Micro Persuasion

Friendfeed's Business Model Will Look Like Google's

I love Friendfeed. However, I am far more enthusiastic about the platform's robust RSS and search capabilities than its current value proposition as a universal social aggregator. I find it generates too much noise at times, but when you tap its search/RSS tools you have a killer app.

As I recently noted Friendfeed's imaginary friend feature is incredibly powerful. In addition, so are its advanced search capabilities. Combine them and this is where things get interesting.

Here's an example. I haven't tried this yet. But my gut is that you can actually use Friendfeed to create a Google Coop-like scoped search tool just for Twitter.

Simply take the Twitter public timeline feed and add it as an imaginary friend. Now you can scan the full text of every tweet - even if Summize should go belly up one day. In addition, you can generate RSS feeds against this new imaginary friend for any term you want to track. The public timeline too much for you? No problem. Just take your personalized Twitter friendstream feed and now you can data mine just your peeps.

This is just the beginning. Friendfeed benefits immensely from the network effect. The more individuals that aggregate their social streams with the service, the more it can be data mined and thus monetized - and its power grows.

So, for argument's sake, let's say in a year that even 50% of people who actively publish online aggregate their streams with Friendfeed. Suddenly you have a competitor that in utility could eclipse most of the vertical social search engines like Technorati, Google Blog Search and Summize. Friendfeed doesn't index the full text of blog feeds yet but I suspect one day they will give publishers the ability to opt-in.

Now, what if Friendfeed were to wrap Google Adsense contextual ads around keyword searches just as it becomes the de-facto source for searching the social web. Think that's big? I do. And that fact that Friendfeed's founders come from Google probably bodes well for such a model. Stay tuned.

Three Ways to Mitigate the Attention Crash, Yet Still Feel Informed

The following is also my column in next week's AdAge.

One of the most important skills executives need today is the know-how to manage and harness their personal information flow.

The Attention Crash is a crisis in global business that is getting worse every day. By 2009, the Radicati Group predicts that we’ll spend 41% of our time managing email. Now add to that the IMs, documents, Facebook pokes, RSS feeds, Twitter tweets and text messages coming at us and we’re officially way oversubscribed.

Unfortunately, the problem will not abate. Human attention is finite. It doesn’t scale. Worse, the pace of change today is so rapid there’s a huge need to stay digitally savvy.

The key is in wrangling your information flow. Here are three of my best tips.

Inbox Zero (www.inboxzero.com) - Blogger Merlin Mann has created a simple way to effectively manage email. His approach involves setting aside blocks of time for “email dashes,” quickly triaging messages and automating some of the processes with search folders – a powerful Outlook feature that most never use. Be sure to watch the video on Merlin’s site.

Invest in Search – When in doubt, let search tools - either on your desktop or online - do the work for you. The time you invest to set up these systems can pay huge dividends.

For example, I subscribe to around 500 RSS feeds in Google Reader. The great thing about my reader is that it’s searchable and acts as a personal database. So recently when my colleague asked me for March Madness online video statistics, was able to pull them up in seconds by searching my archive.

Make Unusable Time Usable – I read a ton. However, I have mastered how to stuff it into pockets of time that are normally “unusable.”

I get through about one business book a week by listening to them when I commute, travel and run errands. Most of the key books are available from Audible.com or iTunes. I am currently "reading" Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li.

In addition, I use Instapaper.com to bookmark articles I want to read. I can access this site from any computer or mobile device. I also keep a reading folder in my email nerve center that syncs up with my different devices. It’s even available when I am offline.

These are just a few of the best tips. For more “lifehacks”, check out my bookmarks.

Three Emerging Digital Careers to Watch

About a month ago, I wrote about three career tracks that won't exist in a few years - at least as I see it. Now let's take a look at three emerging digital jobs that will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

The Chief Customer Experience Officer (and those who work for her)

Want to know if a company is a good witch or a bad witch? It's easy. The web knows. Google, the media and online communities are littered with tales of companies that have exemplary products and customer service. However, it's often easier to find those that have been vilified for the opposite. That's the thesis of Pete Blackshaw's forthcoming book - Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.

Here's an experiment. For fun, enter any company into this special Google search engine I set up and let me know what you find.

Brands are increasingly recognizing that customer experience is everything. They will follow the model that Zappos and others set in optimizing online and offline channels. Digital touch points, for many companies, will be the most critical. Since August 2006, customer experience job listings increased 57%, according to simplyhired. (User experience is directly related and equally important and I believe will increasingly become more integrated with the total customer experience.)

"customer Experience" trends

"customer experience" jobs

Digital Storytellers

Harvard Business Review last month noted that most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. "If they can’t, neither can anyone else," HBR posits. That's not good.

Remember, much of the developed world is coping with The Attention Crash. If a company can't tell pithy, authentic stories in the right places at the right time to the right people, someone else will. For more on this, I highly recommend the book Made to Stick.

Search may change that. Google is downplaying SEO and increasingly rewarding those who create quality content. This includes the pros/media, amateurs and brands. Blended Search - which integrates noteworthy videos, news and images with web results - is winning over users, according to Jupiter Research.

Net, as Jason Calacanis notes, there is a big market for people who know how to create or cultivate compelling content that pulls in people. To that end my employer is starting up Edelman Studios - a virtual content house that will identify online talent and pair them with brands. Many in the Hollywood community, ex-journalists and advertising/PR creatives will orient their careers in such a direction. Don't be left behind. There's plenty of need here.

Super Crunchers

Here's another book recommendation for your summer reading list (sorry, I read a lot so my clients don't have to). It's called Super Crunchers. In the book, the authors explain through case studies how companies that are able to mine through mountains of data and make it work for them usually win. Another great book on this topic is Moneyball, which I have written about before.

The digital space is the most addressable media and marketing platform ever. However, most marketers are not “quants” and data is largely under utilized by many companies.

Data mining and visualization tools reduce risk, make business more efficient and measurable. Great rewards will come to those who know how to dig into data and make sense of it all and can parse that into insights that help companies optimize the dollars they put online. Be that guy or gal.

Those are three emerging careers on my list. What's on yours? The one topic I did not cover is developers, who I suspect will continue to remain in high demand for years to come.

An All Too Convenient Truth: Many Marketers Pollute the Web

Photo credit: Copenhagen Industry Pollution #1 by Miguel A. Lopes "Migufu"

Earth Day is around the corner and a lot of marketers are thinking about the sustainability of our planet. Some are recognizing that doing good also helps business. Edelman's Good Purpose study found that 73% of consumers are prepared to pay more for environmentally friendly products.

However, it's not just the environment that is endangered by toxins. The atmosphere we breathe online is too is being threatened by pollution - from marketers. The all too convenient truth is that it's very easy for advertisers to pollute the web with their garbage. Most often, that's not their intent. But it's the end result and it's reaching an epidemic proportion. Now business needs to take the same approach online as it has done offline through corporate social responsibility (Jason Calacanis echoed a similar theme recently.)

First let's look at the the obvious ways marketers poison the web. These all intend to game the system ...

• Spam: 94% of all email is spam (Postini)
• Splogs: 53% of all blog pings is spam, including 64% of those in English (UMBC)
• Click Fraud: Increased last year by 15% (Click Forensis)

Still, there's more. In subtle ways marketers are contaminating the Internet without even knowing it by spewing millions of meaningless messages across thousands of sites. This may be contributing to the slow down. They're not adding value to your experience or working to help you meet your goals in a very meaningful way.

Consider these popular techniques ...

• Banner Ads: A lot of money is going here but click-through rates remain abysmal and their overall branding value is being questioned. Many of them just litter the web and get in the way of what you want to do. Eye-tracking studies in the past have revealed "banner blindness."
• Social Network Advertising: eMarketer predicts advertising on social networks will reach $2.2 billion this year. However, traditional display approaches to date have not performed. As Ian Schaffer from from Deep Focus noted, marketers need to dig in and figure out how to make the experience better. This means what does work is creating authentic content, widgets/applications and more that people pull because they add value to the community. (Note: MySpace, a major social network, is an Edelman client.)
• Social Media Optimization: This needs to be watched like a hawk. As I have said before, if you participate and add value you are rewarded with Google Juice - and so much more. If you just set up sites and spam social nets to get links, then I am sorry, you're bad.

Despite all the money that's flowing online, most marketers completely miss the boat on what the web really can do for them. As I have talked about before, the Internet isn't just a communications medium. It works best when it's used as a platform for open collaboration. This means taking a PR-centric approach.

This means companies and consumers need to partner toward shared outcomes. This can be as simple as "we want to be entertained" to "we want to find the best world-changing idea." The latter is what American Express will unleash again later this year with its Members Project.

The web is facing it's own global warming crisis as marketers continue to pollute it. Consumers are voting with their clicks and eyeballs by engaging with authentic content that adds value, while ignoring the rest. That's good news that shows maybe we'll solve this crisis, even as business continues to tackle the larger issues that impact our planet.

Later:: Bryan Person asks if clueless PR pitches are part of the problem. Heck ya.

Using Friendfeed's Imaginary Friends as a Master Aggregator

Like lots of bloggers, my latest fascination these days is Friendfeed. The site, which opened up to everyone about three weeks ago, has been on fire. It aggregates the various streams of all your friends from across all the big social sites into a flowing river organized by date. You can find my stream here.

However, when you dig into Friendfeed, there's much more than meets the eye here. Using the site's Imaginary Friends feature you can turn it into a powerful, master aggregator.

First, sign up for a Friendfeed account. Then head over to the settings page where you can create an unlimited number of imaginary friends. Each of these can collect any number of feeds or streams that you tell it to. I have two for starters. One that tracks all of my in-bound links and Twitter replies and another that tracks my favorite RSS feeds and news. These are private and they work great on a mobile devices as well. In addition, the headlines (not the full text) are also searchable.

I am sure we can dream up even more creative applications for Friendfeed's Imaginary Friends feature. For example, it's easy to create a mashed up stream of news feeds and then to re-syndicate it out elsewhere. If you have ideas share them in the comments.

Comparing SMM SEO and PR Tactics is Pure Poppycock

Last week I wrote about how some in the search engine optimization profession (not all) are openly espousing how to basically turn social media sites into heat seeking missiles for Google Juice - and not much else. Apparently there is a whole cottage industry called "Social Media Marketing" (SMM) that analyzes how to use social media for SEO purposes. That should give anyone pause.

Given my accusations, immediately and understandably many commenters jumped on the public relations industry for also trying to use social media to pull the wool over people's eyes. That's complete poppycock. There is no comparison. The reason is that over the last several years the PR industry has largely learned its lessons - often the hard way.

Call me an optimist, but in 2008 most in the PR business take a clean approach to social media. A key reason is that when our clients engage, their participation needs to be transparent for it to be credible. If they fail at following the common law of the community, which has happened in the past, you'll be the first to know about it. You can't always say the same so-called SMM SEO types. Their work is sometimes far harder to sleuth.

I want to discuss this a bit more by addressing some of the comments about PR that came back in response to my post...

Danny Sullivan: "the next time you're dealing with some client asking for visibility, just tell them that hey, if they have a great brand, good PR will be a byproduct."

Positive PR is definitely an outcome of good products, but not always. Public relations professionals play a key role in helping brands identify their core genius and to tell that story. The ultimate arbiter here is the public - either directly or through the media.

We always need to convince people of a product or service's worth, no matter how good it is. If we're encouraging brands to participate in social networks, blogs and social bookmark sharing sites then the bar is even higher. They must add their value before anyone will care.

Social Media Marketing through SEO, on the other hand, often aims to game the system for Google's sake. It can be difficult for someone to discern the role it played in generating Google Juice.

Aaron Wall: "Since when is a PR guy concerned about how wrong it is to game media? I mean...I spoke at a PR agency once, and their walls were plastered with framed media articles that favored their clients. How is that any different then a blogger linking to my content because they like it?"

Public relations professionals - the ones who do their job well at least - never game the media. In fact, every journalist would take issue with that statement. In the social web, the bar is even higher. If good content attracts legit blog links, then that's a completely valid approach.

Chris Kieff: I think the PR industry is just as dirty as the SEO industry. For every 8 of us good ones in both PR and SEO there are 2 lousy ones who give us all a bad name.

Every profession has people who are white hats and black hats. However, my contention is that it's very hard to uncover the nefarious SEO types while it's pretty easy to do so in PR. Fear of humiliation is acting as a deterrent in PR.

Andy Beal: "What about the multitude of PR firms that flood social media with company profiles of their clients–all with the sole intent of building their brand recognition. They want to 'appear' as if they’re engaging their customers, but really they’re just jumping in so they can figure out how to push their brand on users."

I believe these people will all be exposed if they are not adding value - period. We (the community and the industry) need to police these egregious programs, no matter where they come from. And that's happening.

SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media

As someone who reads a lot of blogs about search and social media (a term I am still not nuts about but has stuck), I have recently witnessed a disturbing trend. Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

This represents a clear and present danger to the fabric of the community. If you care about the social web, then you should be alarmed.

Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals of late seem poised to take over blogs, digg, StumbleUpon and other sites with a range of tactics, some legit, others more questionable with the intent of building Google Juice and nothing more. Read these blogs and you'll see it's often all they're talking about. I am not the only one out there who feels this way.

Consider some of the following blog posts that I found in my Google Reader database...

Boost Organic Results. Link Build with Social Media (Search Engine Watch)

The Inconvienent Truth About Social Media Marketing (Search Engine Land)

Building a Company With Social Media (Search Engine Land)

Realizing SEO benefits through blogging (HitTail)

How to Use Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis and Other Social Media Tools to Find New Clients, Make Money and Create the Lifestyle of Your Dreams (Conference)

To be clear, I do not object to the way that blogs, digg links and Wikipedia rank highly in search results. What does get me hot and bothered is when consultants and bloggers propose launching such an initiatives solely for influencing search. SEO, like word of mouth, should be a byproduct outcome, not a primary objective. Any brand that plays in this space should be aiming to create value. Do that and the other stuff will follow.

But the SEO shenanigans for the sake of SEO has to stop. If you're going to play in our sandbox, follow the community's (unwritten) rules.

The Digital Curator in Your Future

Credit: Met by jesst7

Content: it's everywhere. Content is in your inbox, your feed reader, outdoor media, your living room, your pocket and, increasingly, on every web site you visit. It also increasingly resides on sites built and managed by your favorite brands, which are bypassing the media and going direct.

The democratization of publishing is without a doubt a revolution. When we're all dead and gone, the 21st Century will be remembered as a Digital Renaissance - one that rivals the original that preceded it by 700 years.

The Internet has empowered billions of people and is distributing their creativity across millions of niches and dozens of formats. Quality and accuracy, of course, can vary. However, virtually every subject either is or will be addressed with excellence - by someone, somewhere.

However, the glut of content as we all know also has a major downside. Our information and entertainment options greatly outweigh the time we have to consume it. Even if one were to only focus on micro-niche interests and snack on bite-sized content, demand could never ever scale to match the supply. Content is a commodity. The Attention Crash is real and - make no mistake - it will deepen.

Enter the Digital Curator. A curator, in a cultural institution context, is a guardian or an overseer. According to Wikipedia, he/she "is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and their associated collections catalogs. The object of a curator's concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections."

Museum curators, like web users, are faced with choices. They can't put every work of art in a museum. They acquire pieces that fit within the tone, direction and - above all - the purpose of the institution. They travel the corners of the world looking for "finds." Then, once located, clean them up and make sure they are presentable and offer the patron a high quality experience.

Much the same, the digital realm too needs curators. Information overload makes it difficult to separate junk from art. It requires a certain finesse and expertise - a fine tuned, perhaps trained eye. Google, memetrackers such as Techmeme and social news sites like digg are not curators. They're aggregators - and there's a big difference.

The call of the curator requires people who are selfless and willing to act as sherpas and guides. They're identifiable subject matter experts who dive through mountains of digital information and distill it down to its most relevant, essential parts. Digital Curators are the future of online content. Brands, media companies and dedicated individuals can all become curators. Further, they don't even need to create their own content, just as a museum curator rarely hangs his/her own work next to a Da Vinci. They do, however, need to be subject matter experts.

Curators are not editors either. The notion of an editor inherently implies that space is finite. Online it's not. Curators don't need to necessarily be trained in cutting, but in knowing where and how to unearth those special high-quality "finds" and to make them presentable. It's just as much about the experience and the way the information is presented, as it is the content.

If you look for them, curators are everywhere. Mahalo is a thriving community of curators on virtually dozens of subjects. The tech section of the New York Times web site and the My Times site, both of which highlight blogs, is another. Last but not least is the IAB Smartbrief. If you're interested in online marketing and have time to read only one source, this is the one to turn to because they curate.

As content universe expands and floods niches, there will always be a market for Digital Curators. The key for brands, individuals and media companies will be to identify those niches where they have deep expertise and to become the best in the world at serving them. I guarantee if you do this well and consistently, your long-term success is essentially guaranteed. And even if you do not have the energy to become a curator, you will certainly be influenced them.

Become a Knowledge Management Ninja with Google Reader

In this era of data smog, the knowledge worker who can act like an agile ninja by consuming vast quantities of information, synthesizing it and getting it in the hands of the right people at the right time is invaluable. For knowledge worker ninjas, RSS is your shuriken.

I have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - I've tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, it's the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

So as 2007 winds down and thoughts turn to productivity and prosperity in the new year, I offer these tips to help. Share your own thoughts in the comments. (Some of these may work with RSS readers from Newsgator, Bloglines and others but they are written with Google in mind.)

This post has several parts ...

* The Core Philosophy: Google Reader is a database and a feed reader
* Continually add tons of feeds in organized, methodical way
* Establish a taxonomy that makes retrieval and sharing easy using on-the-fly tagging
* Annotate your data by connecting Reader to Gmail or Blogger
* Putting it all together - sorting, searching and sharing

The Core Philosophy: Google Reader is a database and a feed reader

Most people who use RSS readers do so with the intent of subscribing to an aggregated river of news feeds, persistent searches and blogs. However with the recent addition of search, the Google Reader became much more. Like Gmail, Reader should be viewed as a database that you can build from scratch and continually hone. I wrote about this in September when the feature launched, but I see far more potential now than I did then. This philosophy is key - Google Reader = news aggregator + custom feed database.

Continually add tons of feeds in organized, methodical way

Second, I encourage you to throw as many feeds as you can at the Google Reader just so you can capture and mine it. This should include relevant feeds that you never have any intention of reading or even scanning. For example, I subscribe to high volume streams like Twitter timelines, AP news syndicates, various digg feeds and more. These generate a torrent of posts but I don't let them get in my way. The key is to add them to a special folder that is separate from other feeds that you actually read or scan. This way, with a click of a button you can clear these items but still cache 'em. However, the great news is that you can always go back and search and/or retrieve them later, as you can see below.

For those feeds you do want to read or scan, I would also suggest filing them away by context as Daniel Miessler recommends here. The great thing that Google Reader does is a allow feeds to sit in multiple folders. This allows me to store some feeds in a "mobile" folder that I have bookmarked on my mobile phone, even as they also reside in a "blogs" folder. Set up folders by context - including computers, contexts (online/offline/etc) and devices.

Establish a taxonomy that makes retrieval and sharing easy using on-the-fly tagging

One of Google's best, yet underutilized features is tagging. This differs from folders. As I mentioned earlier this week, Google let you tag individual posts/items and then easily retrieve these later using the keyboard shortcut. Lifehacker covers all of this here.

Tagging is an incredibly powerful tool for becoming a knowledge management ninja - especially in PR. As you're reading feeds you can tag them for sharing with a select group or for easy retrieval in the future.

For example, let's say your job is to compile a report to your boss at the end of the week. As you scan, simply tag all of the potential items you want to include with "report." Now you can easily retrieve these posts. However, there's more. You can search them too! This is powerful because you are adding a layer of structure to what is basically a giant pile of information that someone else decided to organize for you when the feed was established.

Anotate your data by connecting Reader to Gmail or Blogger

Other than simple tags, Google Reader doesn't let you add notes to your posts or feeds. However, when you email items out of Google Reader you can add up to 1,000 characters. I recommend sending these into your Gmail Personal Nerve Center so that they get filed away with a certain tag. Another option is to email them into a private Blogger blog using their post by email function. Ruud Hein suggests another way of doing this with Feedburner. I would suggest coupling this with tags as opposed to starred items.

Putting it all together - sorting, searching and sharing

Now that you have your personal knowledge management system up and running, you can begin to pull it all together. For example, start filing away items under tags. Share the tag (privately) with colleagues and get this information out more widely. If you want to make this less kludgy, run the feed through Feebdurner as Ruud describes above and let every one subscribe via email.

Here's another idea. If you are tagging items by client name or project name, you can later go back and run a scoped search within that tag. Even better, you can do the same with specific feeds and folders. So if your boss calls you up and asks you how many times The New York Times used the name of your company in a headline, you can easily give him or her an answer.

This is all just the beginning but you can see where I am going. Set this system up in a way that works best for you. Don't be afraid of too much information. Embrace it. Revel in it. But wrangle it like cattle to make it truly work for you. Be a ninja in 08. Go forward and good luck.

How to Share Items in Google Reader and Still Keep Them Private

There's been an uproar in the blogosphere and elsewhere this week over who - by default - can see your Google Reader Shared Items (a new feature). The short answer is anyone you have chatted with over Google Talk.

If this spooks you out there are two widely reported workarounds: a) don't share any items or b) make sure you hide anyone that you don't want to share with. However, there is a third undocumented trick that lets you share items with a private group and no one else. I plan to expand on this with a post later this week about how I am now using Google Reader as a Personal Knowledge Management System to complement my Gmail Personal Nerve Center.

The key is to make use of Google's underutilized tagging feature. At the bottom of any item in your reader you will spot a small link that says "tags." This system overlaps with, yet complements Google Reader folders. Click on the field to create a new tag. To illustrate for this blog post, here I have added the tag "myteam" to a cool post by Paul Stamatiou (which borrows one of my favorite photos of all time).

Next, click on "Settings" at the the top of the Reader interface, then click on Tags. Find the tag you just created and make that tag - and only that tag - public.

Finally, and this is key, share the tag page only with people you trust. They can subscribe to this tag page in Google Reader. Further, this page will not be spidered by any of search engines. What's more, even if someone should find your private Google Reader number (which shared items does expose when you hover over profiles), no one will be able to find this page unless they know the secret tag name.

It would be great if Google would tell people this so I wouldn't have to (and simplified the whole process). Right now, they make it too hard to find. Still, there is a workaround that lets you have your cake and eat it too. UPDATE :: The psychic gang at Google posted this just as I wrote this post.

Charting 2007's Three Big Web 2.0 Trends

"The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time." - Abraham Lincoln

Thinking about the future is fun. It's what I am paid to do. However, I never contemplate the days ahead without the context of the past. After all, the future is always grounded in history. That's why I have become a heavy user of Google Trends.

The tool is closest thing we have to a global rear-view mirror. Blog search and conversation charts only go so far. They capture what a small subset of the most vocal, tech-savvy users are saying. Search engines, on the other hand, show us what's on everyone's mind - including the giant underwater iceberg of silent users.

Like 2006, this was a big year for Web 2.0. Here are Google Trends charts I pulled looking at three broad 2007 Web 2.0 trends, along with my comments. I chose to focus here on broad trends, as opposed to the gyrations of individual sites, which always change with fickle users. (Micro blogging is an exception because the term is rarely used so I looked at Twitter instead.)

All of the data is global in scope and only as current as mid-December. Of course, all of this is just directional. Ideally, it would be great to cross-reference all of this with other sources, like Compete.com. Still, they do provide perspective.

Trend I: Social Networking

* Data: Searches for social networking and news volume both doubled in 2007. However, more recently, the volume has started to show some signs of weakness. Meanwhile, geographically, interest in social networking from India and Singapore is skyrocketing. Search volume for individual sites, like Facebook, appear to track the broader meme.

* Insight: Social networking is evolving from a group of sites into several competing platforms that power thousands of sites. Eventually, we won't think of social networks as sites but as a feature. This data might just be the first sign of such a progression.

Trend II: Micro Blogging

* Data: Micro blogging doesn't register on Google Trends, so I chose to compare Twitter and blogging (as opposed to "blogs" which is a much broader term). What's fascinating here is that searches for Twitter surpassed for "blogging" in April and never looked back. Meanwhile, news volume for the two are neck and neck. Twitter is particularly strong in Japan. That said, interest in micro blogging has dropped off dramatically this (nearly 50% off their peak in the spring).

* Insight: Blogging is work and the payoff (emotional or monetary) can be hard to come by, particularly for those of us who want to see a rapid return on our investment in time. Meanwhile, personal publishing is evolving because of the increasing sophistication of mobile devices and the Attention Crash. Micro blogging fosters connection with less work all while working well with mobile devices. Blogging remains important, however, as the traditional press rapidly embraced blogging, it has encouraged individual publishers to find new ways to spread their influence.

Trend III:: Web Applications

* Data: Google searches for web apps doubled in the second half of the year. That said they are dwarfed by stalwarts like Microsoft Office or Apple's iWork suite. Interest in Google Docs has flattened since they rolled out their presentation application. The US leads the way in web based applications.

* Insight: The search data seems to reflect what others have said - that web applications are not on most people's radar. This data is consistent with what Microsoft and Apple have said - people like their desktop apps. Web applications are in their infancy. It should be interesting to see if they will remain a niche category in the years ahead. The lack of the ubiquitous connectivity could be a major stumbling block.

How to Set Up a Portable Personal Nerve Center

There has been some debate the last few days about the merits of web-based vs. desktop applications. This was sparked by a big article in last weekend's New York Times about Google and Microsoft (an Edelman client). Ionut Alex Chitu is moving his information to the cloud. Meanwhile James Kendrick at JKOntheRun continues to like his desktop apps.

There is a hybrid solution. You can get the best of both worlds by setting up a web-based Personal Nerve Center (PNC) and making it ubiquitous and redundant so it's available from anywhere, even offline. I find this system makes it easier to manage the information overload drag. (If the entire PNC concept is new to you, then I invite you to read my initial posts on the subject first.)

All of these tips require any IMAP or hosted Exchange email account to work. I wrote this with GMail in mind, which now thankfully supports IMAP. This post has several parts...

• Make the Personal Nerve Center the hub of your online life (Productivity Apps + GMail/IMAP)
• Create a portable, offline version of the PNC that works on any computer or mobile device (USB drive + Portable Thunderbird + iPhone/Treo/Blackberry/Windows Mobile + GMail/IMAP)
• Build an "in case of emergency, break glass" PNC (Portable Thunderbird + Box.net + GMail/IMAP)
• Pump up your PNC with the power of search folders (Outlook/T-Bird/Mail.app + GMail/IMAP)

Establish the Personal Nerve Center as the Hub of your Online Life

I use lots of applications both on the desktop and online. However, I learned from Leo Babauta to become a Cyber Minimalist. This means once the stuff is created, I email into into GMail so that it archives and labels copies of my photos, personal word docs, meeting notes, web pages/PDFs I want to read and even MP3s. I also send "takeout" articles from Google Reader into GMail by using that site's email functionality - e.g. articles that I want to read later. This way, my essential stuff is available anytime, anywhere from any device, even offline (as you will soon see).

For example, when I create a list in Google Docs (which I use for GTD), I always email a copy to a secret "plus sign" GMail address. This automatically gets filtered and archived under my "Lists" label, which I can access from anywhere.

Create a Portable, Offline Version of the PNC that Works on Any Computer or Mobile Device

Getting your information online is just the beginning. The real magic happens when you sync the web with devices and computers.

I carry a USB drive wherever I go. On the stick I carry two copies of Portable Thunderbird - one that runs on Macs, the other on PCs. Both are synced to my IMAP account and have most of my essential PNC data cached - specific folders of articles, bookmarks, notes, GTD lists, etc. In both cases, these copies of Portable Thunderbird are password protected and encrypted. (The Mac version sits on an encrypted disk image.)

The advantage of this system, even though it's not always completely current, is that I can find any computer in the world and even if it's offline, have access to my critical information. That's not all, however.

I also keep my cell phone in sync with my GMail PNC. I always make sure key labels/folders like @Lists, @Reading, @Docs, @Meetings and @Personal stay in sync with my iPhone. This way, even if I am in the air and without connectivity, I have access to my essential data and files. This will work on any IMAP capable smartphone. I wrote about this over the summer but have since simplified the system now that GMail supports IMAP.

Build an "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass" PNC

In addition to keeping my USB key and iPhone in sync with my Personal Nerve Center, I also store encrypted copies of Portable Thunderbird on Box.net. This way, if for some reason I don't have my USB stick or mobile device (pretend I am Will Smith in I am Legend), I can log onto Box.net and download the copy of Thunderbird to a new USB drive. It's a backup for the backup and may one day be handy for the rare occasion when Gmail goes down.

Pump up your PNC with the Power of Search Folders

Last but not least, when I am accessing my PNC offline - be it from Mail.app, Thunderbird or Outlook - I use search folders to easily find certain information that's in my PNC. Lifehacker explains how here.

For example, I can find use these to easily pull up all my Twitter posts and replies from the last six months. I can certainly achieve this in Gmail using sophisticated searches, but you get more power and speed on the desktop than you do with the Web-based version of GMail.

This is what I am experimenting with now. It's clear to me that for the time being, there is no substitute for desktop apps - even though webware is catching up. The magical nexus is when you combine them so that your information is ubiquitous and that's exactly what I have going right now. Eventually, I expect this will all become more seamless and not require as many hacks.

Wikipedia and Wikia are Dead. Google Just Killed Them

Google announced last night they are starting a project called knol that will allow anyone to create wiki-like pages on topics. In particular, Google is encouraging people who know a particular subject to write an "authoritative" article about it. The search engine will not vet any of the content, however, they will prioritize the most credible entries and rank them first in search results. It remains unclear how Google is measuring credibility - a scary thought.

Still, with this move Google is clearly targeting Wikipedia (which is perhaps their biggest rival) and quite possibly is trying to ensure that Jimmy Wales' forthcoming social search engine, Wikia, is dead on arrival. Consider the timing of this announcement. It comes just days before Wikia is set to launch in beta and when Google doesn't even have any site we can poke at.

My initial take on this is that knols are going to kill Wikipedia - but it will take time. This theory, however, hinges on whether people actually start creating knols, but I believe they will. Here are several reasons why Wikipedia and Wikia are dead ...

1) The fame factor - Google prioritizes knols over Wikipedia

In theory, Google no longer needs to rely on Wikipedia for fresh content. The search engine will prioritize content from its own system and rank the most credible articles more highly than anything in the open source encyclopedia. This alone will encourage people to add to the commons. It will take time though for Google to reach a critical mass with its knols. Do not underestimate the power of fame.

2) Official sources and experts are welcomed, not spurned.

I love the openness of Wikipedia. However, I have long chided its lack of openness toward corporations and other sources of authority. As much as we would like to think people don't want corporations playing in our sandbox, most average users welcome organization and multiple perspectives. This is why we still have a thriving profession called editors. When it comes to corporations, Google is open, Wikpedia is closed.

3) Infinite Resources

Wikipedia has been trying to raise money for a long time now. Meanwhile, Google has infinite resources and the most powerful marketing vehicle on the planet to push it.

I am excited about the launch of this initiative. It is my hope that corporations and organizations that play by the rules will be able to unleash their subject matter experts to add content to the commons in a way the community accepts. There's no reason they should be excluded, provided there is some degree of counter balance.

What's even more exciting is that it reinforces the role of PR in this new wild and wooly online world. Now granted, we will have to play by the knol rules and be transparent. Still, this is all very exciting and in the process it might even get Wikipedia to change some too - for the better.

Social Search Sites Could Challenge Stalwarts

The following is also my column in this week's Advertising Age.

Search is broken. Of course, with Google at more than $600 a share, 91% of us using search engines and studies showing we're largely satisfied with their results, it's easy to discard this statement. The problem, however, is that search engines can bring back too much information. With content becoming a commodity, it can be difficult to separate the diamonds from the duds.

Thankfully, a number of smart entrepreneurs recognize this, and they are on the case. They see an opportunity to create a new, blended approach to search that allows us to scour the web just as we do now but with more guidance from community curators.

Mahalo, which means "thank you" in Hawaiian, is among the most notable of these upstarts. The site, which launched with a great deal of fanfare in May, is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis.

Mahalo blends wiki technology with search. The site has a small team of editors and even more volunteers who work to pull together frequently updated pages that point users to high-quality links for the top 10,000 searches in popular categories. These curated pages cover topics such as how-to articles, the latest gadget reviews and more. Pages are updated frequently as news breaks.

If a page does not exist in its database, Mahalo will aggregate results from all of the major search engines, including Google, Live.com and Ask, as well as Wikipedia and YouTube. Further, users can apply to become a guide or suggest pages and links. The only way to advertise is through contextual search ads placed through Google AdSense.

While anecdotal data shows that Mahalo may be getting some traction, it has a lot of competition in the same genre. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is preparing his own social search engine, Wikia. It promises to be more open. About, which is owned by New York Times Co., has long taken a similar approach. Finally, Google too is showing signs of becoming more social. Just recently it started allowing users to edit maps or collaborate in the open to build complete travel guides.

Google Reader Now Recommends Feeds

Google Reader has added a feature that recommends feeds for you. Recommendations for new feeds are generated by comparing your interests with the feeds of users similar to you as well as by looking at your web history. A help page explains the process...

The "Top Recommendations" section lists a few feeds you might be interested in, but aren't subscribed to yet. You can get more recommendations by clicking the View all link next to those recommendations, or by clicking the Discover link in the sidebar.

You can preview a feed in Reader before making a decision to subscribe or not; just click on the feed in the list of recommendations. There's also some extra information about the number of subscribers to the feed and approximate posts per week. If you find a feed you like, just click the Subscribe button to add it to your reading list. If you've decided you're not interested in one of the feeds, just click No thanks to take it off your recommendations list.

Your recommendations list is automatically generated

Here's a screen shot of what this looks like in my reader. Though it's not very controversial since all of the data is anonymous, it would be great to see Google give you an opt-out choice since some people may not want to share their reading habits with the world - even anonymously.

Five Reasons Why a Pay Per Click Recession Looms

For the last several years, search engine marketing has been on a tear. While the big advertisers sat on the sidelines in the beginning, they have lately been ramping up their spend on pay-per-click advertising, primarily on search engines but also affiliate sites like those that run Google Adsense.

However, I am calling a top to this market now. Here are five reasons why a pay-per-click advertising recession looms. (If you depend on Adsense for the bulk of your revenue, this applies to you as well.)

1) Clutter
Have you shopped for a car lately? I have. And I did a lot of Google searches in the process but largely ignored the ads. The reason - clutter. Take a look at this search. Ads are stacked on top of each other. There are 10 ads in my browser. Advertising clutter is a known deterrent to advertising effectiveness. TV advertising suffers from clutter and there's no reason why search engines are immune. The New York Times touched on this today.

2) Declining Relevance of Traffic/Transition to Cost Per Action
OK, you have heard this from me twice in a week now so I won't spend a lot of time here. Traffic is becoming irrelevant unless it results in action. There will be some pain as search engine marketing moves to a cost per action model, rather than one based on sometimes irrelevant clicks. This will contribute to a search engine marketing slowdown.

3) Rising Costs
According to a five-year Forrester interactive marketing forecast published last week, costs per keyword rose an average 33% each month in Q1 2007 compared with the same period in 2006. As a result, some marketers are buying lots more Long Tail terms. Further, Forrester says that "many still spend with abandon." The reason is that search outperforms other advertising - but for how long? And again, how do you define perform (see point #2)? The madness will end as soon as the economy tightens.

4) Marketers Spread the Ball Around
Move over search, you're not the only game in town. Marketers are increasingly investing in behavioral targeting, webisodes as well as more social channels like blogs and soc nets studies say. These formats are becoming more targeted and effective too.

5) Search Ads Are Viewed as Untrustworthy
If there's anything that Enron, Bill Bellichick, Marion Jones, Worldcom and Barry Bonds taught us, it's this - trust is king. Google CEO Eric Schmidt knows this - note his comments this week to AdAge. However, according to a study published by Nielsen last week, search engine advertising suffers from low trust.

Now, before all the search consultants flame this post with comments, I believe strongly in the marketing firepower of search engines. It's a terrific venue and one that I regularly advise our clients to invest in.

However, it's impossible to deny that pain is coming. As SEM matures it will move to a new model just as spending on digital marketing overall rises and diversifies. This means the market will recede before it expands. In the long run, that's good for everyone. Just be prepared for what's coming.

Web 2.0 Economics 101

This is going to be a short post about economics, a subject I never studied in school. Even though I am no Bernake, I do know one thing: capitalist economies operate on supply and demand. As supply goes up, it indicates that demand is heading down. As demand goes up, then it points to supplies going down. Any 7th grader knows that. It's the law. (Tell me if this severely math-challenged monkey has this all wrong.)

Yet people are not thinking about economics when it comes to the web - particularly Web 2.0. Here are two key trends to consider.

A) As the supply of content rises, attention decreases and demand lowers -  e.g. traffic thins
As I wrote earlier this week, the entire concept of measuring sites on traffic is becoming totally moot. Why? Yup, good ol' uncle supply and demand. It's much harder to attract people to web sites when there's much more content and it becomes a commodity. The people who got in early and achieved scale or have a truly differentiated approach will be the winners (thanks in part to Google Juice). The Attention Crash is another force at bay here too. It's directly related.

B) As the supply of ad-supported media rises, inventories swell - e.g. this equals less ad revenues
There's a good story on Reuters today about how there will not be enough ad dollars to go around to all of the sites that hope to make money from it. Why? Yup, uncle supply and demand. As media proliferates, the ad budgets gets flattened across all of these sites. There is one key exception, however. Advertisers still - for now - like to buy lots of eyeballs. So once again uncle supply and demand spoils all the fun and that's why consolidation rules.

The economics of the web are truly deflating. These two trends are directly related. When people start ignoring basic economics that spells trouble (which rhymes with bubble). If you're a start up or an advertiser, pay attention to these two trends. They will have a big impact. It's going to get very hard for advertiser-supported startups to get any scale when it comes to revenue.

Search is Broken

Search is broken. You may not feel the same way, but it is. And it might require a new web standard to emerge in order for it to truly be fixed.

Now with Google at over $600 a share and 91% of us using search engines (and largely satisfied with them) it's easy to believe that search is anything but broken. However, the problem is that the entire search paradigm was built during the Web 1.0 era when generally all we cared about searching was the content that other people created. That's not true anymore.

Today all of us are generating a torrent of content across lots of different sites - sometimes hundreds of them. This includes everything from financial transactions your bank site is logging to email that sits in your Gmail or Hotmail account to content you're posting on Facebook and, increasingly, documents you're creating using rich internet applications like Google Docs. In addition, lots of data comes back at you too - replies, account alerts, pokes, etc. There's currently no way to easily search it all.

Right now when you want to find bits that you generated you have to think first about where it lives and then go to that site and search for it. Here are some of the search boxes that I utilize on a daily basis. You may recognize them too.

Now, I don't know about you but I don't want to think about where my information lives or use 100 different search boxes. That's the beauty of Google. You go to a single box you enter what you want and instantaneously you find it. You don't have to think about what site it's on. Google knows so you don't have to. We need a secure, opt-in web version of Google Desktop that can find all the bits we generate online, even if they are behind walls.

At a minimum, the portals will evolve so that you can not only easily search the web, but all of the stuff you generate on their properties via one box. You should be able to go to Google.com and search Gmail, GCal, GDocs, GReader and Jaiku. Right now you can't - easily.

However, with a little bit of collaboration, the opportunity is much bigger. It would be great to see a secure XML standard emerge for data sharing. This way, if I enter a search in AOL.com and I let it access my Gmail account, it will pull up my messages in the search perhaps in a special tab. This is a topic I am hoping some of the speakers will address at next week's Search Marketing Expo, which I plan to attend.

I will let the technologists figure the details out. What I do know is that people don't want to think about where their data is. In my case, I have upped my Gmail storage to 30 gigs because I use it as a private intranet (I have written about this extensively). I constantly email stuff into it - e.g. web pages, personal docs, etc. - to basically create the one box interface I am looking for. Others do the same or use Greasemonkey to fuse sites together. But that's not what normal people want.

So search is broken. If we leave it to Google they will fix it - but only within Google's land. How about Yahoo or Microsoft? Same. They can only search their own servers. It would be great to see everyone work together to make everything an individual wants to find searchable from one place.

Turn Gmail (or any E-mail Account) Into a Social Network Hub

There's been a lot of chatter about the entire concept of social graphing. I have no idea if there is validity here or not. And certainly people smarter than I am are talking about the potential viability of the entire concept.

However, what I do know is that a lot of us are increasingly participating in social networks and we need a way to track it all. Also, most of us are hooked on email too. So, the good news is you can easily combine these addictions (um I mean "tools") to your advantage.

Thanks to gobs of storage, a pretty strong reason to stay locked-in (three and a half years of heavy email use), my Gmail account is the nerve center that runs my life. Yes, just as Gmail remains my personal nerve center, it now also tracks my social graph. I use Gmail as a Grand Central Station-sized hub that helps me track every social network I participate in and my friends' activity there - as well as my own.

Here are four tips that have helped me. Many of these tips will work on most social networks that provide RSS, SMS or email alerts as well as on all big webmail sites - e.g. Windows Live Hotmail, AOL Mail, Yahoo Mail or even Exchange.  What I love about it is that it also works great with Treos, Blackberries and iPhones. This series has several parts...

• How to use Gmail to post to social networks
• How to track your friends and their replies using Gmail
• How to build a "lifebase" inside Gmail that maintains a record of your various friends/connections
• How to use Gmail to prioritize the right friends and weed out the ones you want to un-friend

Use Gmail to post to Social Nets

Let's face it, life is busy. Who has time to go to a site, log in and post something new. SInce I already spend a tremendous amount of time inside Gmail, I have rigged it so I can easily post directly to the social nets where I choose participate. In my case, this consists of Twitter and Facebook. It's simple.

In Twitter's case I use Twittermail. I have a super secret address that I send mail to and it automatically posts to Twitter, edits me down to 160 characters and formats my links. 

Facebook doesn't have email in functionality for status updates, but you can use Teleflip  or another email to SMS gateway to get around this. Configure it so that any mail you send it auto forwards to FBOOK (32665). Use the @ symbol to update your status. Other commands are posted here and listed below.

Track Your Friends and their Responses with Gmail

So now that we covered how to get stuff posted to social networks from Gmail, let's start using it to get updates so you can track your peeps - and their replies back at 'ya.

In the case of Twitter, it's simple again thanks to their API. Twittermail can automatically email you any replies to your Tweets. In addition, I use Twitter Digest to generate  a feed of all of the friends I want to follow the most. I then stick this feed in my Gmail clips, which rotates whenever I am using the account. Even better, you can run a Twitter Digest feed through R-Mail (now owned by NBC and soon to be called SendMeRSS) and have it land in your inbox as an email message once daily.

How about Facebook? Easy. Log into your account, find the status update page, grab the RSS feed and run it through Feedburner. Why Feebdurner? Because you can keep it the feed and your friends updates safe from search engines, yet still subscribe to it via email. This doesn't just apply to Facebook but any site that lets you track friends via RSS.

Use Gmail (or other Webmail Service) to Build "a Lifebase" of Friends

Now, I don't know about you, but in my business relationships are everything. Increasingly social networks are becoming a theater of operations for PR. So we need ways to track our interactions over time. Enter email.

Using any of the methods described above, start subscribing to feeds via email for the friends you want to follow closely. If a feed doesn't exist in the social net you want to track and there's only text message capes (like Facebook), use an SMS to email gateway.

With the emails set up, then build some very smart filters in Gmail. For example - "from:R-mail subject:Scoble." This will find all messages that come in from R-mail from Scoble's Twitter stream. I have this search automatically filtered and archived to a special "Friends" label as Lifehacker describes here. Using this method, you now have a nice way to track a friend's entire stream - should you wish.

Use Gmail to Prioritize Friends You Care About Most and Weed Out Duds

If you follow the steps above you will start to amass a lifebase of all your friends and their social networking activities. This works especially well on services that offer unlimited storage, like AOL and Yahoo. Over time, you will open certain messages and ignore others. This will reveal just how valuable a particular friend's update is to you.

Using Gmail you can find these all instantly with a command like this - from:R-mail subject:Twitter is:unread. Then you know which friends you should toss - at least from Gmail.

These are just a handful of tips and this concept is evolving but even before someone builds the big social graph in the sky, I am just getting along fine using Gmail, thanks to a bit of hackery.

Analysis: Why Some Web 2.0 Sites Will Never Attract Big Ad Dollars

Accountability - e.g. a company's return on investment in advertising - is an evergreen topic in the marketing community. Naturally, when it comes to the emerging sphere of Web 2.0 sites, advertisers want to sleep easy knowing that their money is generating a return. So with US ad spending on social networks expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2011, this is a good time to poke at conventional wisdom with hard data. It's not pretty.

Based on a informal analysis, my belief is that many online communities, bloggers, social networks will never attract a critical mass of advertisers because they are not set up properly to attract visitors who have a commercial intent to buy products and services. Online media is not sold this way now, but I bet it will be in the very near future.

Today, most advertisers size up community sites, blogs and social networks using traditional media buying models - namely, reach and frequency. Unfortunately, the reality is that many Web 2.0 sites, can't deliver marketers the numbers they want because of the effect of Long Tail. It's simple supply and demand economics at work. This is why efforts like the one announced by comScore and Federated Media are fundamentally flawed.

This week in New York I am participating in an all-day roundtable discussion about how to measure the impact of online influence. Edelman, my employer, is convening some of the industry's leading thinkers on this subject. It is my hope - and our challenge - to come up with new ways to measure the potential the web has on influencing purchases. Quantifying eyeballs is not the answer. We need new thinking.

My personal conviction - one that I plan to table - is that search should be the most important driver for how advertisers size up the influence of different community sites and the individuals who make them up. The problem is no one is thinking this way. Everyone is overlooking the organic impact of Web 2.0 on product-related searches in favor of quick and dirty old school metrics.

Microsoft AdCenter Labs has some demonstration technology that illustrates this vividly. (Microsoft is an Edelman client.) Their Online Commercial Intent tool uses terabytes of search data to calculate the likelihood of a web site to attract buyers.

I took a handful of different URLs and ran them through the Microsoft tool. To give you a sense of a benchmark, Amazon.com has 52% purchase intent. Here are my results (numbers are rounded) ....

Consumerist - 49% of visitors have a commercial intent
Gizmodo - 47%
Autoblog.com - 45%
Treehugger - 41%
Techmeme - 41%
Engadget - 40%
Gridskipper - 38%
YouTube - 38%
TechCrunch.com - 37%
digg.com - 34%
del.icio.us - 29%
PerezHilton.com - 27%
Wikipedia - 14%
Flickr - 14%
Facebook - 10%
Twitter - 5%

While a lot more analysis is needed, as you can see a lot of sites don't fare particularly well. They're set up to attract eyeballs, but perhaps - purely from an economic sense - not necessarily the right ones. Eventually ad spending will recede and marketers will place a greater focus on ROI. Purchase intent and search will play a key role. If you want to attract advertisers, start conveying that you attract buyers and make sure you are delivering on that promise.