand what’s new, and report back to readers at corporations (who I write for)

Slide
Focusing on improving applications like Funwall (the top application with an estimated 1.6 million active users), Topfriends and Superpoke. In addition to deploying on Facebook, they are also on MySpace. Slide says they have a strong sales force, and goes direct to brands. Suggests that advertising on slide apps are greater than going with Facebook themselves. Why? Facebook is a utility, when most are interacting with an application.

Example: Brands like Estee Lauder has been working with Slide to advertise across superpoke.

Example: 10 million vitamin water ‘top friends’ drink on the first eight days. It’s not an ad, it’s an integrated part of the top friends experience. People sent them ‘virtual drinks’. Coke.

RockYou
Adding more applications and helping more developers to monetize. Rockyou is now more like an ad networks, although Slide and RockYou were compared as competitors in previous months, their business models appear to be diverging. They’ve an active sales force that goes to brands to sell ads across their network,. As well as working with agencies.
Revenue model: Rockyou is doing a lot of ads and cost per install (CPI)

Example: Tropic thunder is an application that used, Superwall, and there was a tab added for top videos that promoted the movie.

Faceit
Viral application developer mainly focused on Facebook (as the name suggests). Have about a dozen employees. Their current clients include apparel companies such as Adidas and consumer companies such as Pedigree and other Fortune 500 brands. Partnered on projects with RockYou, such as Supewall and Likeness. Price point for deals, Minimum for 30-50k range. They do guarantee the app is up and running, do not guarantee visitor numbers.

Example: Adidas, they designed the app, includes education in hourse, then they do a product spec. then they make the app and manages it for an ongoing basis. Its on fan page

Living Social
This application let’s users review products of six major types: books, music, movies, restaurants, video games, beers. They’ve recently received 5 million in A round funding. Planning to monetize through advertising and affiliate marketing.

Example: Recently did a campaign with Sony, and promoted a movie (that was an book adaptation) they then used cross-movie promotion on books by that author.

iWidgets
WMS Widget Management system for creation workflow and ad management. This website let’s website owners (non-technical) to create a widget that can be embedded on Facebook. They are opensocial compatible. How they monetize? They have an ad on each of the widgets for tiered CPC, brands can pay to remove the logo of iWidget

Example: A brand that has interesting content on their site (that is frequetnyly update) can quickly and easily use iWidgets to reach the newsfeeds on MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle and Netvibes. Coming soon is Bebo and Hi5.

Social Media
Wants to reach brand, media, companies. Can help increase exposure of brands on social networking platforms, motto: “Apps are the Microsites of Social Network”.

Example: BMW joyrides application, that lets users create and configure a car, and select friends and where they want to go. They worked with the agency to devlope, although core competency of social media is to leverage their network 95,000 installs. Also working NBC, American Gladiators

[Context]
Claim to fame: a Social Marketing Company. They aim to build ads, build widgets, and advise.. these are really ‘interactive ads’. Current client base includes EA, Spore, Bank of America.

Example: Microsoft office did a campaign called ‘office poke’ that sent Microsoft branded pokes to each other with business humor. There were millions of pokes were sent. 700.000 installs and continues. Even though the campaign is over the application is downloaded and spread –over successful.

Xobni
While not a Faecbook developer, I was able to spend time with the founders, as an outlook plugin, that makes outlook a socially aware utility. Recently, they announced a partnership with Linkedin so their social graph is displayed on Xobni, an outlook application. How they can make money? They are evaluating the different ways to monetize such as premium models.

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Findings

Although startups exhibit great passion…
It’s really great meeting folks at startups, you can often see the fire in their eyes, hear the passion in their voice as they share their dreams. On the flip side, it’s also very hard when you see that they’ve commodity technology, are entering an already crowded market, or have rough marketing skills. I can see the pattern of companies that come and go, after attending so many STIRR events, startup events, and seeing the many early (seed) startups at the Techcrunch party two nights ago.

…Most startups will fail
Many of the early stage startups don’t make it, which is the natural selection process that we know as the market. The ones that are standing on their own (often A, B round stage, sometimes C) are mature enough to have a communications person, or hire a PR firm and eventually brief analysts. This means two things: 1) They’ve traction with their products, 2) They want to reach Fortune 5000, and are getting ready. I care the most about these later stage startups, as they are the ones that I may

Facebook embracing successful apps, punishing others
Mark declared in his keynote that providng a safe and successful experience for users is key, as a result, they are creating methods to filter applications that provide respectful user experiences that are non-invasive and protect users’ identiy first. Others will be penalized. Expect developers to clean up their act.

Developers struggle telling their story to brands
Applications/Widgets are very complicated story to tell to corporations, many corporate folks don’t “get it” and would rather rely on tried and true forms of web marketing like microsites or traditional advertising. More than one widget vendor told me they are having a hard time explaining their story to brands. There’s a lot of truth with this as when I give presentations to Forrester clients about social computing, I often have to explain what a widget is.

Business models rapidly changing
Unless you’re directly in the space it’s very difficult to keep track of who’s doing what, with low barriers to entry (400,000 developers currently exist) there are many entrants. As a result, this petri dish is constantly flexing and remorphing, business models, revenues streams continue to change.

Funding fuels more innovation –but doesn’t guarantee success
In Mark’s keynote, he said there was $200 million total of funding to developers from a variety of investors. This large influx of capital is allowing for many startups that may not have had the chance to launch products. A year from now, it will be interesting to see a string of dead applications that were once funded –but not adopted by users.

Many Developers Pan-Platform focused
While Facebook was the first to offer an open platform for developers, there’s been many containers that have opened up, as such, developers are seeking to widen their network by expanding to new communities.

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Related Resources

How Dell’s Regeneration Campaign allowed customers to build their own ads

What ‘Facebook Connect’ Means for Corporate Websites

Many Forms of Widget Monetization

Forrester Report: Google’s OpenSocial: Good News For Marketing Widgets But No Silver Bullet

Forrester Report: The Best and Worst of Social Network Marketing, 2008

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Although many brands forget that what happens offline echoes online, Sony is using a combination of digital and in person evangelism for a powerful concoction. Last night, I had dinner with Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow and Top Blogger, Rick Clancy who publishes on the Sony Electronics Blog.

Head or Corp Comm spearheading Blogging Efforts
Rick, who is actually the head of Corporate Communications has decided to establish himself in the front (read his bio) as the lead blogger. This is unique, as in many cases corp comm folks find the product experts to come front and center in the blogs rather than themselves.

Outreach: Visiting 42 Stores in 40 Days
Now, in many cases, blogs created and run by corporation communications folks tend to be sterile rehashes of press releases, and feature pro-corporate content. While the Rick’s blog is certainly squarly on the party line, he’s doing something that many do not, he’s getting out in front of the browser and actually meeting customers. He’s on a cross country tour to visit 42 stores in 40 days, the goal? to learn from customers at Sony Style stores, and to evangelize their latest offerings such as PlayStation, HDNA, Vaio, DSLR cameras, Blu-ray players and whatever cutting technology leaps forth.

Taking a closer look at the blogging efforts
I’m not the only one to enjoy Rick’s blog, as Heart Interactive’s CTO Mike “Glemak” Dunn proclaims via Friendfeed: “i think he’s excellent - a great example of using a true voice as a corporate blogger - he was good from day 1, a natural - “.

I enjoyed how they have a flickr stream (but should embed flickr pics directly into the post) and have a Google Map Mashup to track his future locations.

While Rick is certainly heading the right way, I made a few suggestions to him over wine, since he’s incorporating this as live event, I recommended he use Twitter to help pre-announce where he’s going to be (for example, today he’ll be in Portland) to help encourage technology early adopters to show up and meet and greet. Although I didn’t mention it, uploading pics in real time with Sony Ericson phones as well live streaming from the Vaio line could only help draw the connective tissue.

Lastly, I just reviewed some of the incoming links to the Sony Blog on Technorati and see that their successful Mommy blogger event was covered by an influential mommy blogger –Rick should link back into the conversation.

A room full of journalists and one Twitter user
Perhaps it’s a sign of the time, but the room was filled with journalists from the top newspapers, (this was a press and analyst event) who were scribbling furiously during dinner. While the quality is by no means a comparison, I was live-tweeting the highlights in real-time, getting feedback from you all, in 140 characters or less on my twitter account. Is it game changing? Maybe if I took it more seriously, but then again, reporting isn’t my job.

Sony’s vitual/real blogging outreach a good model
Good wishes to Rick and the Sony team on their outreach, a good example of social media as an overlay to the real world –and important story for a company who captures these stories and displays them with digital devices.

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This is an advertisement for Forrester services. I share a lot on this public blog, and we should be thankful my employer is so gracious to encourage this, so please show the same respect as you would to my other posts. For some history, I promote other events, workshops and conferences that are not ours, as long as I think they will help you.

But first, a story: A few weeks ago at Forrester’s Marketing conference my CEO George Colony (he blogs too) in front of everyone (hundreds in the room) asked me how I approach blogging. This was during his keynote, and he handed me a mic, I told him that companies can give away the appetizers for free, in order to entice customers of how great the food is inside the restaurant. To me, this blog is the appetizer, but the full meal with dessert and wine (literally) is at our 1:1 sessions, conferences, and consulting.

One of the ways that we are able to fuel our research, reports, and this blog is by generating revenue from giving workshops. Forrester Research has a 5% off Discount for those that want to attend my upcoming workshop (with Peter Kim) in San Francisco on July 17, 2008 San Francisco, CA.

We’ll cover the POST Methodology (how to approach social computing/media) from a high level perspective, and show data of how consumers actually use these tools. Then we’ll get into the weeds and discuss the five different objectives: listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing along with several case studies for each. During this interactive session, you’ll be able to ask questions, get answers, and network with industry peers in this small classroom setting.

Social Computing Workshop
To get the 5% discount: Call 1 Call +1 617/613 – 5905.

At the end, groups will break out, dig into exercises and come forth with actual strategies that could eventually apply back at the home front. The last one we conducted, the ratio was two instructors for a class of 10, you’ll get a lot of specific questions answered.

If you’re not planning to attend, you know I give away a great deal of information on this blog at no cost, thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope to see you there!

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When I first read the Cluetrain manifesto, it got my excited. I actually printed out the 95 Theses and left them on many of the marketing leaders chairs at my office at Hitachi Data Systems. The content was very revolutionary, so I actually never told them that I was the one that printed it out and parachutted these 95 soliders onto their desks. Since they read this blog, I guess they now know.

10 years later and the book is still going strong now (and it’s available for free), Shel Israel suggests (and I agree) that it’s the first in a trilogy of books: Naked Conversations, and now Groundswell. I was around during the launch of Naked, and was given permission to buy over 60 books for my colleagues at HDS (I guess the paratroopers did their job), and was at the book launch at Arrington’s house, and got to know Shel really well, and eventually worked with Robert. Now, I’m sitting right next to Charlene, and work with Josh frequently, it’s a real blessing to follow my passion.

The Conversation Group (social media strategists) have put together a great event, remembering Cluetrain after 10 years, in fact they’ve a blog dedicated to the tour, and I’ve asked to be one of the presenters, quite honestly, it’s a humbling offer, thanks.

Hope to see you at the “There’s a New Conversation” Thursday, May 29th, in Palo Alto

I hope you attend too, you can register for “There’s a New Conversation” Thursday, May 29, 2008 8:30 am PT - 8:00 pm PT, Palo Alto, CA. My discount code is friendoftcg and it totals the event at $75 / person including breakfast, lunch, and cocktail reception afterwards.

See you at There’s a New Conversation!

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On my last night of official ‘work’ before going offline, I was able to meetup with Hawaii’s top bloggers, access this post directly (if you’re seeing this in a feedreader) to watch video.

Whenever I travel to a new city for business, I try to meet the local bloggers at a community dinner, I’ve now friends all over the world, and we connect on twitter, blogs, and social networks to keep track of each other. Ryan Ozawa (who has the only Hawaii licence plate “Blog”, see pic below), the community leader and early technology adopter helped organize this dinner of Oahu’s top bloggers. About 15 of us assembled at a local joint (I was the only tourist) and we had authentic food –minus the luau, dancing, or fire spinning. Believe me, this was a real treat for me. I’m not even going to link to the restaurant website as I don’t want to spoil it for the locals, but if you’re a smart web hunter, you’ll figure it out.

I spent some time with Welton, who lives in Waikiki, he took me to some local bars after dinner, (Ryan’s) and gave me the low down of life in Honolulu from a local’s perspective. Some of the guys were live streaming the dinner from their phone, a bit grainy, but you can follow in from this player. Check out the coverage from Ryan Ozawa.

Truly one of the most friendliest groups I have ever met, the Aloha spirit was really there, including receiving a gorgeous flower lei from Xapa.

The one thing I noticed is that when I’ve visited HK, Singapore, Portland, and now Hawaii for blogger dinners, the local tech community doesn’t get together as much in real life, they often need someone to trigger it forward. I certainly hope that this Oahu group can start meeting more frequently, and to grow their community. (Ryan Ozawa left a comment with more color around this, please read that below)

Ryan left his thoughts on his blog, and took a roll call of those who attended:

Burt Lum (@bytemarks)

Cathy

Chris (@techustle)

Dave Zuls (@hawaiiseo)

Ian Kitajima (@ikitajima)

Jennifer Ozawa (@kilinahe)

Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang)

Joe Philipson (@jphilipson)

Jonathan Wong (@hawyn316)

Kara Baker (@xapa)

Lianne Kitajima (@lkitajima)

Neenz Faleafine (@infinitypro)

Roberto (@88hawaii)

Ryan Ozawa (@hawaii)

Welton (@welton)

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(Above Photo by Jeremy Pepper)

Jeremiah Owyang:  Sitting in the front row from Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2008, the theme for today’s event with over 800 attendees being Marketing’s New Imperative For Success: Engagement

Voices from the Audience:

• Rodney Rumford is excited to blog from the Forrester Marketing Forum in LA.
• Rodney’s live blogs Brian Haven’s Engagement presentation
• Marianne Richmond couldn’t attend, but writes Forrester Marketing Forum 2008: Engagement and I.
• David Deal of Avenue A Razorfish wraps his thoughts on Engagement
• Rather than Blog, Amy Worley used Twitter for her whole experience

Live Streaming the Morning Keynotes:
Harley Manning (Setting the Stage) and Brian Haven (Engagement), 54 Minutes

Speaking of Engagement… As we live streamed from the front row, we responded to questions from the Ustream chat room.  One virtual attendee from UK (named Haydens30), asked a question on Engagement, which was then asked by Josh Bernoff at the live event and answered by Brian Haven.  There were hundreds that watched live, and over 70 were in the chat room, you can watch the keynotes in the player below:

MicroBlogging: Twitter
Members are using their laptops and mobile devices to interact with each other using Twitter, a form of Microblogging.  Some of them are tagging their posts (called "tweets") with the event tag, you can view them all here.

Select Tweets include:

• adamcohen : next speaker: Emmanuel Brown of Nike Jordan brand - he’s wearing Air Jordans, love it
• adamcohen :  Engagement is the4 i’s:  level of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence over time #forrmarketing0
• Jeremy Pepper: 
  Engagement is close to becoming just a buzz word bc of overuse.
• Robert Scoble
  @jowyang ’s CEO called him into the office. Now if he were REALLY hip
  he would have sent a Twitter message. :-)  (George reads this blog, so
  he’ll see this)
• Alex Nesbitt
  @jowyang - why such an anti-social conference? You guys needs a way for
  people to ask unfiltered questions or text in questions. (my respone)

Pictures:
Below are a few pics I’ve taken, but to see all public photos peruse this flickr tag ForrMarketing08,also see Jeremy Pepper’s set,

Eating Our Own Dog Food
At Forrester, we preach to our clients to follow the POST Methodology, here at the forum, we’ve set up roles, processes, and have identified the key objectives we want to achieve by using social media at our forum, have a written plan with success metrics, and will report back to our stakeholders how the event went –both good and bad.  In the spirit of transparency, here’s some of what the plan that was shared among the internal team: Energizing, rather than create most of the content, we encourage our attendees to publish, we’ll link to it from this blog post.  Supporting: We encourage attendees to join our Facebook page and network with each other.  Embracing: We’re using this feedback from attendees to learn how to improve our future events.

Select photos (some from Jeremy Pepper)

 

Cross posted on Forrester Marketing Blog

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We’re gearing up for next weeks’ Marketing Forum in Los Angeles, with over 800 expected attendees, the company is really excited to deliver great content, facilitate networking, and showcase technology vendors that help solve marketing problems.

The speaker lineup is impressive, aside form Forrester analysts presenting their key industry findings we’ve speakers from Fedex, Nike, Wal-Mart, Dell, Leapfrog, and more. The event team has been working hard to prepare all the logistics, and I’ve already listened in to dress rehearsals for presentations (our speakers rehearse dozens of times, in order to deliver high value)

Also, each of the attendees are getting a copy of the upcoming Groundswell book. I’ve been asked to do what I’m best at, help facilitate social media during the event, so I’ll be sitting in the front row in the blogger bullpen, if you’re a attending and attend to blog, stream, tweet, the conference, come up and sit with me, or please say hi. Looking forward to seeing you next week.

Watch the Forrester Marketing blog for details.

You can check out the last time I went to the consumer forum day 1 and day 2. Leave a comment below if you’re going, I look forward to meeting you.

Tag for the event is forrmarketing08

Update: Marianne Richmond has high expectations of the event, we’re looking forward to seeing her!

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Key Hinkley the CEO of Somewhere does a technical analysis on the Mark Zuckerberg and Sarah Lacy interview, he brings forth frequency charts by keyword, new users sign ups, and provides some analysis and predictions.

What’s interesting isn’t so much the interview itself but how social media has spread among the crowd, it’s a cross between sociology , technology adoption, and psychology.

I know the drama of the discussion has already been talked about by many bloggers, so I’ll leave my opinions off the table, I’m more interested in the impact this has to future conferences. At least two conference organizers have come to me asking for guidance, there is some concern over social media revolts.

A few days ago, I reported the keynote wasn’t the only session where the audience asserted control.

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SF Blogger Dinner on Tuesday, March 25th

I’m getting the word about about a SF Blogger Dinner on Tuesday, March 25th. We’re welcoming Josh Bernoff to town, Charlene’s co-author.

It’s pretty normal at blogger dinners that everyone pay their own way, and in the spirit of community blogger dinners, we’d ask that you chip in $30 for dinner and we’ll all buy each other drinks. Register here.

The current list includes, Beth Blecherman, Ben Metcalfe, Christopher Heuer, Jennifer Jones, Josh Bernoff, Charlene Li, and Josh Bernoff. We only have room for 50, so please sign up.

SF Blogger Dinner on Tuesday, March 25th

Dinner
Cocktail style, with a buffet of appetizers (pizzas, crispy calamari, spring rolls, chicken and beef satays, endive spears).

Location:
21st Amendment, 563 Second Street, San Francisco, phone: 415-369-0900

Date:
Tuesday, March 25th

Time:
6-8pm

Cost:
$30 for dinner

Parking:
Closest on 2nd Street just north of Townsend.

Here’s a few other blogger dinners that I’ve organized, promoted, or attended, I really love meeting those I interact with online.
SF
Boston
Portland
Barcelona
Hong Kong
Singapore
Chicago

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Here’s where to find me in the coming weeks:

Monday, March 17 I’ll be in NYC at the API Conference as a guest of Stephanie Agresta.

Tuesday Morning, March 25 I’ll be speaking in Mountain View
Social Networking Half Day Conference: Business Applications of Social Networking on March 25th in Mountain View. Readers of my blog get a discount use the code SNC325. I’ll be presenting my presentation on “Online Community Best Practices” (I presented it twice today, one full version and one small version for clients and their customers).

Tuesday Afternoon, March 25th, SF
I’ll be at the SNAP Summit in San Francisco on a panel

Tuesday Night, March 25th, SF
We’re having a blogger dinner, stay tuned for details

March 27, 2008, UC Berkeley,
I’m waiting for more details, but it’s the Online Community Keynote

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For the second year, I experienced the SXSW Interactive Festival, an event attended by thousands who have love for media, the web, and gadgets. SXSW is a bubble of the tech elite assembling, in many ways it’s a glimpse into the future, exposed on a Petri dish today.

[A Groundswell Occurred at the SXSW Interactive Festival as the Audience Revolted And Took Charge]

Last year, Twitter gained traction at SXSW 2007, this year, it fully ramped up to be one of the most prominent and power shifting tools of the festival –we witnessesd a Groundswell. What’s a Groundswell? It’s a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions. Dan Fost, writing for Fortune Magazine reports that this is Social media is putting an end to the passive role attendees traditionally play at business gatherings.

At least four Groundswells occurred at SXSW 2008:

1) Audience Revolt at Mark Zuckerburg Presentation
The first and foremost example was the interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg by Sarah Lacy, Although discussed by
hundreds of blogs and on twitter, I’ll summarize: Sarah Lacy was un-prepared to interview the young CEO, displaced the focus, and a uprising happened online and in person from the audience. They vocalized their discontent on Meebo (a chat room provided by the conference organizers), and expressed themselves using Twitter (a mobile social network and chat room), and even took charge by taking control of the questions, and then spilling it over to hundreds of blogs. Sadly, for Sarah’s reputation has been marred as an interviewer by the extensive coverage of blogs and even mainstream media. As a result, the audience took charge, revolted in discontent and hijacked the interview, later, Mark Zuckerberg held a make-up discussion off site. It’s very clear the audience took charge. You can watch the video, and read Wired’s SXSW: 2008, the Year the Audience Keynoted.

2) The Crowd overtakes a Panel
Perhaps far worse than interviewing skills was the direct challenge to the general assertion of some presenters. The speakers in the Social Marketing Strategies Metrics, Where Are They? panel, were victim to a revolution in their own session. Although I wasn’t present, I heard that the audience disagreed with the content, statements, and stance of this conservative panel and directly challenged them. One member of the audience requested to ask a question, but was denied by the panel. Defiantly, and with the crowd on his side, he asserted himself. Read the actual chat transcripts to learn more.

3) How an audience “team” improved a session
Not all the examples were negative, in Charlene Li’s presentation, apparently, one of the projectors were off center, disrupting the experience. A murmur started to bubble up in Meebo (conference provided open chat) requesting that “…somebody fix the screen”. According to Miles Sims, one member of the audience nearest the projector went over and fixed it, and a silent cheer from the crowd echod in the chat room. You can read the archives yourself.

From the Meebo Chatroom during Charlene’s Preso:

09:37 alx: can somebody fix the screen?
09:37 TheMuggler: I wish that sxsw staffer near the projector would line it up witht he screen
09:37 aebaxter: I know, I can’t see all the pictures of the revolutionaries
09:37 mstephan: I am next to it, I’ll see if I can fix it
09:38 james: nice
09:38 Miles: Good work!
09:38 mstephan: *bow*
09:38 TheMuggler: you are a revolutionary!

4) Twitter, a communication tool to track sessions, parties, and events
Perhaps in a pure social manner, Twitter became the glue of the dozens of friends that were spread out over the city at parties, to find out where friends are and people you want to meet, people were actively tweeting where they were. In many cases (myself included) it was a way to let people know where the happenings were, and to constantly keep a pulse on what the masses were up to. More than one person expressed to me that they were overwhelmed by the dozen or so tracks simultaneously, but were able to monitor through twitter, meebo, and from blogs.

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SXSW is a conference made up of folks who thrive on interaction, you won’t see this type of behavior from every conference, and the conference organizers supported this behavior by providing the Meebo chat room. We should still look at how this could impact other conferences, is this just a one off, or a trend?

Wisdom of Crowds or Idiocy of the Mob?
Some are suggesting that this is an example of unruly mobs being rude and disruptive using anonymous tools. Despite the damages this could have, it’s certainly not going to go away. It will be interesting to see if conferences are going to encourage back channels (like SXSW promoted the Meebo chat rooms) or how they will embrace as they naturally bubble up due to twitter usage. It’s very clear that this groundswell can quickly do immense damage (search engine results impact client and job relations) yet it can also put the power into the hands of the customers, in this case, the audience.

Speakers, Panelists, and Moderators must monitor back channel
Recently, I wrote a post that has been passed around many conferences on how to successfully moderate a panel. I’m now adding a section suggesting that the moderator first poll his community using some of these tools, and to also monitor the back channel in real time, while not all conferences will embrace a back channel, it’s safe to assume that Twitter will be found at many tech and marketing conferences.

Moving from “Me” to “We”
SXSW was certainly a collection of creators, critics, and joiners (individuals that participate, then influence, according to the Forrester’s Technographics data) and in no way represents a larger sample of the marketplace. Conrad Hametner, shared with me that the esteemed speaker Henry Jenkins, who gave a presentation at the Festival and suggested that social media world is taking charge, the former generation the “I” generation is now being replaced by the highly networked generation of the “We” where collaboration, two-way discussions, and power of masses starts to take hold.

Jenkins is right, we’re starting to get glimpses of the future where the social tools gives to a culture shift from the “me” to the “we”.

I’ve cross posted this on the Forrester Marketing Blog

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If you’re reading this in email or a feedreader, come visit this post to watch the embedded video.

I was lucky to be at the very first BlogHaus at SXSW in Jan 2007, and was really pleased to return to yet another version at SXSW this week. Stephanie Agresta interviewed me, and we talked about SXSW, and what I’m watching as an important technology.

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I’m headed to SXSW Interactive Festival in a few hours, I’ve a red eye from Silicon Valley that’s going to give me time to sort through a few hundred emails, write a few blog posts, and pen the strawman for my upcoming report on OpenSocial: Challenges and Opportunities.

SXSW is a festival, not a conference. Its about parties, networking, conference then bbq, pretty much in that order (at least to me), what’s amazing is that most of the bay area tech scene picks up and transplants in artsy city of Austin, except for Dave Winer who said to me in twitter that it’s mostly for young folks (Ill be sure to find some “old” people and congratulate them for breaking the mold)

Check out my posts from last years events, (the awards, how twitter exploded on the scene day 2 and 3 coverage). If you’re headed to SXSW, I look forward to meeting you at the many parties, events, and at the conference itself, so please come up and say hi, I really love meeting folks. I’ll be at the following events:

Sunday: Panel: Scoop the Story on Your Blog We’re going to do something unique, that involves mobile and not just in the session room we’re intended to be, so please join this very interactive session.

Dinner at the famous Salt Lick outdoor BBQ restaurant with many bloggers.

Monday: Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing, the killer panel will include: Chris Heuer Partner, The Conversation Group, Tara Hunt Co-Founder, Citizen Agency, Deborah Schultz Founder/Chief Catalyst, deborahschultz.com, David Parmet Owner, Marketing Begins At Home, Hugh MacLeod Grand Pooh-Bah, gapingvoid.com

Monday Night Party: An Evening of Conversation Starters at Icon Cactus sponsored by Federated Media and Dell , along with Bulldog Solutions, The Conversation Group, and Social Media Club Austin

I’ll also be tweeting where I’m heading in real time, I hope to see you on twitter, my screen name is jowyang. (Ill add you back)

Or you too can choose from the dozens and dozens of panels (and this is just the interactive sessions, not even the film or music ones)

I’m purposly trying to avoid any set meetings (except for the ones listed above) but if you do want to meetup, let me know of which events you plan to attend in the comments, and Ill try to make it.

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We shouldn’t be surprised that Social Media Strategists know how to share. Forrester was pleased to host the Online Community Roundtable, you can continue the discussion in the Facebook Group.

(Update: I uploaded this video with the Flip Camera, man it’s easy capture, edit and publish with this thing)

Bill Johnston is a community servant (Update: he posts his thoughts from his blog), and I mean that in the best possible way. He organizes events for the Social Media industry that serve those who are practicing, it’s really a very valuable service. Every other month, he organizes the Online Community Roundtable for anyone who’s struggling with the day to day job of reaching to customers using online tools, a different company hosts this event each time. Update: Chris Kenton provides his thoughts from the event, he was expands off the idea of Identity Escrow. Ken Kaplan gives context on his presentation on storytelling, I’d like to see Ken speak more often.

To me, perhaps the most interesting topic was one around the “Future of Social Networks” and Chris Kenton’s historical look at marketing, and how technology has empowered and disabled marketers

This is actually a ‘user group’ or in Forrester terms, what we call a ’support community’ where friends, colleagues, peers (and competitors) come together to share and learn from each other. The size of the event is limited, around 35 yielded quality conversations, any more would have caused fragmentations. Bill is masterful in not letting anyone pitch, and anyone who wants to share puts their name up on the board, here’s the list of presentations.

One social network even got up and told the group that they were having challenges growing in a particular market and asked for opinions and help. A few questions from the crowd asked for demographic information, objectives, and clarification, then a barrage of suggestions from seasoned community folks came back to help, now that’s community.

There’s a “Soft NDA” in place, so if a member wanted something to stay confidential, then all will have to respect this, it leads to greater sharing and trust. Some of those who attended included those from Intel, Webex, CyWorld, Charles and Helen Schwab Organization, Cadence, YouTube, Lithium, Leverage, LiveWorld, Ringcube, Intuit, Symantec, VM Ware, Wyse, Babycenter, Tesla Motors, Joyent, SixApart, On24, ZapTXT and hosted by Forrester. (who did I miss?)

I think I can speak for Charlene, that for us this was a real treat, these are the folks we research for, these are the problems that we’re also trying to find out what works and what doesn’t for. I’d like to to thank Forrester’s Frans V.E. for funding the food and drink, Frank C. for helping drag the tables around, and Joan M, the Foster City office manager for all her work and preparation.

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With the success of the Twitterbowl experiment (read the premise or view results) a few weeks ago, the Twitter community is self-organizing to make TV a participatory sport.

How? Those on Twitter can comment, discuss, praise or criticize the stars, their outfits, and their self-important speeches. It’s pretty easy to do, on twitter you can type in Twitter Comment the phrase “#aa08″

To see what others have said:

Watch this blog aa08.wordpress.com
Or this mashup tool Eventrack
Twemes has a tool to gauge AA08

Thanks to Ike Pigott (Twitter, blog), and Shannon Whitley (Twitter, Blog) for first alerting me to this little project. Craig Cmehil (Twitter, Blog)created the eventrack

You can find me at Twitter with the screen name jowyang, add me, and I’ll add you back.

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Seems like everything is picking up, there are more conferences, workshops, and webinars appearing at –the space is booming. Everyone has questions about social networks, and there’s a lot of interest around widgets and the promise of OpenSocial.

Here’s where you can find me in the month of March

Online Community Keynote, The Knight Journalism School | UC Berkeley, March 27, 2008 Last time I visited the journalism school, we had a great roundtable, looking to expand on this

Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives | Mountain View, March 25th To date, I’m really proud to be invited, I’m the only male speaker at this point.

SNAP Summit | San Francisco, March 25th If you’re in the social networking space, you should be here.

Webinar with Awareness Networks (client) on Online Community Best Pracftices| 11:00 AM US/Eastern, March 13th (update the details are here)

SXSW | Austin, March 7-11th I’m really looking forward to this event, lots of parties. Dell and the Conversation Group are hosting a lounge on Monday night, and I’m looking forward to seeing my Singapore friends

Supernova 2008| San Francisco, March 6 Kevin Warbach just asked me to moderate a panel on opensocial, interop, and I’ll post more details when I get them.

Graphing Social Patterns by O’Reilly | San Diego, March 3-4 That’s just next week, I can’t wait to get some San Diego sun!

I’ll be at various other local events, stay tuned.

I considered creating a public calendar, like Scoble does, but I decided to just centralize on this blog for now. I also keep a tally of all my future and past speaking gigs on my profile page.

If you’re going to be at any of these events, leave a comment below, and let the community know of any get together, blogger dinners, or if you just want to meet. Looking forward to meeting you!

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Silicon Valley: 3 tech events every day
I also talked to a colleague and I told her that there was about 3 tech events every weekday in Silicon Valley, you can hunt through Upcoming.org, or see this list of local user groups in Silicon Valley that regularly meet.

Example: 7 events tonight
And these are just those I know of:

1 Dataportability Meetup (Chris Saad)
2 Geek Dinner with Dr. Richard Clayton (with dotBen)
3 Bowlr US (with Scoble)
4 SF PHP: OOps! The PHP Fear and Loathing Guide to Basic Object-Oriented Design
5 Orkut OpenSocial Hackathons (at GooglePlex)
6 How to Effectively Use Social Media for Search Marketing Campaigns (Joey Wan)
7 And I’ll be speaking at the Deal Maker Media tonight

Join me at the Community Roundtable (hosted at Forrester)
Feb 28th | 530pm | Foster City, CA
I’ll be adding to the busy-ness of the valley. I’m pleased to be hosting my first real event at Forrester, on Feb 28th, we’ll have those who lead community efforts in Silicon Valley over for an open discussion at our Foster City branch. (HQ is in Cambridge) It’s a free event, many of the folks I know, and I really welcome them with open arms. As an analyst this works perfectly, as I’m researching and writing reports on online communities, social networks, and widgets, I’ll give the attendees a choice to get their hand on the report. Bill Johnston the organizer since 2005 has the details on how you can attend. A few rules, no vendor pitches, and there’s a ’soft NDA’ where much of the content shared from attendees will not be made public (although the concepts will be).

Here’s a few other events I’ll be speaking at in Feb-March
I’ve indicated which ones are public conferences, so I hope you consider attending.

Online Community Keynote, The Knight Journalism School | UC Berkeley, March 27, 2008

Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives | Mountain View, March 25th

SNAP Summit (Public Conference) | San Francisco, March 25th

SXSW (Public Conference) | Austin, March 7-11th

Graphing Social Patterns by O’Reilly (Public Conference)| San Diego, March 3-4

Internet Strategy Forum | San Francisco, Feb 27

Shaking the Money Tree of Multi-Platform Social Networks | Stanford, Feb 19

Web 2.0 Marketing: What’s Real and What’s Hype (Microsoft/MarketingProfs | Webinar, Feb 14

DealMaker Media, Social Networking ‘08 | San Francisco, Feb 7 (that’s tonight)

I really hope to see you out at these events, if you’ve any events in your area (and not in Silicon Valley) feel free to leave a comment or a link. Spread the word.

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(Left: I met and interviewed MySpace’s team Will and Jim)

I just got back from the brand spanking new SF MySpace office, an event tonight that was catered to the new developer platform which they announced today. This post isn’t aimed at developers, but at the Web Strategist (web decision maker) here’s what you need to know:

MySpace opens third party developer platform
MySpace announced a developer platform so third party developers can create applications on top of their existing commmunity. This is released on time, and is a competitive move to Facebook’s application platform. I’ve published stats and demographics about MySpace (and Facebook here). Over the next 30 days, developers will get to play in the ‘Sandbox’ (the theme for tonight’s party).

Here’s what to expect:
After watching this space, talking to MySpace techical staff, and talking to many developers at the event, here’s my predictions and insights.

1) MySpace builds strategic relationship with widget developer community
MySpace’s new SF office is a great foothold into Silicon Valley, in particular, to the widget developer community. Most of the widget network developers are located in this area, and by buidling relationships with them, there’s an opportunity they’ll launch their widgets on their container, fueling the next generation of MySpace. The schwag (pics below) really catered to the developer: a backpack full of shirts, flip video player, and a few toys for the beach. (for the sandbox)

2) Unlike Facebook, Developer and MySpace will partner and monetize
Unlike Facebook, it’s expected that developers will have direct access to monetize utilizing MySpace’s advertising tools. Although it wasn’t formally announced, expect hyper targeting, and other monetization opportunities to be available to developers.

3) MySpace respects Privacy
MySpace, a later adopter to this movement, let Facebook make it’s mistakes (newspage and Beacon) and will not suffer from the same issues. Expect Myspace to play it safe, and play it right, leaning on the mistakes from Facebook.

4) While not fully developed, expect platform to slowly evolve
It was very clear (I talked to many developers in the room) and they were all waiting to see what the platform was like, as very little was released, miany documentation. I asked during the Q&A session when all the APIs will be available, and they said “tonight…(looking over at colleagues) right?” Laughter from crowd erupted. There will be three APIs released each with different abilities. Also, applications can display in 5 different locations within MySpace, including a private area for the user to see the application without anyone else seeing it.

5) Widgets on MySpace react different than other Social Networks
Even if widgets can be easily ported over from Facebook to Myspace don’t expect them to work the same. Demographics (who they are), Psyhographics (their emotional drivers), and Technographics (how they use technology) will all be different. Expect very few of the successful applications in Facebook to perform the same way in MySpace.

6) MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo coexist
I can’t tell you how many times I’m asked “is Facebook a Myspace killer?” the answer is no, they are different tools from different audiences. They will coexist.

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What it means:

Predictions
Expect a lot of trial and error development to occur, this is really and experimentation stage for the next 3 months. The platform will ilkely have a lot of tweaking and expect a lot of experimentation from the developer community. In the long run, MySpace will be able to successfully monetize, developers will profit, and brands will start to get involved. Hopefully, the user experience will respect the wishes of the users, and it will be a win for all.

Recommendations to the Web Strategist
Unless you’re already a successful widget developer you should not engage, instead you should Wait and Watch, and see what applications work, and what won’t. Then, consider contacting those developer networks to rebrand successful applications, or go a step further and create interactive of social campaigns partnering with them, and lastly, developing your own widget.

Update: Thanks Steve Ames for the assistance, he spotted a few errors in text, more from Justin Smith.

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Congrats to social media author, advisor, speaker and expert Shel Israel to join Fast Company with his co-author to launch the Global Neighborhoods online video show. Shel pioneered much of the thinking of business blogging with the Naked Conversations book (I purchased 65 copies for me and my colleagues) and will be leading the same passion for social media with his upcoming show.

When we look at what Fast Company is doing, they’re really empowering a new generation of medium as video becomes a part of the web, they’re enhancing their text based product to now add rich media. I’m sure they’ll consider how to incorporate other tools like social networks into their programming.

Congrats Shel to the next leg of your journey, please wish him luck at his announcement post. Ill be adding this announcement to my next people on the move in the social media industry.

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Here’s where you’ll find me, (and my presentations) over the rest of Jan, and all of Feb. This excludes any ongoing Silicon Valley events (is this updated?) that I may attend.

Web 2.0 Marketing: What’s Real and What’s Hype (Microsoft/MarketingProfs | Webinar, Feb 14

DealMaker Media, Social Networking ‘08 | San Francisco, Feb 7

Customer Support is the New Marketing | San Francisco, Feb 4

Dow Jones Webinar, Social Media Measurement | Jan 31st (Free)

Web Guild Web 2.0 Conference: Crowdsourcing | Jan 29

Forrester Teleconference: Strategy For Facebook | Jan 28

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