July 31, 2009

Each one of these could be meaty blog posts, but I don’t have the time, and I’d rather share them, I guess to some degree, Steve Rubel is right, there’s a need for something in between a tweet and a blog post.

• It was a busy week, I travelled to Indiana to visit a client, had several briefings and client meetings during the week.  Chiago’s O’Hare is consistently poor performing, bigger isn’t better.   Still conducting interviews for upcoming report on skills needed for social marketers.
• I don’t need to say it, but there’s a tremendous amount of interest from brands and media around social.  In the back of my mind, I try to keep a bigger perspective, as in 10 years we’ll look back and think of this in the same way as we currently do about people having email conferences in the 90s (that actually happened you know).
• I wish I went to Blogher, the amount of brands (partial list) that are trying to reach online influencers is a sight to behold.  Heard from many that this year, there were many more brands that ever, I realize there’s more to the conference than influencer outreach, but that’s my focus.  Did you see the fake Scott Monty?  He heads up social at Ford and was omnipresent, smart.   On a related note, Adriana told me her vision for Girls in Tech, a site focused on empowering women in a male dominated field.
• It’s not just women bloggers, learned of Dave McClure’s geeks on a plane tour that travels to Asia, as well as Christine Lu’s China Business Network blogger trip, and Renee Blodget’s we blog the world are travelling blogger troupes.  Not only does this bring awareness to other cultures, bloggers get expose to new ideas, technologies, and startups.
• It’s interesting to hear about the many acqusitions that appear to be happening (a common occurance in a downturn) and how companies have to reinvent their social strategies.  It’s also interesting to see how slower projects get shifted into high gear and go live half-baked so teams can prove their worth.  I’ve seen a few of those.
• A few years ago, when brands said they would dip their toe into social that meant launching a blog.  Now, I often hear of creating a Facebook page or a Twitter account.   Why?  it’s cheaper, less commitment, and all the rage.
• Met with Ryan Block and Peter Rojas of Engadget, we discussed the launch of their social network Gdgt, here’s my profile.  What is it?  it’s a site where the social object is gadgets, this is important because we know consumers trust each other more than brands –this site will do this for the passion owners, but likely won’t be for mainstream users.   If you’re in the consumer electronics space, you should pay attention.  They have the community, experience, and vision to pull this off.   There are implications to Amazon, Cnet, BestBuy, Wal-Mart, and of course the gadget manufactures.
• Louis Gray, who I rely on for deep dives into technology,  gave me a demo of My Sixth Sense, which is an app for iPhone.   What is it?  It’s a feedreader that suggests content based on your previous behaviors.  RWW has a more thorough review.   This is a trend, as there’s more content being created, we need tools to reduce the noise, see next bullet.
• Sensing the FTC and other regulatory legal eagles are moving into the social web.  Did you see the story about Horizon realty suing a Twitter user that had 20 followers for defamation?  Read the comments in my last post from Bryan Rhoades about commercial speech.  We should expect more incidents of this.
• From an industry perspective, I certainly see many brands and people exploding with social activity, they are mainly doing pollinating, which is spreading content to the social web.  As a result, it creates a lot of noise.  As a result, I’m seeing a trend towards aggregation, the opposite reaction of pollinating.  Aggregation alone isn’t sufficient, the need for prioritization and filtering is the next trend.  Vendors like GetGlue and My Sixth Sense are the early pieces of this.
• On a personal note, I’m realizing that being really busy reduces my ability to connect with people and build more meaningful relationships.  As a result, I tend to be very direct, which unitentionally gives off the wrong public impression that I never intended to portray. There are certain stigmas I want to shed, I know what Ben would say to me, read his last paragraph.

Curious what you think of any of these bigger than a tweet, smaller than a post observations, either way, It’s 3am, I’m going back to bed.