This is a busy week, I’ve received more submissions than ever before, if this pace continues, I’ll have to figure out a new way to let folks self-submit. Be sure to include a link to your announcement, if it doesn’t exist on the web, it’s hard to verify, and it’s really what we’ve come to expect in this space. Lastly, while social media is certainly easy for folks to offer, I’m seeking examples of folks who really are offering this as their core expertise –not a side offering. As a result, I’ll be filtering to those that are truly living and breathing in this world.

I’m starting this post series (see archives) to recognize and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

Highway 12 Ventures Gets Serious about Social Media and hires Tac Anderson, formerly of HP (who’s commented that he’s still with HP), keep an eye on Tac, he’s a fast mover, he’s on Twitter too.

Starting August 25th, James McNally became the Tucows/OpenSRS Community Specialist, a brand-new position for this internet services company based in Toronto.

Congrats to Kathy Jacobs who is now the Community Manager for AllVoices, a group focused on citizen media at its best

UpDown.com, the leading social platform for virtual investing, today announced that Joe Ranft has been named Vice President of Product.

Jesse Stay is making a move, but had yet to reveal the details of the specifics. I’ve met Jesse, and had a great time talking about Facebook at the FB Developers conference. One could only expect his move to be Facebook or widget/application related.

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How to connect with others (or get a job):
Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how:

Submit an announcement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, leave a comment below, or if you’re feeling shy (it’s cool to self-nominate) send me an email. Please include a link to your announcement, and ensure you’re really living and breathing in the social media world –this is not a small aspect of your role.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

List of Enterprise Social Media Professionals
This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

See Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, fees pay for my hosting)

Connect with others in the community manager group in Facebook

Check out Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs

See Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs

SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community

Teresa has a few jobs, some around community

New Media hire has an extensive job database

Social Media Headhunter

Social media jobs

Jobs in social media

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, or I’ll delete it)

I’m seeking folks that are related to full time hands on social media strategy and community managers, to be on this list, so let me know if you see these folks, and please submit them. Also, I probably will not include executive management changes on this list at social media companies, as the list would go on and on, but you can feel free to express yourself in the comments!

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I had a great time on Mario Armstrong’s Digital Spin Radio (NPR Affiliate) which was joined by KickApp’s Michael Chin (who has a cool accent). He saw my post on Social Marketing from Democrats and Republicans, which kick started this conversation. Also, McCain has launched a new social network, using KickApps, which has caused a flurry of online discussions

And yeah, they had to patch me onto the show, they must have had me on mute –insert joke below in comments, I need a bit of humility once in a while.

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I’m deep into the Wave research (read my latest status update) for nine community platforms (big list here), in fact, this week and next, I’m in 5 and a half to 6 hour meetings with vendors getting to know them very well. Of course, that’s just one side of the story, I’m interviewing up to 27 of their customers (brands) to get the ‘other’ side of the story. You’ll see me pop up online for “Twitter breaks” here and there, surfacing for air, then submerging back again.

I wasn’t surprised to hear from a few brands that not everyone is a fan of Software as a Service (Saas), in fact, for some, on-premise software makes a whole lot more sense. What exactly was the pain point with Saas?

Of course, the most obvious points continue to come to mind: conservative companies, or those with truly critical data wanted to have the data on site, or wanted to self-support their own architecture, or wanted to modify the software at their choosing, yet I learned about something that I hadn’t even considered:

Some brands felt that being tied to SaaS meant they were at the mercy of the vendor when it came to the software architecture. While this is certainly the case not just for SaaS but all non-opensource software, when a vendor would upgrade a version, some brands were forced to accept the changes. In some cases, some brands were not aware/prepared of some upcoming upgrades to the SaaS software and were blindsided to the changes.

Furthermore, these brands felt that the larger customers who wanted specific feature upgrades were able to influence the vendor through direct pressure or even fueling the R&D work through feature requests. What’s wrong with that? Alot, if the feature requests of the larger customer don’t reflect the needs of a smaller SMB customer. Since the software is delivered over the web, there was little recourse for the smaller brand to deny the changes, they pretty much had to suck it up.

Now you may ask, isn’t this a problem with all software, SaaS or on-premise? Yes but vendors are more likely to allow customers to use multiple versions of on-premise software, of course there’s a date when they will no longer support it. Yet vendors who provide SaaS are far more likely to provide only one version, forcing clients to swallow the changes on demand.

Have you had a bad experience with Software as a Service? Leave a comment, let’s explore this further.

Related reading: Community Platforms: Here comes the CIO.

Update: As usual, the conversation has also splintered into FriendFeed.

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The search box circumvents the address bar
After playing with Google’s Chrome browser for the last few days, I noticed the “Address” bar, which is just called a “Omnibox” (corrected from just “box” via comments) is really a search field. Anything entered into it will deliver a webpage (it first looks at your historical activities) or renders Google search results (or search of your preference, including twitter search). As a result, it’s become apparently that I no longer need to enter in URLs to my browser for 99% of all tasks.

[Chrome is a nod to the future, the address bar is really a search bar. URLs will be an anachronism]

…is what I mentioned in Twitter with a flurry of agreements back from the community. Lori MacVittie expands further on the idea and agrees that like engine parts in our car, or IP addresses, they mainly go invisible as we drive to our real world or online destinations.

What’s next: content to be found and served through context
I have an odd habit of counting how many TV advertisements don’t have a URL somewhere in it, on average, I only count 1-2 per hour, nearly all are signaling to viewers to learn more on the web. If I’m curious about a product, I can manually enter in the URL, or do a search to find the site. Given that Google has experimented with active listening to TV programs through the mic on your computer, there’s ways to serve up contextual information at any point of your TV watching experience, thinking further, when TV and the web truly marry, entering in URLs will truly be an extinct activity.

Of course, URLs will always be there, but like signs on the road, they move into the background and let you focus on what’s really important –your destination.

For me, I’m happy to say good bye to URLs and move on to more contextual ways of finding, or serving information through digital spaces, the next phase of information navigation is starting.

Love to hear your thoughts:

1) Will URLs go away?

2) At what point will URLs be an Anachronism?

3) What is needed to make this happen?

4) How will be find (or be served) information in the future?

Can you answer the above 3 questions without saying the “S” word? (semantic), try to, it’s good for ya.

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Above: The Social Technographics of Voters, read Josh Bernoff’s Analysis which further segments the behaviors of McCain vs Obama supportersa

In this post, I’m going to make some observations from my network, but my only caveat is, this is not representative of the whole tech industry. First, we should ask some questions about what I’m seeing:

Does the Social Media Space tend to skew Democratic?
I’ve noticed for some time that the web industry tends to skew very liberal and democratic, you certainly see elements of this within Digg, for example, I did an advanced query of dugg (voted) stories that got on the front page, (title only) and McCain has 42 pages (many stories are negative), and “Obama” has 65 pages (mixed bag of content).

Does sentiment tell us much?
Yet frequency isn’t telling, and sentiment is. Last night, I asked the community around me in Friendfeed to list out three keywords what come to mind in this association test for both parties. You can read the Republican, and Democratic responses –nearly opposite.

Update: I’ve asked my Friendfeed network to think about why there’s strong liberal sentiment in FF, read their responses.

Why does the social space (or at least my network) tend to skew so left? It could be a number of factors from age, willingness to adopt change, or that the ideology of the very social web in it’s essence could be core to liberal beliefs. In fact, if you read a book on blogging or social media marketing, you could quickly transplant the words “company” for “government” and the book would still read very logically.

Is it because there may be many Republicans in Silicon Valley?
Yet despite this lean from the left within my social media network, I do remember during the last election that a great deal of republican votes came from the Silicon Valley. I remember my friends who worked at NASA, Boeing, Lockheed, that were strongly encouraged by their management to vote Republican, as it would increase the eventual spending in the aerospace and hi-tech sector. Many of these companies have large headquarters in the Mountain View area, with thousands of companies supporting this eco-system, in fact read this 2004 article from the last election which profiles ’sheepish republicans’ in Silicon Valley, it’s an interesting mix here in the valley as while folks make swing left in ideology, many are very wealthy.

Is it adoption of Obama and McCain Social Media?
Not all is lost by the Republicans in this space, this article by Techpresident (Which is indexing and commenting on the the digital marketing efforts of each candidate) suggests that even though Obama may have a grass roots lead within social media and dedicated staff (including Facebook co-founder), McCain’s supporters could master the tide by creating an API and encouraging the movement to create their own applications.

Or is it speed of adoption of these tools?
If speed is any type of indicator of adoption of social marketing, McCain just launched their online community on the campaign domain, called McCain Space, Yet Obama’s campaign has been up and running with MyBarackObama for some time.

So what is it that fuels the social media space to appear to be more active for the Democrats vs the Republicans? Let’s focus on data:

Some Answers May Lie with the Technographics of Voters (see above graphic)
In Josh’s analysis, he points out that the tendency to Join (be in a social network) between Obama supporters and McCain supporters is nearly a margin of 13%, which isn’t a lot but given that across the board Obama members are more particiaotpry in soical technographics than McCain supporters they’re more able to energize their base. Perhaps the most telling is the Spectator behavior, which indicates which support group is more likely to consume citizen created content. Nearly tho-thirds of Obama, (59%) consume social content, and less than half of McCain (44%) supporters will consume social content, a margin that straddles the half way mark.

Data about overall existing behaviors of users (technographics) are perhaps a key indicator that demonstrates why one party may have an advantage in social marketing.

In typical internet humor, a meme called “Little known facts about Sarah Palin” continues to spread throughout twitter. Given her largely unknown background, the twittersphere has had fun creating her background for her.

The above is just cursory observations, had I more time I would love to do a more formal study on this specific vertical, maybe in four years.

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I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an Industry Analyst –a good way to get in my head.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

You can subscribe to this digest tag only, which filters only these posts tagged digest.

Web Strategy Summary
A smattering of small announcements his week ranges from new features, acquisitions and John McCain launches his own version of MySpace. Sometimes, quiet weeks are good weeks.

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Feature: LinkedIn builds community with ‘Groups’
Now launching this groups feature (similar to Google Groups and Yahoo Groups) it’ll help users build more of a discussion to self support each other online.

Features: Facebook’s Newsfeed improved
Nick O’Neill has a live video showing the interactive and dynamic features of Facebook’s “Live Feed” feature, a real-time life streaming aggregation tool.

Sunset: Yahoo shuts down SoNet ‘Mash’
Listed as Yahoo’s fourth failure at social networks, they’ve now shut down Mash. Where should they look? Yahoo mail is one of the largest social graphs around

Virtual Goods: Facebook creates virtual currency
This analysis suggests that Facebook’s virtual goods are creating virtual goods as currency upwards in the $35 million range, yet we must remember it’s only worth as much as what people buy it for.

User Experience: Facebook puts brakes on Wall Spam
An interesting dilemma, this popular social network encourages developers and brands to participate, yet they’ve got to control the user experience above all else, and look to control wall spam.

Deployment: Marriott launches communtiy using LiveWorld
Interesting how hotels are getting on the bandwagon as Marriott launches online community for Marriott Rewards. Link via Henry Harteveldt. Congrats to Liveworld for earning the customer, I had to go hunt online to find out who the vendor was.

Acquisition: Book based SoNet Shelfari gulped by Amazon
Amazon to move into the social networking arena with this recent purchase of Shelfari a community based application that let’s people create virtual ‘bookshelves’ to share with others.

Mobile: Hi5 moves to mobile
Expect Hi5’s online growth to fuel it’s recent launch of 26 languages of it’s mobile version of it’s social network, given that many cultures lean on mobile communications over US based browser, this could be a medium for growth.

Security: MySpace Login Held Ransom to Music Artist
Not sure how to react to this, but Soulja Boy hip hop artist had his logins to MySpace and YouTube held ransom from a 12 year old boy demanding 2500 dollars.

Awards: Neighborhood America receives accolade
Insight community vendor, Neighborhood America receives award at the Always On AO ‘Global 250 Winners’ for innovation.

Deployment: McCain launches community via Kickapps
McCain launches his online community, in sync with the announcement of his new VP. This online community (the URL indicates it’s from KickApps) energizes young republicans to connect to each other, and then spread word of mouth.

Features: Blogger.com launches profiles
This trend, in which blogs like blogger.com are now becoming more like social networks emulating MyBlogLog features or even SixApart’s intention to make blogs more ’social’. Expect to see a more formal announcement for wordpress.

Advertisements: Contextual ads spit insults
This reporter isn’t happy being called “muffin top” in her contextual Facebook ads. We shouldn’t blame Facebook for this, it was likely the advertisers choice, and besides…it worked.

PR professionals that have clients in this space, should subscribe to this blog, and ensure their clients are put on this digest by sending me an email, or better yet, leave a comment. If you work for a white label community platform, keep me updated, I want to know of your wins.

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With nearly every tech blogger pontificating on the cartoon, firefox vs IE vs chrome, or expressing love for the ‘cloud’, only a few folks are thinking about the long term implications to Google’s new browser called ‘Chrome’.

Harry McCracken does some forward thinking and raises 10 questions that need to be answered, mainly around conversion and partnerships. I’ve got to add a few more ideas that I’m not seeing asked by others, Google’s new browser could mean:

More accurate web analytics. Although not mentioned in the announcement nor cartoon, the opportunity for Google to develop better web tracking from actual users spanning multiple websites is at hand. Now that Google has it’s popular web analytics trackers are in many websites, they could potentially increase data gathering by using a browser –of course opt-in would be necessary, perhaps like the attention trust.

Any website can now be social Google’s browser could eventually make any website social –even if the website owner chooses not to participate. How? A plugin could be created that allows your gmail, gtalk, and other network to join you wherever you surf on the web, essentially your social graph could go with you as you travel the web. Coupled with Google Readers’ aggregation ability, this is a way to beat Facebook using a more ‘open model’.

A default browser on the Android mobile platform. If you’re not familiar, Google has announced it’s intention for it’s Android, a mobile platform suitable for software developers who want to incorporate their websites using Chrome. Expect to see a lightweight mobile version be available. Eventually coupled with geo-specific location gathering, (of course, opt-in) this could now empower Google with information about location based marketing.

Other methods to monetize. Other than the obvious ability to create more categorization of the web and offer ads, let’s think creatively on how Google could use this to enhance their bottom line. With more accurate data (combine analytics and location aware scraping) Google can now return more intelligent search results to users –in fact, each person could receive a customized search results page, advertisers would follow suit to quickly achieve higher rankings.

Peer into closed networks. This browser is a direct threat to closed social networks that do not allow Google to search or scrape like on the openweb. Social Networks that require a login to see data like Facebook potentially can be flanked if Google is the browser is the browser rendering the pages. Of course, this brings all kinds of privacy issues into play, but attention trackers with opt-in agreements could help Google to map these out.

No, this is not an IE killer, history has shown there’s plenty of room for multiple browsers, different users have different needs.

There are so many echos on Techmeme, so let’s try to have some original thoughts, I’d love to hear your long term insights on how this browser will impact the web space, leave a comment.

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We’re all social creatures, and we thrive on the interactions of others, in fact, these interactions are the primary drivers for troublemakers in communities.

I’ve read stories about how babies that are given all the proper medical attention, food, shelter to deem them ‘healthy’ whither away to near death if they don’t get human contact and love and care. The same applies to prison, perhaps one of the more dreaded punishments is sending inmates to the ‘hole’ for isolation from all social contact. POWs can muster the strength to survive knowing that a series of Morse code taps can signal to fellow inmates that they’re ok and cared about. How does this apply to online communities?

[The ‘Bozo’ Feature renders the troublemakers’ activities invisible to everyone else, naturally severing what they most crave from others –attention and reactions]

One of my primary coverage areas is on community platforms (also known as white label social networks) that are used by brands to deploy their own social features on their corporate domain. I’ve come across both Mzinga and Pluck that offer this feature, leave a comment below if you also have this feature.

Community managers have a few options when dealing with troublemakers, the first is to take them on head on, either in private or public, sometimes it leads them to banning them. Banning them (removing their account) often doesn’t solve many issues, instead they may choose to create new accounts, or figure out how to cause additional trouble in subvert ways.

Some community managers who can’t deal any further with these troublemakers are left to only one option, by rendering the troublemaker as a “Bozo” using the communtiy software. What’s the “Bozo” feature? It renders the troublemaker invisible to everyone else.

Troublemakers thrive on the attention they get from others and enjoy stirring up fights, but they won’t know that no one else can see them, and therefore assume everyone is ignoring them, or their ploys hold no weight. As a result, they’ll slowly move away, sometimes never realizing that they’ve been labeled a “Bozo”. This gives the community manager a way to defuse the situation, in a non-confrontational manner, allowing for the troublemaker to quietly move on their own.

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I’m often asked by companies and indiividuals on what they can do to stand out. Here’s what I’ve learned… but don’t just take my word for it, add your own tips in the comments.

The problem:
There are so many brands now, in fact with the introduction of websites, and blogs in particular, many are developing personal brands, something not as easy to accomplish in past years. With this profileration of brands, it becomes so much more difficult for brand to stand out from the millions of others. Sure, you’re thinking the long tail solves this, and well yes, in a way. In reality there are leaders and followers being created in each sub-niche, so the rules of getting noticed still apply.

Have a goal
Before you do anything, think about what your objectives are. In particular for brands or personal brands, identify the keywords that you’d most want to be associated with. Try to think of keywords that people would search for, are long-term, and aren’t some made up name that no one would seek. Your goal may be association with these keywords which you’ll be gunning for. Or, if your goal is to network with others and to grow your reach, focus on how many quality relationships (perhaps defined by people that would help you and you’d help back) that you can grow. Or if your goal is to learn about a new topic and eventually master the subject material, focus on how you’ll learn by reading, then eventually writing on that topic.

Develop a unique brand
I really don’t think URLs are as important as they used to be, often folks will Google your name to find you, and the fact that we disperse to so many websites (Facebook/Twitter/Friendfeed/What’s next) is an indicator of the distributed web ruling the destination website. There are millions of blogs/companies out there, and if you’re trying to get noticed, you’re going to have to compete to stand out. Having a default blog template to your website isn’t going to be enough, you’re automatically segmenting yourself with others. Develop a unique look and feel by designing it yourself or finding someone who can help. If that’s too difficult, at least create a custom masthead image that will brand your site.

Get personal
If you want to stand out, you should add your picture to your blog, and develop a visual icon that demonstrates who you are. While not everyone shows their picture (Louis Gray comes to mind) he did develop an icon “LG” that represents his personal brand. Use this icon on all your other social media properties in a consistent manner. Also, register the same handle on other social media sites, and cross link them from your blog. Take for example Jive Software, who in a crowded space (80-100 vendors) has encouraged Sam Lawrence to develop a unique voice that he inserts –and leads– in the conversation about enterprise social software.

Attend local events
One thing I found very useful when I was trying to get noticed was attending many events. I attended 2-3 tech events every week, which was easy to do in Silicon Valley. By doing this, I was able to meet folks who were passionate about the space, were speaking at other events, and developed a network to interact with online during the day, and one I’m very active with now.

Lead events
You’ll soon start to notice a gap in the events you’re going to: a particular topic isn’t being covered, or a particular style of a topic isn’t being approached (unconference, roundtable, lecture, networking) and you can start to quickly develop your own events. I’ve seen so many do this, in particular blogger dinners, or meshwalks or barcamps.

Be interesting
Given the large number of people talking about the same thing you are online, you’re going to need to differentiate. Sure, standard business strategy but it’s amazing how few fail to do so. Many simply quote what others say, adding very little value, instead, you need to consistently be intersting. Here’s a few approaches: conduct analysis, respectively disagree with the mainstream, break news, compare and contrast services, develop lists or indexes of companies or topics. When I met Scoble in 2005, I asked them how I can be a better blogger (get links from A-listers) he told me to ‘be intersting’, I took that too heart.

Archive your achievements
As you develop your repitorie of speaking at events, leading events, or being quoted in articles or top blogs, start to create an archive that links to all these achievements. You don’t need to make it totally visible, but you’ll want to be able to share this with decision makers (next job, speaker selector, media, recruiters) to indicate on one page how you stand out.

I’ve so many other tips on how to get noticed, but I’m going to leave this an open discussion in the comments, leave examples and tips for others on how to best get noticed.

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Above Photo (Click to view notes): The combined Forrester and Jupiter Social Marketing and Social Computing Research teams (missing: Christine Overby, Nate Elliott, Tom Grant, Laura Ramos, Peter Burris, Steven Noble, Rebecca Jennings, Lisa Bradner, and Tom Cummings.)

The last time I participated in an acquisition I was part of the company that was getting bought, it was exciting –yet very scary.

The last two days, I’ve been relatively quiet online (despite my trying to start some rumors on twitter) as Jupiter and Forrester research teams met for the first time at Cambridge HQ. We had folks travel from Amsterdam, Paris, NY, Silicon Valley, as well as teleconferenced in from London and dial in from Silicon Valley.

Although this is just the start of a long road, this is significant in a few ways: 1) This is perhaps one of the largest research teams assembled at an analyst firm that’s primarily focused on the impacts of social computing to marketers. Although there are 16 analyst that we’ve identified as covering some aspect of the social space, not all focus on it full time as I do. 2) This was the first group of many within Forrester to integrate and ‘mashup’. It only seems fitting that a group focuses on ’social’ would be the first to try. 3) The combined brain power yielded some interesting insights to where this market is currently and where it’s headed, while size doesn’t always indicate quality, with this larger team we can dig deeper into very specific areas of social media.

Many of us are going to blog our perspectives (I’ll link to them below) from both Forrester and Jupiter sides, so I’m just going to speak for myself. The key takeaway for is that we’re more alike than apart. While the Jupiter analysts would often approach the problem at a different angle than we were used to thinking about, almost always we would end in ‘head noding’ when it came to insights, findings, and recommendations. It was good to get to know Emily Riley, Michael Greene, David Card, Barry Parr, (Nate Elliott wasn’t able to join us) as well as some fellow Forrester colleagues I don’t get to see that often. I was particularly glad to meet Emily Riley, who’s research on communities, influence, and marketing were both impressive –yet strangely familiar in insights (and confirmation) as our own findings.

Aside from the fact that we got to know each other and were able to share a common bond for analyzing the same area, we were able to focus in on future research topics, take inventory of our areas of coverage, and socialize the POST process, Technographics, and learn about each research culture.

Now back to my story about getting acquired, it was at the tail of the dot bomb in Santa Clara, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, I was a junior web professional, working on the UI for the enterprise intranet at Exodus Communications, the company was falling at a rapid pace after a meteoric climb. We were snatched up by British Cable and Wireless, and spent the next few months integrating and filtering people, tying together systems, and eventually becoming one entity that is now still in existence. I remember so many questions being unanswered, uncertainty and my boss John Perera constantly telling me to ‘embrace change, embrace change’.

Recently, I’ve spoken with a few clients who’d expressed concern about a few of our very smart analysts moving on, and I asked them what could I do to reassure them that we’re still heavily focused on giving them the same insights as before, and we agreed that we should transparently blog about the two new teams coming together, so I’m making it a point to do just that.

To be clear, this is just the start, and we’re all going to ‘embrace change’, as we’ve identified many areas that we’ll have to work on as a team, there is some overlap of coverage, we all have individual approaches to the same problems, and the mixing of any two cultures will take time to settle. The key that we were able to come together, stand on common ground, and agree to move forward to deliver quality research that will help our clients make the right decisions. Personally, I’m reinvigorated and looking forward to what comes next.

Updates:
I’ll be linking to my colleagues perspectives as they appear. It’s refreshing to hear their honest takes on the last two days.

Aug 29: Emily Riley writes she’s Going Corporate, and observes my silicon valley lens.

Aug 29: David Card changes colors by Going Green, Embracing the Groundswell, etc, First Take, he notices the process too. Yup, but like good jazz, structured chord changes allows for amazing improv solos. The first step is to learn those chord progressions.

Aug 29: Blend master Josh Bernoff declares “It blends”

It was good we all met, I just got a project come in the day after the meeting that needs more than my expertise, I sent an email to David with details.

Below are some picture from the last two days which include some rare pictures of the research team at 400 Technology Square.

Many of these pics were taken by Zach Hofer-Shall, who uploaded to our internal wiki, which I then snagged and put on Flickr with attribution.

12 comments

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an Industry Analyst –a good way to get in my head.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

You can subscribe to this digest tag only, which filters only these posts tagged digest.

Web Strategy Summary
Facebook launches Engagement Ads, which signal how widgets and advertisements start to look alike. Third party developers such as Widgetbox are now available on Hi5, and the OpenSocial protocol continues to gain traction, despite a setback with developer relations at Ning.

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Engagement Ads –Early Trials, and Caution
I shared my thoughts with Cnet about Facebook’s Engagement ads, and the impact it has on brands and users. While highly innovative, Facebook’s experiments could put some brands at risk, let’s hope they develop some best practices that meets the needs of brands –and users. Read my additional analysis.

Stats: OpenSocial reaches 350 Million Users
This protocol, first lead by Google is gaining adoption by developers who are using it to encourage their applications to be write once, run anywhere is seeing adoption and growth.

Usage: Facebook hits 100million users
As Facebook approaches a very large user base of 100million registered users, they have an increase of adoption of users opting in to the new redesign.

Verticals: Social Network for Chefs
Yet another segment of social networks that are launched, cooks can now connected at CookEatShare, link via Arturo Pelayo.

Analyst: Gartner pushes social networks for retailers
These findings and recommendations encourage retailers to approach social networks as they are attracting too much attention too ignore.

Mobile: Linkedin launches mobile version for iPhone
Allowing members to access their social network while mobile is a nod towards the future, this simple app appears to display one’s newsfeed.

Media: Bebo hosts modeling show
This 12 episode show “Model.live” reveals reality style how models live and work to achieve their modeling dreams, this ties in well with Bebo’s heavy media and lifestyle network. A good example of TV and social networks starting to merge.

Developers: Ning boots Widgetlaboratory
Ning removes Widetlabs from developer network, citing violation of terms of use, Widgetlabs fights back launches opensource widgets and hints at legal action. Followed by a response from Gina.

Applications: Widgetbox Gallery Available for Hi5
Hi5 a fast growing social network has now tapped into Widgetbox’s existing OpenSocial widgets gallery to be available for their community. Despite the challenges that Ning and developer Widgetlaborartory had this week, this is another example of how containers are embracing third party applications.

Features: Lithium extends blogging features
Although they’ve had blogging features previously, Lithium signals to the market they’ve more robust blogging features for enterprise clients.

Privacy: SoNets increase connectivity but not privacy
This interesting article from Scientific America (thanks Brian for the link) gives examples of how some have been impacted by the connected world, for better of for worse.

Culture: Women review bad dates
Read about this in the Scientific America article above, where women rate, review, some pretty bad men. This site scores well for google search results where no other is present. Now, when folks meet each other in real life, they may start to do Google searches, a sign of the times.

PR professionals that have clients in this space, should subscribe to this blog, and ensure their clients are put on this digest by sending me an email, or better yet, leave a comment. If you work for a white label community platform, keep me updated, I want to know of your wins.

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I’m currently doing an intensive 3 month research project on the topic of Community Platforms, and it’s become very clear that by talking to many of the 27 brands, 9 vendors, and leaning on forecast data where many decisions are currently being made to purchase these enterprise software solutions. To start with, many solutions (define as a set of software, services, support) are being purchased by marketers who want to bring a social aspect to their corporate website.

These marketing folks, who may have worked with IT in the past to load CMS programs are bound by corporate red tape, de-prioritized by IT project management, or want to evade the rigors of legal and security and free to purchase community platforms using Software as a Service model (SaaS). Why is this beneficial? As they’ve only to rely on IT for single sign on (SSO) they often can handle the rest within the web marketing team, or lean on the services of the community vendor.

Yet, they aren’t the only buyers, HR departments are starting to become sponsors for enterprise social network platforms to improve internal knowledge transfers, collaboration, and developing specific programs for alumni, new hires, interns, and even women using pre-packaged use case features provided by these vendors.

You can see where this is headed right? IT departments realize that fragmented communtiy software is going to lead to a disparate mess to clean up, and many are starting to make recommendations for enterprise platforms that will span the usage of the whole company. Why? To reduce overall resources, ensure security, centralize data, and ensure, well that they are responsible and safe when it comes to their information.

I’ve only heard of a few instances from the marketers that I’ve interviewed where IT has thought of community platforms as an enterprise solution rather than a one-off by marketing.

Talking with many of these folks in this research project, I could make the case that in 12-24 months we’ll start to see CIOs start to initiate projects to deliver enterprise social networking mandates, take ownership over these disparate projects, and wake up and realize the importance of these tools beyond marketing and HR.

This yields all kinds of questions regarding: security, what does enterprise-class entail, how will Microsoft/SAP/IBM respond, will Saas or on-premise software be required, governance, flexibility, allowance of third-party widgets, and costs. More to come on this as I dive further into this research project.

It’s amazing it’s taken so many years for this to come around, I first started writing about this back in 2005 with Dennis McDonald.

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One of the ways I tell companies how they can best serve their market is to be transparent on how they build products. By doing so, it helps folks not only understand, but appreciate the level of effort that goes into creating a service or product. While analysts offer guidance and advisory sessions, we’re most known for the reports that we create, in fact, these are key products that help decision makers be successful.

Demand for community platforms, yet too many vendors
I’m asked a few times a week on which community vendor to choose, with a list of 80-120 vendors on my blog and a more refined catalog on the Forrester site, it’s very confusing for brands to determine who’s best. If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know I’ve been watching the community platform (aka white label social network space) with great interest, even before I joined Forrester. A few weeks ago I announced my intention to start a Forrester Wave report, which will segment out nine vendors that will meet the needs of Interactive Marketers at Enterprise Class companies (companies with more than 1,000 employees).

The Forrester Wave Methdology
Using the refined Forrester Wave methodology that has been completed by many analysts before me, we’re nearly half way done with this 3 month research project to understand, and segment the community platform market. For this particular report, it doesn’t make sense to utilize crowd sourcing methods (although I’ve used crowd sourcing for other reports), the Wave method is already refined from the many analysts before me.

To date, we’ve created a detailed scorecard that involved a feedback loop with major brands who have recently deployed community software. This particular scorecard contains over 54 criteria that was assembled through client discussions, a panel of a trusted folks who have deployed communities, discussions with fellow analysts, and feedback from the vendors. Next, we collect data from the 9 vendors, each completing the scorecard for a total of 496 cells, then I create my own sheet of cells verifying what we found for a total of 992 cells of data collection.

Also, we’ve started interviewing and recording feedback from 27 brands that have deployed community software from these vendors, in order to find out what went right –and what could be improved from each of these nine vendors. Again, more spreadsheets and data collection.

Starting this week, we start a series of day-long labs with each of the vendors, where will be looking under the covers at the actual software, discuss their business strategy, and understand how their community offerings can best help marketers. We’re looking at the market from a variety of angles, to ensure that an accurate report is created.

Collaborative environment
At Forrester, an analyst never works in a vacuum, it’s collaborative and I’ve a lot of minds to lean on. It’s not just me alone, I’m getting help from analyst and my editor Shar Vanboskirk, analyst Oliver Young who knows the enterprise side of this space, analyst Suresh Vittal who’s completed many waves, analyst Laura Ramos, and constant support from research associate Sarah Glass (my guiding light, and detailed taskmaster) and research associate Zach Reiss-Davis. I’m under the guidance of my research director Christine Overby, and am in constant contact with our seasoned Josh Bernoff. Despite suggestions that some analyst firms do not have knowledge management strategies isn’t quite true. In fact, we retain the knowledge of our colleagues through tools like internal wikis, constant team communication, and most importantly knowledge and insights generated by reports will live on for colleagues and clients on the website.

Focusing in
That’s just the half way point: next I have to analyze, score, conduct follow ups to ensure all the data is correct, and begin the scoring process. You’re going to notice a decrease in my posting over the next few weeks, and my online activity start to wean off as I work hard to deliver a quality report later this fall that will help interactive marketers make the right decision.

Read more about this Wave Research project:

Part 1: Starting the Wave
Part 2: Data Collection Process
Part 3: The Analysis Process (coming soon)
Part 4: Announcing the Wave (coming soon)

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Update: Only a few brands will trial these new ads, after testing, will then be broadly released later in the year.

A few days ago, I had a private briefing before the press with Tim Kendall, Director of Monetization at Facebook, below are the findings, with specific recommendations for brands. As I get more information, such as results and data, I’ll update this post.

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Web Strategy Summary (90 Words)
Facebook launched a new product called ‘Engagement Advertisements’ that encourages members to interact with the ads by leaving comments, sharing virtual gifts, or becoming fans. To combat dismal click through rates of traditional advertisements, these features emulate widgets and encourage users to increase member adoption, viral growth, and brand interaction. Brands will only succeed with these “WidgetAds” if they create content that puts community first, lean on new interactions, integrate with other tools, plan for the long haul, and change how they measure success –traditional internet advertising tactics won’t apply.

[Facebook’s ‘Engagement Advertisements’ emulates natural activities of members –in hopes to increase interaction, network spread, and brand preference]

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Facebook, a Fast Growing Global Social Network
Facebook, noted as the largest social network, is on a growth rate to increase it’s active users to 90million active users today in August, 2008 up from 54 million aprox at the start of the year. While presumed to be of a younger college educated demographic, it’s not the domain of the young alone as the largest growth rates are educated white collar workers, over age 25. Facebook has global growth in markets such as 66% growth rate in EMEA, and 35% and 33% growth rates in Europe and Latin America, respectively.

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Engagement Advertisements Integrate with Natural User Behaviors
Facebook’s innovative way of monetizing is unique, they were the first to launch a developer platform (F8) as well as the ill-fated Facebook Beacon, and are now launching with a new interactive marketing and advertising product.

[Facebook’s ‘Engagement Advertisements’ more akin to interactive marketing with a social twist: “WidgetAds”]

Unlike Beacon or Facebook Connect, both products intended to aggregate the actions on third-party sites (like Blockbuster.com) this new product called “Engagement Advertisements” is intended to nicely integrate with Facebook’s newly redesign profile and news pages. Early brands to trial this include: Paramount Pictures whose video commenting for Tropic Thunder ran two weeks ago –I’ve asked for campaign results. Future early adopters also include General Mills’ Betty Crocker which will have image commenting and the ability to ‘fan’, and video commenting for Addias, both to trial late August.

Engagement Ads provide three unique experiences
Rather than clicking on the ad and being whisked away to a branded microsite, these ads allow members to stay within the contained walls of Facebook and their social community. Engagement ads come in three major flavors:

1) Comment Style Ad: Members can now leave comments on these advertisements, much like wall posts. Brands that are focused on entertainment, new product rollouts, autos and apparel are well suited. The ad can show up to 4 comments per object, and the activity spreads to the users newsfeed.

2) Virtual Gifts Style Ad: Brands can now create virtual items that users can share, spread to each other. This wildly popular behavior within applications and Facebook is suitable for consumer products, entertainment, and some media.

3) Fan Style Ad: A play off the Facebook pages, users with a persona affinity for a product (like Apple) can become a fan, triggering a notification to their network, and could then tie on social ads. Will work great for established brands, like guitar hero, passion products, luxury products, or any brand with a rabid customer base.

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Forrester Data: Social Networks foster communication, self-expression
With horrible click through rates (I’ve heard cases of .04 percent CTR) of ads on social networks, some brands prefer to focus resources elsewhere. Why the low rates? Our research indicates that youth primarily exhibit behaviors of communication and self-expression –not searching for products, looking at ads, or hunting for information.

Common Behaviors of Youth on Social Networks
See what my friends are up to: 86%
Sent a message to someone: 79%
Posted/updated my profile: 70%
Looked at profiles of people I didn’t know: 65%
Sources: North American Technographics Retail And Marketing Online Youth Survey, Q4 2007, Forrester Research

This youth data supports that social network behavior is in fact, ’social’ and these respondents are not seeking to find out about product information, nor learn about the latest products at a media site, product review, or a search engine like Google.

[Brands will only succeed with ‘Engagement Advertising’ if they lean on user behaviors like communication, self-expression, and social exploration –traditional internet advertising need not apply]

Knowing that the use case between social networks and product-focused sites is key for marketers to deploy successful marketing. For success, marketers and advertisers need to focus in on the key social behaviors, and integrate the marketing activities within the community.

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Demystifying Facebook’s Marketing Tool Chest
Facebook’s marketing toolset is confusing, and many brands frequently ask me what is the current set, and how do they use it, here’s the current toolset as of today. Remember that when it comes to groups and brand engagement, the most powerful activity is for employees to actually participate in the community with their customers –not stand by the idle wayside. With that said, here are some of the other tools available to marketers to engage the Facebook community.

Engagement Ads: (new, and detailed above) allow community members to interact with the ads in the profile and newsfeeds –without leaving the Facebook site, increasing interaction, social spread, and brand engagement. Currently unproven, brands may not be ready for these types of new ads, until they change how they measure success.

Standard Advertisements: These Text and image ads can appear on homepage or profile pages, neatly integrate with the new redesign.

Social ads: Are helpful for brands to increase the velocity or acceleration by marketers, allowing them to buy ads that echo the behaviors “what did my friends do” of opt-in users. These primarily appear on the newsfeed, which will encourage spread to an individuals network. Some brands have been under fire from users who felt this was invasive.

Traditional IAB graphic ads: Advertising laden brands may still purchase the standard IAB skyscraper and banner ads from Microsoft both an investor and partner. With low CTRs, some brands have better places to spend their money for return on investment.

Facebook pages: Launched last year, brands can (at no charge) create their own pages, embed applications, encourage discussions, and start to garner “Fans” of it’s products. Most brands are incorrectly using these, based upon the findings from my recent report on the best and worst of social network marketing for 2008 -Forrester Research.

Event Feature: based pages allow marketers to promote events through viral invites, rsvp tools, and event rollups from media and community interaction. While a useful utility, for most brands that market on the web, this is often a side-effort, not the primary push.

Facebook Connect: Perhaps the biggest untold story is the day when Facebook (and other social networks) will connect with corporate websites, I’ve outline future scenarios in this post What ‘Facebook Connect’ Means for Corporate Websites.

Applications: Facebook was afirst mover to allow third-party developers to create an entire eco-system of applications that are growing their own applications. Most brands are harassing successful apps through sponsorships, cross branding, and a few are building their own apps, see how Dell was able to let the community create –and spread– ads on their behalf. Also read my posts on Widget strategies to learn more, or my overview of Facebook’s F8 Developers Community.

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Key Takeaways
Monetization of social networks continues to be a challenge, and Facebook continues to innovate, however for this announcement, brands and Facebook should:

To Succeed, Brands Must Learn Social Marketing
While costly, risky, and foreign to brands, the biggest missed opportunity for brands in social networks is to become part of the community, interact and build real relationships. Although we should expect interaction rates and viral spread to increase with engagement ads, brands should wait and see how these ads CTR perform. For those brands that are ready to forgo the risk, and pursue ‘Engagement Ads’ they should:

Be community themed: Ads created by the brand will succeed if the content is first focused on the needs of the community.

Rely on new interaction activities: The rules of the game have changed, the goal is to increase interaction within the community –not pull them offsite.

Approach with an Integrated Mix: Facebook offers many tools, ‘Engagement Ads’ shouldn’t go it alone, instead increase chances of success by involving other tools.

Change how they measure success: Brands must also change they way the measure success with these interactive ads, rather than weigh success solely on page views or referral traffic.

Marriage of Widgets and Advertisements offshoot: “WidgetAds”
Looking forward, this announcement helps to set in place how online marketing will start to evolve. Widgets have already become advertising units, and now these advertisements are starting to become widgets. Expect Engagement ads, and Widgets created by third parties to start to exhibit these behaviors outside of Facebook. Facebook Connect, Google Connect, and OpenID will bridge social graphs with interactive ads –springing forth a new generation of widgetads.

Although innovative, Facebook must focus on marketers
Although pushing interactive marketing, Facebook must hand-hold many brands with their frequently changing marketing offerings. Facebook must develop a client solution that will help optimize these tools with professional services based on data, results, and demographic information. Marketers can’t afford to experiment with their brand without the help of a trained and experienced group of social marketers provided by the platform.

The only caveat being that the experience of users, always, always comes first, I’ll point to others that cover this aspect.

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Related Resources

This is cross-posted on Forrester’s Interactive Marketing blog

See all posts tagged Social Networks, Widgets, Facebook, or my weekly digest

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

Forrester Report: Online Community Best Practices

Forrester Report: Online Communities: Build Or Join?

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

Forrester Report: Get With It With Widgets

As usual, the conversation spirals off into Friendfeed.

Update: Forrester clients can access a short brief with additional recommendations for interactive marketers.

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This is a busy week, I’ve received more submissions than ever before, if this pace continues, I’ll have to figure out a new way to let folks self-submit. Be sure to include a link to your announcement, if it doesn’t exist on the web, it’s hard to verify, and it’s really what we’ve come to expect in this space. Lastly, while social media is certainly easy for folks to offer, I’m seeking examples of folks who really are offering this as their core expertise –not a side offering. As a result, I’ll be filtering to those that are truly living and breathing in this world.

I’m starting this post series (see archives) to recognize and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

David Griner joins Brand Agency Luckie & Co. as Social Media Strategist, starting with recently launched social media blog, the socialpath.

Erin Kotecki Vest “The Queen of Spain” has now joined BlogHer full time as the Producer of Special Projects, which will include social media projects, her area of expertise.

George Dearing has recently joined Telligent Systems (Community platform vendor) as Corporate Evangelist.

Dan Ziman join Lithium Technologies (community platform) as Director, Marketing Programs, congrats, I’m sure we’ll be speaking frequently.

Michael Francesconi is Fanscape’s (agency) newest Social Media Manager, who comes from the Huffington Post where he was a community manager, and now runs a department specializing in digital word of mouth strategies and viral marketing. Update, learn more from this CEO blog post.

Kirby Winfield joins WidgetBucks as the Chief Revenue Officer. In this role, he’ll be overseeing their advertising sales relationships.

Nat Wilson joins the Society for Human Resource Management as their Manager of Online Communities which he will be leading their social networking projects

Frank LaRosa is promoted at Network Insights to Vice President of Development, previously a senior developer.

Sarah Worsham leaves Online Business Development Manager job to launch Sazbean Consulting (online and soical media) with her husband.

Josh Wolf a video blogger who was jailed for not handing over evidence in SF has now joined a Palo Alto news agency as a traditional journalist. While not a ’social media’ move, we’re glad to see Josh take a step forward.

Speaking of Jobs, Forrester is hiring a Senior Analyst for Social Computing as a peer to me in SF area or Cambridge (email me), as is other firms, apparently, this is a growing area across industries.

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How to connect with others (or get a job):
Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how:

Submit an announcement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, leave a comment below, or if you’re feeling shy (it’s cool to self-nominate) send me an email. Please include a link to your announcement, and ensure you’re really living and breathing in the social media world –this is not a small aspect of your role.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

List of Enterprise Social Media Professionals
This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

See Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, fees pay for my hosting)

Connect with others in the community manager group in Facebook

Check out Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs

See Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs

SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community

Teresa has a few jobs, some around community

New Media hire has an extensive job database

Social Media Headhunter

Social media jobs

Jobs in social media

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, or I’ll delete it)

I’m seeking folks that are related to full time hands on social media strategy and community managers, to be on this list, so let me know if you see these folks, and please submit them. Also, I probably will not include executive management changes on this list at social media companies, as the list would go on and on, but you can feel free to express yourself in the comments!

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I’m getting more feedback that this digest is a success, I know have confirmation that leaders at the largest social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Google) and community platform read this digest, submissions are piling in, as savvy PR folks continue to submit –thank you. Always try to submit links in addition to press releases.

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an Industry Analyst –a good way to get in my head.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

You can subscribe to this digest tag only, which filters only these posts tagged digest.

Web Strategy Summary
This has been one action packed week, there are two acquisitions from Hi5 and AOL, MySpace extends it’s reach to third party sites, and Facebook crowned largest social network. There’s been several deployments by brands of branded communities, as well feature releases from LinkedIn and Six Apart. Most importantly, advertisers project increase of spending into this space –furthering growth in this industry.

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Trends: Location Aware Social Networks
This is an important one to watch, as social networks (in real life) extend beyond the browser, so why shouldn’t that experience cater to our mobile devices? Ulocate and Where partner for GPS device Garmin, and Yelp syncs with Loopt and iPhone.

Stats: Facebook Global Social Network
Facebook has expanded it’s world conquest by allowing users to translate the site to their local languages, this lead to Facebook now being crowned as the largest global social network says BusinessWeek.

Money Projections: Advertisers increase spending on social networks
eMarketer publishes data that projects that US based advertisers will spend $40 million this year alone, then will increase spending to $210 Million in 2012, a growth rate of 300% in four years.

Acquisition: Hi5 acquires Interactive Technology PixVerse
This rapidly growing social network Hi5 has acquired technology that encourages in browser interaction, PixVerse. Expect the site’s experience to emulate desktop like behaviors, further engaging users.

Acquisition: AOL ready to lifestream and buys Social Thing
The latest trend in social software seems to involve aggregation or site-decoupling. AOL picks up on this and snags Social Thing, a competitor to Friendfeed, Facebook newspage, Six Apart’s Activity Streams and Google Reader.

Announcement: MySpace makes Data Available
Similar to Facebook connect (read my review) MySpace now let’s developers extend the experience of the community to third party websites with MySpace Data Availability (MDA). This increasing trend means that social networks are pervasive and eventually even on static websites that don’t want to participate.

Features: Six Apart adds social features in Movable Type
I was briefed yesterday by the 6A team, who have increased the social features of their robust blogging tool, Movable Type. Given their strong footprint in the enterprise sector, 6A should compete for dollars with other community platforms. Expect their suite of activity streams, and focus on content to be a differentiator.

Feature: Linkedin’s company pages get sorting feature
LinkedIn recently announced it’s new company pages –a trend moving the intranet outside of the firewall, and now adds more features that allow users to sort via industry, company size, and location.

Applications: RockYou tries monetizing with car ads
Seemingly an odd fit, RockYou will integrate ads for autos within it’s large network of widgets, should we expect the next BMW to appear in our superwall? Yet more examples of developers throwing rigatoni, spaghetti, and even pizza at the wall to see if it’ll stick.

Lawsuit: Facebook under fire from Beacon
This class action lawsuit aimed at Facebook and partners from users is intended to recoup damages from the ill-fated Beacon launch last year. Mark has admitted in public they’ve since learned from this.

Status: Cadence’s Community Manager shares 1st month Results
In a bold and forth coming way, Tom Diederich, Cadence’s community manager shares his experience after his first month of launching a branded community: over 6000 registrations and 1000 posts in 30 days.

People: Facebook Exec Ben Ling Boomerangs back to Google
This speculative post gives some insight to why Benjamin Ling, a former executive at Facebook has moved back to Google, with tie ins to the new COO, loyalty, and personalities.

Deployment: Heineken to launch community in Thailand
Popular “Skunky” beer Heineken to reach Asia community by investing in community software and launching their own platform to support it’s “Greenspace” campaign.

Partnership: Pluck extends partnerships
With Avenue A selecting just selecting Pluck as a strategic partner, now Swift Communications announces intent to use Pluck platform for client efforts. Expect to see other white label social network vendors to cozy up with interactive firms and digital agencies.

Deployment: Fox news joins Facebook –not MySpace
Although MySpace and Fox are both owned by behemoth Newscorp, they have to follow their audience and have deployed on Facebook, a smart move.

Deployment: MySpace hosts Presidential Debates
Myspace streamed the Rick Warren Civil Forum between McCain and Obama on the venue’s site Saddleback church for this first time meeting between candidates.

Deployment: Scottrade launches community with Small World Labs
This branch supported investment firm announces their own social networking site to allow customers to self support with each other. Small World labs is selected as technology partner, visit community.scottrade.com to see the site in action.

Culture: Students and Teachers awkwardly interact online
It’s important to note how these tools are used, and in this case, some teachers and students are unsure how to act online as personal and professional relationships merge. The benefit? teachers can now extend the classroom online.

PR professionals that have clients in this space, should subscribe to this blog, and ensure their clients are put on this digest by sending me an email, or better yet, leave a comment.

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The rapture of social media paralyzes some brands
Recently, I’ve spoken to a few large brands that have been getting the sermon from a few social media consultants about damnation to hell if they don’t convert. These type of scare tactics include suggesting radical change need to occur for brands to join the conversation, as well as handing over all control to the marketplace, should everyone in marketing can pack up and go home early?

Most brands aren’t firing their marketing group
In reality, this is rarely the case, (well cept for Dell, and a few others who had trial by fire) most brands slowly adopt these tools and the communication changes that happens, and I’ve never seen a brand completely turn over messaging control to the marketplace completely, have you? While there certainly are changes afoot, as technology impacts progress, there are course corrections happening at many companies, but I’ve yet to meet one CMO who’s fired the MarCom and Communications team in lieu of a team of external bloggers.

For conservative brands, take a pragmatic approach
Instead, perhaps the best way for conservative brands to move forward is to focus on three things:

1) Understand if their marketplace is using these tools, and how. First see if your prospects, decision makers or influencers are using these tools, do a study first, take inventory.
2) Next, have a goal, or an objective, rather than jumping in rather than being pushed in because someone else lit you on fire. Don’t allow fear to be the sole driver of your decisions, instead, focus on what success will look like.
3) Experiment internally with these tools where it’s safer, where mistakes can happen without the ridicule of the public looking on.

Focus on clear business strategy rather than allowing someone to light you on fire
While there are certainly changes happening in communication and marketing, this doesn’t mean you throw out the playbook, and react. Instead, for conservative or risk averse cultures, focus on understanding the changes in your market build a plan and experiment where it’s safe. When you look at moments of great change, see how history remembers the difference between radicals sand revolutionaries.

Let̵