Reading through the article I couldn’t help but reflect on the value PRWeb has gained from having a tremendous circle of early adopters to lean on for feedback, creativity, and spreading the gospel far and wide.

One of our biggest drivers of new customer acquisition has always been and continues to be word-of-mouth.  When you consider the volume of customers we are working with on a daily basis it is just amazing how much actual value we have derived from creating solid relationships with industry influentials.

Anyway, getting back to Brian’s article, it is a great read for anyone in the start-up industry particularly in light of the recent economic trends.

In the midst of the blogging craze, a small percentage of highly traffic blogs have emerged as real influencers in the media world.  Most of these ‘head’ blogs are fueled by capital and are financially self-sustaining.  The majority of long-tail blogs flame out in a few months (if that).

The infusion of revenue into blogging however should create an opportunity for an independent middle-class to emerge and sustain momentum.  There was an interesting article from the Associated Press today that examined the impact of advertising on blogging. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, advertisers spent $16.9 billion in 2006, up from $6 billion in 2002.

As online spending continues to increase, it is likely that there will be an emerging opportunity for bloggers to begin monetizing their hobby and some of them may even be able to turn their hobbies into full-time ventures.

The monetization of long-tail blogging will probably be the variable that brings some legitimacy and sustainability to the medium.

I vividly recall Carr saying that with the tremendous aggregation of content occurring online, the primary challenge would be what to do with all the content.  In hindsight, Carr’s point seems fairly acute considering Google’s search algorithm has not only served to frame our experience of the Internet, but “Googling” has become entrenched in our everyday lives.

As Google continues to grow at an unprecedented rate and purchase just about every emerging start-up that comes onto the horizon, it seems that the warnings of theorists like Hargittai, McChesney, Nissenbaum (and a host of others) are coming to fruition.

Take for example Google’s purchase of Blogger, a popular blog content management software. The usability of content management systems like Blogger is what is fueling the movement popularly referred to as Web 2.0 or social media because software like Blogger facilitates the gap between thought and actualization through publishing.

From a commercial perspective the value of Blogger to Google is in the advertising that can be sold on the content that is being fueled by the software. Although from an aesthetic perspective Blogger may not look like it is fully integrated into the Googleopoly, make no mistake – it is fully integrated. As a matter of fact, AdSense (Google’s ad network) is integrated directly into the dashboard itself making it easy for anyone to set up a blog and start making money through their blog in a matter of seconds. And with every new blog that is set up, and every cent earned from a click, Google’s power expands.

Now what happens in search is that Google will find ways to boost the visibility of Blogger because the more visible Blogger is, the more money Google stands to earn.

Sound like a conspiracy theory? Just run a Google query for blog and see for yourself. Wikipedia comes up in the pole position, immediately followed by Blogger. The official Google blog comes up #4. What’s more, the blogs that run on Blogger consistently perform at the top of the Google heap.

What is funny to me about all this is that traditionally, the Google brand has been associated with openness and innovation, but their blogging software is far inferior to the open source WordPress (which this blog runs on). It seems like most of the “innovations” being released by Blogger are oriented around making it easier for a broader population of people to publish and sell advertising on their content.

So Google has social media figured out then?

Wrong.

The competitive advantage that has brought Google to the forefront of the online world and kept them firmly entrenched at #1, has been the algorithm.

The algorithm is all about search and retrieval, it is about eternally answering the questions of a mass audience of empowered media consumers.

By “empowered” I mean that we are still media consumers but we have more of an ability to make choices about which media we consume – because of solutions like Google.

Suddenly, we are entering a second wave of media inundation and I don’t believe that the Google algorithm is going to be able of handling the evolving needs of a population of online users who have shifted from being empowered consumers into something new.

My own anecdotal experience reveals an inbox flooded with e-mails and Web alerts, an RSS reader flooded with feeds I have subscribed to, social network profiles that have countless messages, an IM client flooded with messages, and a Web browser flooded with bookmarks.  This is the net result of my own evolution from being an empowered media consumer to being a media producer, and the similar evolution of others within my network.

My solution to this new wave of inundation is currently ad-hoc. I browse over the titles of the various messages, pay special attention to the sender of the message and try to prioritize based on my job responsibilities, family responsibilities, etc.. These are all activities that are so personal and spontaneous that the Google algorithm simply does me no good.

If I need information on a restaurant I am interested in going to I know Google will be there, but if I need a method for helping to organize my everyday experience of the Web – Google has simply fallen by the wayside and selling more AdSense and juicing their properties in search isn’t the way for Google to pick up its game.

Returning back to Dr. Carr’s prophetic vision of the future, it is my belief that the next challenge we face will be to move beyond search and to something new – something more personalized and reflexive than search. Something that we adopt that helps filter our new experience of the Internet into something manageable and perhaps even enjoyable.

This will be life after Google.

The article does a good job representing the spectrum of approaches that social marketing agencies are taking to drum up buzz that in some ways mirror some very fundamental dichotomies that exist in public relations – is it better to instruct or influence – state or spin your message?

As Pete Blackshaw, CMO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics explains, “There are many things advertisers can do to influence the outcome, but there’s a high order of finesse and sensitivity needed.”

In traditional public relations, the repercussions for a bit of spin gone wrong are normally not that severe (provided the spin is mild). In social media however, there can be serious repercussions, which raises the stakes considerably for many of the companies that are focused on the space.

At any rate, I felt the article did a good job listing out some of the emerging social media services but I thought it might help to try and group them. Note – I parsed out social marketing services (those that are more focused on leveraging word-of-mouth) and focused primarily on social media services (those that are primarily online).

Here is how I see it playing out:

Bucket 1: Social media enabled services – These services are communications-oriented but have adapted to better integrate with the social media paradigm. PRWeb would fit into this category because the initial benefit proposition was about cutting through the media and communicating direct-to-consumer through news aggregators and search engines. Over time, the press releases have incorporated social media trappings like trackbacks, social bookmark links and other tools that recognize the growing importance of social media.

Bucket 2a: Social media oriented services (outreach) - These are the groups that have mortgaged the house and put all their chips in leveraging purely social media to create buzz. PayPerPost would be a prime example because it is entirely oriented around connecting brands with social media influencers. It has really been forged in the paradigm and oriented around creating buzz through social media but it is not entirely social media itself. In fact, it bears a greater resemblance to an advertising affiliate network than to a true open network. Collactive could also fall into this bucket.
Bucket 2b: Social media oriented services (monitoring) – I think conceptually, this bucket is probably very similar to bucket 2 except their primary goal is to collect and analyze data in social media. Radian6 and Relevant Noise would be good examples of this type of service.

Bucket 3: True social media services – I would say the third bucket of services are those that are oriented at impacting social media in some way, but can themselves be considered true forms of social media. The distinction is sort of hazy here, but I think the manner in which the user interfaces with the service will be fundamentally different than before. I think LinkedIn is a good example of the approach because it provides a very social media-driven approach to networking, but it is not really PR/Marketing consumed.

Over time, some of the services from the other buckets will evolve into this bucket; others will simply be new offerings in the market.

According to SNCR:

1. 70% are currently spending 2.5% or less of their communications budgets on conversational marketing
2. Two-thirds plan to increase their investment in conversation within the next twelve months
3. 57% project that in five years they will be spending more on conversational marketing than traditional marketing
4. 23.8% believe that spending on conversational marketing will be the same as traditional marketing in five years
5. 81% of all respondents project that by 2012 they will spend at least as much on conversational marketing as traditional marketing

On a side note, leading with that last statistic is pretty shrewd. The title of the release and blog posting starts with “Spending on Conversational Marketing to Outpace Traditional Marketing by 2012.” Who in their right mind isn’t going to be lured in by that?

The findings also cited several barriers to entry that social media must navigate as it continues to become entrenched within mainstream PR and marketing strategies, including:

1. Resource limitations
2. Fear or loss of control
3. Inadequate metrics
4. Cultural issues
5. Difficulty with internal sell-through

In my opinion, limitations #2, #4, and #5 are all essentially the same. As social media continues to embed itself into our everyday lives, the culture will inevitably change. Current senior-level managers will become more comfortable signing their names to budgets that contains social media components, and the mid-level managers who are immersed in social media start will start moving into senior-level management positions.

Of the other two barriers, I believe that the metrics issue is going to be the first to fall. Two participants at this past week’s PRSA expo, Radian6 and Relevant Noise, seem particularly well poised to address this issue.

I would say that the issue of resource limitations is still up in the air to a great extent. To a certain degree, this is a matter of perception. For example, fifteen years ago, people may have thought they didn’t have enough the resources to use the Internet and now it is inconceivable to consider professional life without it. In a similar vein, it may very well be that in about five years it will be inconceivable to think about life without more social forms of media like blogging or social networking.

At the same time, I believe there is a clear opportunity for both players to come to market with the core benefit proposition of helping people save time engaging with social media.

Stay tuned…

I suppose it is simply a natural law that power-law distributions will gradually emerge in any controlled system – even those that are ostensibly constructed to be democratic in nature.

The Internet emerges as a network and within a few years, a minority of Web sites and portals garner the lions share of online traffic; then, blogging emerges as an communication practice and within a few years, a minority of top-tier blogs garner the majority of traffic online.  In some ways it seems inevitable that the same distribution would set into social bookmark sites.

The question of how to engage with bloggers has been puzzling buzz manufacturers for some years now and I suppose you can now layer in the question of how to engage best with the dominant users in social bookmarking communities.  There is certainly a void that seems to exist between those that want to connect with mass audiences online to promote their messages on one side; and those who have the influence to do so on the other side.

The article does a good job encapsulating some of the commercial attempts to systematize and commoditize these relationships but I haven’t seen anything that I find terribly sexy yet.

I don’t know how successful the site is, especially because their branding and general design strike me as a bit, err…underdeveloped, but I think the vision is ballsy to say the least.

Traditionally, content production has gone something like this: with the content producer going through a middle-man of sorts (in music, this would be the studio), and from there it would go to the mass of consumers. In turn, the middle-man would engage in marketing research and use their own expertise to either mold the content producer to meet the requirements of a broad audience or alternatively, find a new content producer who more adequately met the requirements of a broad audience. Of course, there are exceptional cases where the content producer is talented to the point of re-framing the expectations and tastes of the broad audience but those tend to be exceptional cases.

It gets more sophisticated than this – for one, the roles of consumer and producer start to mesh. In that space between, where the middle-man used to be (who was a quasi-producer) a lot of mediation happens – without the middle-man as mediator, the consumer and producers start to play more mediate roles.

In general though, it is a fascinating approach and one that many believe will have a strong role in the future.

Update (9/12/07): Strayform founder Brandt Cannici informed me this AM that their site design was updated.  I think they improved the look and feel of the site and I certainly appreciate Cannici following-up with me on the development.

1. Information and influence coming from new sources;
2. Loss of control on the part of corporations and marketers;
3. Convergence in communications disciplines;
4. Increasing importance of trust and relationship.

Actually, there is nothing that is really ground-breaking about their findings, but there are some good anecdotes, secondary research citations, and quotes throughout the paper that make it worth downloading and reading.    Their conclusions also eloquently state and reinforce what many in the space have been saying for some years now.

A couple of interesting nuggets that jumped out at me:

1. Value of usability in social media – “Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the international investment-banking arm of Dresdner Bank, based in Europe, has used a wiki for a decade to improve communications between its different worldwide locations and business groups. The wiki has gotten much more sophisticated and easier to use in recent years, especially after Socialtext Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., which makes enterprise social software for collaboration, released a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor in January 2006. WYSIWYG provides an editing interface that behaves like word processors such as Word, making it easier for many more people to access and use the company wiki. Following the editor’s introduction, wiki usage climbed 30%, becoming the primary tool for intra-team communications.”
2. Importance of practicing what you preach – According to noted Silicon Valley journalist Tom Foremski, ““If you are looking for a PR company that understands something about blogging, find out who in that organization blogs, and how long have they been blogging, and what is their blog page rank and traffic. You will find that in many large PR agencies, it is their most junior staff that are the in-house bloggers, and there lies the rub. PR companies that ‘get it’ have senior staff as bloggers, and they blog regularly, and they have decent traffic, and they also use other types of new media such as wikis.”

I am happy with this version of it, which some people (I hope) might find interesting.

1. On a typical day in August 2006, 26 million Americans were using the Internet for new or information about politics and the elections.
2. This represented a 5 million increase since Pew ran surveys during the November 2004 elections (21 million); and a 15 million increase since 2002 (11 million).

Trends in Internet access, as opposed to consumption, had a lot to do with the jump between 2002 and 2006 but the shift between 2004 and 2006 likely had a lot to do with changing patterns of consumption.