Att vi lever i en brytningstid präglad av många och snabba förändringar har nog knappast lyckats passera någon. Det många av oss ena dagen känner som "sanningar", är gamla redan dagen därpå. Och att hänga med, hinna anpassa sig, förstå och agera rätt efter ständigt nya förutsättningar är en utmaning för de flesta - både individer och företag.

Den 21 oktober bjuder vi på Disruptive Media in till Disruptive Change
- en konferens med fokus på just förändring. Vi har samlat de bästa talarna som tillsammans ger sin bild på hur sociala medier, crowdsourcing och den digitala ekonomin förändrar sätten vi driver, organiserar och kommunicerar våra företag och organisationer. Tanken är att det inte bara ska öppna dina ögon och ge dig nya insikter, utan också konkret lära dig att förutse de problemområden som idag lätt uppstår över en natt.

Här läser du mer om och bokar in dig till höstens förmodligen mest omskakande konferens
 som hålls på Tekniska Muséet mellan kl 9.00-17.00.

Känner du fler som kan tänkas eller åtminstone borde vara intresserade av Disruptive Change, så sprid gärna ordet! Och glöm heller  inte att följa oss, både här på bloggen och på Twitter för löpande nyheter och uppdateringar kring eventet!

Jennifer Bark

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

In addition to writing for their human readers, web writers and bloggers have to consider the digital web crawlers employed by search engines like Google. Your business can’t skip the task.

Since most would-be readers use search engines to find blog posts, you need to make sure that Google ranks your site highly when those readers search for terms related to your business and the content you’re writing.

You could spend thousands of dollars to have a search marketing firm optimize your business’s blog for search engines, but chances are that you can learn a lot of the fundamentals yourself, saving yourself a lot of money as long as you have the interest and the time. Here’s a basic primer on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your company’s blog.

1. Always Include Search Terms in Your Post’s Title

When Google reads a website to index it, it reads the code directly, not the snazzy presentation that humans see. The way most blogging platforms are built, the headline or title of your blog post is among the first things Google sees, and Google generally assumes the words that appear earliest are the most important. That’s why the title is the most important part of your blog post when it comes to SEO.

Think about who you want to reach with this blog post, and what that person might be searching for when looking for your business’s goods or services, then include critical words from that hypothetical search in the title. The most important terms should appear as quickly as you can reasonably fit them in. Just be careful not to make the title unreadable or awkward to human readers — that SEO effort will have been for naught if the reader is immediately turned off by the content once he or she finds it.

Here’s a pro tip: You’re not likely to win strong ranking for more than one or two search terms at once, so minimalism is a virtue here. Don’t get over-ambitious. Focus on one potential search term, then if you want to rank for a second term, write a separate and unique post specifically with it in mind.

2. Link Important Words to Earlier Blog Posts

Search engines generally assume that a blog post that has been linked to has more authority than one that has not. They also consider exactly what word or phrase linked to the post; a blog post about the iPhone is going to be more likely to show up in Google searches on the subject if another page links the word “iPhone” to the post.

You’ll get the most value from external links from sites that Google or other search engines already consider to be an authority of the subject (if the top blog about iPhones links the word to your post, you’ll get a huge boost), but all incoming links will still pass rank to your page, even those from elsewhere on your site.

So be sure and link important keywords to other pages or previous posts on your blog to gain some credibility and search rank. It will make a big difference. Just don’t overdo it; not only do human readers hate reading blogs so filled with links that they might accidentally click on something, Google may penalize you if you go overboard, too.

3. Hit the Tagging Sweet Spot

Most blogging platforms let you apply tags to your posts. Tags help organize your blog so both humans and search engines can find what they’re looking for. They’re terms like “consulting,” “local” or “technology” that reflect the topics and content of the post.

Google tries to recognize tags and use them to prioritize your site in its search ranking for those terms. The tags are usually links to other pages on your blog (usually a backlog of other posts with the same tag), and like we said earlier, linking search terms to other pages on your site helps too.

So by all means, add pertinent tags to your blog post, but be warned that Google and other search engines are wary of sites that try to game this system. They will penalize you in the search rankings if you use so many tags that the web indexing bots suspect you might be attempting to associate your content with unrelated topics just to score extra traffic.

The method for determining this is arcane, but a good rule of thumb from a pro blogger is that five to 10 appropriate tags are usually right in the sweet spot.

4. Use Google Insights to Find the Best Search Terms

You don’t have to play a guessing game about the best tags or search terms to link or put in your post’s title. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it makes sense to focus your efforts there. Whenever you’re not sure which terms to go with, hit up Google Insights, a web-based tool that compares the popularity of any search terms you want to know about.

For example, if your business is a coffee shop but you’re not sure whether would-be customers are more likely to search for “café” or “coffee shop,” Insights can tell you which one is more popular.

These four tips should get you on your way to having a more SEO-friendly corporate blog. Add your tips for search engine optimization in the comments below.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Small Biz Web Design Trends to Watch
- Why Social Media Monitoring Tools Are About to Get Smarter
- Why the Social Gaming Biz is Just Heating Up
- The Future of Public Relations and Social Media
- HOW TO: Pick the Right Social Media Engagement Style

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MacXever

Reviews: Google, iPhone, iStockphoto

More About: blog, blogging, business, corporate blog, how to, List, Lists, search engine, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO, small business, smb, tips

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Google Rich Snippet
Oli Studholme has an excellent new article on HTML5 Doctor on the different ways HTML5 can be extended with things like microformats, the link tag, and more. Why would you want to do this?

While HTML5 has a bunch of semantic elements, including new ones like <article> and <nav>, sometimes there just isn’t an element with the right meaning. What we want are ways to extend what we’ve got, to add extra semantics that are machine-readable — data that a browser, script, or robot can use.

First, he starts with the options HTML4 gave us and what options we now have with HTML5:

There were five fundamental ways we could extend HTML 4:

• <meta> element
• class attribute
• rel attribute
• rev attribute
• profile attribute

In HTML5, rev has fallen by the wayside, becoming obsolete since hardly anyone used it correctly, and because it can be replaced by rel. profile is also obsolete, and there is no support for namespaces in HTML5. However,<meta>, class, and rel are all in HTML5. In fact, <meta> now has spec-defined names and a way to submit newname values, and rel has several new link types defined in the HTML5 specification and a way to submit more too.

Even better, WAI-ARIA’s role and aria-* attributes are allowed in HTML5, and HTML5 validators can check HTML5+ ARIA. Other new methods of extending HTML5 include custom data attributes (data-*), microdata, and RDFa. Guest doctor Chris Bewick introduced us to HTML5’s new data-* attribute system, which is perfect for adding private custom data for JavaScript, and we’ll no doubt meet microdata and RDFa sooner or later.

Finally there are microformats. As Dr. Bruce touched on microformats in his article on the <time> element, let’s delve a little deeper into what microformats are and how to use them in HTML5.

Oli then does a great deep dive of microformats, going over the different ones defined by the community to date (there are 33 microformat specifications!) and covering some of the common patterns that you can use if you need to roll your own microformat. If you’ve been wondering how to use things like hCard, hCalendar, XHTML Friends Network (XFN), etc. in your own systems then definitely give this article a gander.

[via John Allsop]

Foursquare now has more than 3 million users, if the site’s public user registration numbers are correct.The 3 millionth member appears to be Brian S. from St. Louis, Missouri, who has yet to check in to any venues via the mobile-based social network.Foursquare’s growth has been accelerating rapidly lately. The...(author unknown)

Shared by AnnikaLidne
A very good summary of where we currently are in the social web development, and not to forget history as things tend to repeat.

Galway is a lovely place, and I have always wanted to see where ‘the hills sweep down to the sea,’ so Blogtalk 2010 was fun. Isaw old friends, and made some new ones. But this get-together reinforced a few thoughts, which wound up in my keynote, as well.

The era of blogging is over: it’s impact as a goad, a competitive force on print media has been felt, and deeply internalized. Meanwhile, most of the failures of 20th century journalism remain: notably, failing to create open social discourse, and becoming entrapped in the liturgy of journalism while failing to debunk lies and expose injustice. But print media have adopted the trappings of blogging, and have coopted much of the heat — if any — of the blogosphere.

This has been relatively quick, partly because blogging is really ‘personal publshing’ — low-cost publishing, and lines up pretty well with the one-to-many dynamics of mass publishing. Comments and backlinks are pretty weak sauce when considered in the light of ‘social media’. Blogging, in the final analysis, ten years later, isn’t particularly social. Especially contrasted with social networks and other tools.

Blogtalk was filled with talk about social networks. A representative of Facebook spoke, and was almost orgasming as he related how great all the newest features were. Facebook and Twitter’s growth rates were repeated like kabalistic incantations throughout the event, and the unstoppability of Facebook in particular — its manifest destiny as the basis of all things social on the web — was generally taken as a given.

But social networks as realized today by Facebook and others are closed worlds, silos in which vastly different user experiences are managed. I heard presentations on a variety of approaches to federated and/or open identity management schemes, which could potentially support open and/or distributed social networking models, but these are only of theoretical interest to actual users.

I believe that Facebook represents the high water mark of social networking, as we understand it today, a time dominated by social networking applications, as if our social interaction is something best managed in a single enormous database, whose rows and tables are designed by a small group of developers in one company.

Facebook is the new AOL.

They are managing the chaos of social interaction on the web, normalizing it and standardizing it for us, just as AOL made the web neat and tidy. That seemed a winning proposition in the late ’90s, which led to astonishing valuations for AOL. They acquired Time-Warner using that wealth, and in 2002 Time-Warner wrote off $600M as AOL started to fall. Now, AOL has been spun out, and has no central role in our experience of the web. 10 years is a long time. Time-Warner is now the second largest entertainment company in the world.

The moral of this story is that you can make a business out of simplifying what is chaotic and confusing, but only at the outset. As people become habituated to what at first was scary and headache-inducing, they will move away from controlled experience to more personally managed negotiation of the world.

‘But, all my friends are on Facebook!’ That was true in 1999 about AOL, too. All my friends had AIM accounts, so it was the best place for instant messaging. Until Yahoo and MSN offered audio and then video, and blogging broke loose. And then everything changed with broadband.

And what is going to be the equivalent of broadband for sociality online? What is going to come along to destabilize the Facebook stranglehold on our ‘social graphs’? Simple: sociality has turned out to be the most interesting thing to emerge from the past decade of the web. It’s not all the servers, the cloud computing, the data, or even the explosion of materials online: its the social dimension, and the tools we have built to explore that.

At the same time, we are witnessing an almost unprecedented era of invention around new devices, form factors, and operational premises for computing and communications. Smartphones, tablets, app stores, and the emergence of activities like geolocation, massively parallel gaming, social tv, and so on. These are leading to a deep rethinking of the operating environments we rely on, in our PCs, mobile and gaming devices, and formerly internet-deaf devices like TVs and appliances.

The next generation of operating environments will be social at their core. Our current operating environments are based on standard understanding of things that programmers care about, like files, directories, and access controls. The average person could care less.

We will see social operating systems where following people’s activities, or likes, or publishing a profile will all be built-in. These will not be features of apps, or managed as metadata in walled silos. The primitives that structure our social connections will be built into the fabric of the next generation of operating environments, just like file systems, URLs, and HTTP are well-integrated into today’s.

As a result, actors like Google, Apple, the Linux community, and Microsoft — as well as upstarts that don’t even exist yet — will be the implementers of the next generation of social web, with social interaction built into the DNA of the web.

Imagine that I could turn on my next generation iPad, a few years hence, and I would be presented with various applications that show views over the streams of information finding their way to me based on my social relationships. But those relationships are not based on application managed information, but related to me connecting to the web, like getting an IP address to connect. I would get a social IP, and post connections out to all the other entities online, so that information from those that I follow would find me, just as email is routed to me today independently of what email application I choose to use.

There will still be a place for applications to present and augment the basics of social interaction, but they will not be what Facebook is today: a huge social scene whose rules and regulations are managed by the owners of the application, for their own interests.

Clearly, The New York Times, ABC and Apple don’t want to hand the future of our social connection over to Facebook, or any other cabal of software companies. The answer is not in copying Facebook, which seems to be the goal of Google’s Me project. Inevitably, the way ahead is to lower the social dimension — at least the core features that have emerged in the social web to date — down into the operating platforms. Actions like following, liking, posting, reposting, and so on have become the core of our social existence. And the core should be core, not peripheral.

It remains to be seen how quickly or smoothly this transition will be. And in the meantime the dominance of Facebook will make billions for investors. However, the fastest growing segment on Facebook is the 55+ crowd, which suggests that the young and the hipsters will start to defect to alternatives, just like they fled MySpace when the phonies and fogies came in.

Social music and social TV are the two areas that suggest the greatest pressure for a solution at a fundamental — not application, or application framework level.

Facebook’s management may be aware of this, as well. Imagine the scenario where Facebook’s valuation is so high, and the prospects seem so grand, that Facebook acquires an apparently fading Microsoft, and works to fuse Facebook into some version of Windows. Like the AOL Time-Warner merger, I bet it this would lead to smoke but no bang.

Meanwhile, the world will lurch chaotically forward. If cable and entertainment companies develop standards around social TV, and allow experimentation by entrepreneurs to develop social apps that augment TV, we will see some real interesting stuff arise, and the defection of viewers from non-social TV will slow, and reverse. Facebook will see its numbers falling as people start watching basketball, reality shows, or movies with friends online. Likewise, Apple could lead to similar experimentation around social music by exposing social APIs in a future socialized version of iTunes.

This will take years, if not decades, to roll forward. But I maintain this will happen, and that, as a result, Facebook is not the future, but just a very temporary present.

A very good summary of where we currently are in the social web development, and not to forget history as things tend to repeat.

Shared by AnnikaLidne
The .com boom is back in all it' hmm glory?
In terms of brand recognition, it’s hard to top a huge live display billboard in Las Vegas. But Foursquare has managed to do it. As you can see above, they now have a massive, multi-level and multi-angle display practically screaming about the service to all those in Times Square in... The .com boom is back in all it' hmm glory?

Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Nikhyl Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow.

Is it conceivable that one of our greatest inventions, the phone number, is about to face extinction?

Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this year, when asked if Facebook would be around in 100 years, as long as Ma Bell has been around, Zuckerberg responded, “I don’t know. But I don’t know how long telephones will be around for.”  Will they be around for ten more years? I’ll go even further. It may not even take 5 years for the phone service, as we know it, to meet its demise.

Who’s going to lead the charge?  Voice on Gmail and Skype are just the beginning.  What are Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft doing?  As AT&T, Verizon, Apple and Google spent this summer hashing out plans for world domination, it seems that Facebook is best positioned to strike the fatal blow against our beloved carriers.  And it starts with those phone digits.

I’m certain my grandkids will never dial a phone number, or even have one. It’s time to say goodbye to ten digits along with the world’s oldest social network.  While we’re at it, let’s kill phone-tree mazes, do-not-call lists…everything associated with phone numbers.

Don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. This isn’t the demise of phone calls.  Far from it.  People will still talk on their phones.  They just want the service to be simple and fun, which won’t entail punching digits into a device to start a conversation.

Why put phone numbers on deathwatch?  Consider a few facts:

1. No control. Anyone can dial your 10 digits, including your ex-girlfriend, a political campaign worker, or a solicitor.  Unlisted numbers, Caller ID and do-not-call lists all tried to solve this problem, but these solutions still don’t prevent unwanted calls.
2. Phone numbers are tied to a device, not to you. Everyone has multiple numbers, yet your home line is shared, leaving callers guessing the best way to reach you.
3. User experience is very limited. The phone was designed as a utility—dial a number, have a conversation. It’s remained this way since its inception.  It’s not optimized for other experiences, which is why voicemail and conference calls are tedious, and why checking flight status is worse than a root canal.

Compare this to your social networks.  You have control over who accesses your information; you have one username and profile that you use at all times; and applications fill in the holes and extend the network’s capabilities to communicate, play games and meet people on your own terms.

On any Facebook page, I can “send a message”, even if we aren’t friends. And I can choose to receive messages from non-friends. The key thing is the network sets up a policy, and I as a user can change this. We don’t have this choice on the phone network today. Anyone can dial my number, and I can’t control it—but I do control my interaction on a social network.

Google, Skype, and others try to resolve telephony problems by stuffing the phone system into the web.  Personally, I’ve spent five years at SayNow trying to eke more out of the digit-based phone system too.  We’ve built dozens of applications that enable brands, celebrities and millions of users to use the phone in an entirely new way.  But we’ve all hit the limits of what we can accomplish.  Instead of replicating the antiquated phone network inside the web, let’s instead dramatically simplify telephony by adding voice on top of our social networks.

If given a choice between Ma Bell and Zuckerbell as our operator, we should choose Zuck.  Despite criticisms about Facebook’s privacy settings, the site gives us far more control over our interactions than we have on the telephone.  Since our contacts live in the network, we already belong to the world’s largest white pages.  And with more businesses moving to social networks, throw in the global yellow pages, too.  So say goodbye to lost phone numbers, moving contacts between devices and even 411.  More importantly, just as you determine who can see your bachelor party photos, you will soon have complete control over who has access to call you and who doesn’t. As I write this I already hear my wife saying, “Honey, why can’t my mom call us anymore?”

Also relevant here are the creative smartphone applications that developers churn out daily.  None of these leverage the primary reason these mobile devices exist: voice.  Once smartphone platforms allow developers to initiate conversations and voice messages, you can bet voice will finally become flexible and fun.

Speaking of which, I was at a Lady Gaga concert recently, and the good people at Virgin Mobile arranged for Gaga to “surprise” a fan with a phone call that upgraded her seats.  Great idea, but we all know the entire activity was scripted and carefully orchestrated.  But what if it wasn’t?  Lady Gaga should be able to open her iPhone, see her Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace fans, choose someone checked in at the venue, and…. (cue drumroll), call them.  Call one of them.  Some of them.  All of them.  And whether you have 5 million friends or just 5, phone calls should be just that easy.  So enjoy punching those digits while they are still around.

CrunchBase InformationGoogle VoiceFacebookSayNowInformation provided by CrunchBase

Pete Warden / HubSpot:
The March Of Twitter: Analysis of How And Where Twitter Spread  —  To answer that question I created a visual history of Twitter's growth, feeding data from Dharmesh Shah (developer of TwitterGrader.com) into OpenHeatMap to produce an animated visualization of the service's growth …

(author unknown)0833473945774401880214822964983660994265

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Microsoft To Pay More Than Half A Billion Dollars To Jump-Start Windows Phone 7  —  Editor's note: The following guest post is by Kim-Mai Cutler.  —  Nearly four years after Apple launched the iPhone and two years after Google open-sourced the code for its Android operating system …

(author unknown)06704185983052820261100757125182751210090627379999426826198304863170094270652340

The MPEG Licensing Authority has announced that it will indefinitely extend royalty-free Internet broadcasting licensing of its H.264 video codec to end users, erasing a key advantage of Google's WebM rival and cementing Apple's preferred H.264 as the video format for modern HTML5 video on the web.


(author unknown)1787142105454792296207234321953516125275180981700879207059981067895516383412555610037821321046184134108650234760510810600498934745854182401907553175934164969678181084786224338090110274315646362410008203389214148075939320157768883238591892751108691276860156907804046582076049453687039088597402273911651702475488160644002701608318545280180518127050990810152152210354178972938974395202656574447608994283097213740684991822460657276216677624662708079866026572136154182580710090558526241080806928613763003414128287306872348058072014485676654461300125981869869972112811174281509654907336127166679277030609421529596146634857474406969062076141194093093016220463694010620668447276420927841612935220262459564239166972495428917191261068582735299502523107917999171265625049123384100675424258800354596466669492048617124800213172783268106951538611909515850241356790266526785307879008898162565211059493786211390760001220296613789866167816137835543953477018116046149305360750390531382565332399164103526858162053867652127214004590727156060198357713408506584414904241550709336209123462543517495229310851769115925446213902121817345101781455146781603807138304210888668614925374685407066529638660716102002030778311434476441762798355528621063506872283268829862712027737401499859809471571701147112090207206322551553253102976058172418011759687130341599949806667611317298190258553022230013827940571133848221257204890350252277806547031092060364351164289889172455543311134981356187132312809559953256839315456

Shared by AnnikaLidne
Super for small businesses who DON'T want to blog.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Even in 2010, managing and maintaining a website can be a daunting and complicated process. Blogging platforms like Tumblr and Posterous are great, but they aren’t always the right solutions for small businesses that might need a product page, contact forms and other landing pages associated with a business.

Similarly, popular content management system (CMS) solutions like WordPress, Drupal and ExpressionEngine can sometimes be overkill for businesses that just want the ability to build out a few pages and have an easy way to modify and update those pages.

Fortunately, there is a solution. More and more developers are catering to the “lightweight CMS” market. These alternatives might not have as many options and features as a traditional CMS, but they are built with an emphasis on making webpages easy to create and update.

Here are five of our favorite lightweight CMS alternatives for small business users.

1. MojoMotor – $49.95 per site, self-hosted

MojoMotor is the latest product from Ellis Labs, the company behind CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine. MojoMotor bills itself as “the publishing engine that does less,” which makes it perfect for smaller projects. Featuring options like drag-n-drop pages and friendly front-end editing via a WYSIWYG HTML interface, MojoMotor is designed to be easy and fast. WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get,” and implies a user interface that allows the user to edit a webpage in a view that is very close to its final form when published. This eliminates the need for users to memorize coding commands.

We really like the front-end friendly design that is accessible for end users (who will be inputting most of the content), but also flexible enough to support rapid customization via HTML and CSS. If your needs outgrow MojoMotor, you can easily import your content into ExpressionEngine, a much heftier publishing platform.

2. CushyCMS – Free, Pro plan is $28 per month, hosted

CushyCMS is a hosted CMS, meaning that the content and settings are stored on the CushyCMS servers. Users just tell Cushy CMS their site URL and FTP information, and all the editing and customization takes place on the Cushy servers.

The free account is good for unlimited sites and pages, but the Pro account includes WYSIWYG editing and the ability to brand the CMS any way you want.

3. GetSimple CMS – Free, self-hosted

GetSimple CMS is a PHP-based CMS that doesn’t need a MySQL database to function. It was designed with the small site market in mind and has an intuitive user interface that makes editing content blocks and adding pages very simple.

GetSimple also supports features like sitemap generation and keyword and tagging suggestions.

4. Simple CMS – Free for one site, $15 per month for each additional site, hosted

Simple CMS is a really great option for web designers who want to create a site that is easy for their small business clients to update and edit. The designer can designate what portions of the site are editable, making it easy for the owner to make changes or additions.

Like CushyCMS, the backend is hosted on the Simple CMS servers and no downloading or web installation is necessary.

5. Perch – £35 (~$55 USD) per site, self-hosted

Perch almost feels like a full CMS but it has a much more streamlined user interface, especially for content editors. It’s a great choice for designers who want a site that is easy for end users to modify but that doesn’t overwhelm users with options.

Perch includes some really great features like image resizing and microformats.

These are five of our favorite lightweight CMS alternatives for small business users. Do you have a favorite that we didn’t mention? What do you use to power your small business website? Let us know in the comments below.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Small Biz Web Design Trends to Watch
- Why Social Media Monitoring Tools Are About to Get Smarter
- Why the Social Gaming Biz is Just Heating Up
- The Future of Public Relations and Social Media
- HOW TO: Pick the Right Social Media Engagement Style

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pavlen

More About: CMS, content management, content management system, cushycms, GetSimple CMS, hosting, lightweight CMS, MojoMotor, Perch, Simple CMS, web hosting

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Super for small businesses who DON'T want to blog.

Shared by AnnikaLidne
Good post on measurement and relations between follows, followers and engagement.

In last week’s installment of  “Rethinking the Value of Social Media,” I discussed how social media marketing is not and should not be a pure numbers game. In this post, I’d like to talk more specifically about re-framing the way we think about the measurement of our social media efforts.

Firstly, we should stop worrying about the numbers of friends, fans and followers we gain, or how quickly we gain them. Instead, we should be measuring the value of our followers over time against engagements — both quantitatively (how many?) and qualitatively (what is the sentiment?).

My company Conversify has been using a Follow-to-Following Ratio on Twitter (dividing the number of followers of an account by the number of people being followed) to measure Twitter health. Maintaining a ratio of at least a “1″ or more helps to keep us on track to keep us from “over-following” and helps us illustrate that we’re growing our Twitter following thoughtfully.

It seems like an useful additional number that we might use is an Engagement-to-Follower Ratio. This could track the increase in interactions with one’s following, commensurate to the growth of one’s following. As the number of followers an account has grows, however, can the number of engagements (retweets, @ mentions, etc.) grow at the same rate? And how do we factor in the additional work it takes to maintain or increase engagements?

Using the theories outlined in Julien Smith’s “Follower Hyperinflation” post, it stands to reason that you cannot keep up with growing your following at the same rate over time while having the same access. And you can’t produce enough content, status updates and interactions with your following at the same rate over time to maintain the same engagement-to-follower ratio — it’s just not sustainable.

Given the many variables of growing and managing your followings, here is one more way to frame social media measurement, basing it on Amplification, Conversions and Transactions:

Amplification: How much is your message being spread (or “amplified”) because of your social media interactions? You can benchmark your “social media influence” today with free tools such as SocialMention, Twittergrader and Vitrue’s Social Page Evaluator and paid apps like Radian6 and Attensity360. How do the number of retweets, shares, likes, etc. increase over time? How many more mentions of your message or brand are you seeing online?

Let’s face it: It is far easier to measure to watch the digital trail of pass-along messages (retweets, shares, blog posts references) than the assumptions we make about the reach of traditional advertising. If we advertise in a magazine, why do we trust that the magazine that our ad will reach, be seen and acted upon by other people through offline “pass along” and how do we measure that? We use a formula instead of concrete numbers. When we pay for a television ad campaign, how can we know for sure that the people who see your commercial will not only act on what they see but then tell others about it offline? We can’t, and yet for some reason we trust those things are happening when we’re sold those ad spots.

Conversions: How is your following helping to convert others to becoming fans and eventually customers? We could also call this “Recruitment.” While this number is harder to measure concretely, you can easily run an “experiment” about the willingness of your following to help you build an even bigger following. Simply post a status update to your Fan Page on Facebook asking your existing friends to suggest your Page to their Facebook friends. Pay attention to the increase of fans after that. “Warm” referrals and recommendations have so much more value than those you obtain though cold calling or by paying for, right?

Then go a step further and note who mentions that they did, indeed, suggest your Page. Your social media “superfans” will often comment to let you know they did what you asked, happily. Think about recognizing them for their efforts somehow; perhaps surprise them with a gift. Not an incentive, mind you, but an unexpected “thank you” after the fact. You read more about your social media superfans in “How to Convert Your Facebook Superfans Into Brand Ambassadors.”

Transactions: After converting interested people to to loyal followers, you want them to do something more — some kind of action or transaction: hire, buy, donate, sign a petition, etc. This is an easier number to benchmark and monitor, but it also tends to be the number that is slower to grow, particularly in the beginning. Placing a social ad on Facebook that leads to a shopping cart to buy doesn’t work as well as leading people to your Facebook Page to become a fan, converting them to Superfans and inspiring them to convert others, and then gaining transactions over time.

While time always seems to be “of the essence,” any company that has been in business for a long time will tell you they didn’t grow overnight and that the value of loyal customers far outweighs the one-time customer who responded to an ad but never came back to buy or interact. Repeat customers — and referrals from satisfied customers — are still the “cheapest” marketing we can hope for, but it does take time to cultivate them.

Not everyone has the patience for the cultivation and care social media marketing requires to do it well. They look for short cuts because they are fixated on the wrong numbers and placing value on the wrong things. For those with patience there are rewards, though: There are many case studies out there to prove that social media marketing can be a valuable addition to a company’s marketing mix; it can enhance and amplify their traditional and online marketing efforts and can have a positive impact on a company’s brand, customer service capabilities and, eventually, sales.

What are some concrete examples you have for positive returns on your investment and real value in social media marketing?

stock xchng image by user thegnome54

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking?

Good post on measurement and relations between follows, followers and engagement.

In last week’s installment of  “Rethinking the Value of Social Media,” I discussed how social media marketing is not and should not be a pure numbers game. In this post, I’d like to talk more specifically about re-framing the way we think about the measurement of our social media efforts.

Firstly, we should stop worrying about the numbers of friends, fans and followers we gain, or how quickly we gain them. Instead, we should be measuring the value of our followers over time against engagements — both quantitatively (how many?) and qualitatively (what is the sentiment?).

My company Conversify has been using a Follow-to-Following Ratio on Twitter (dividing the number of followers of an account by the number of people being followed) to measure Twitter health. Maintaining a ratio of at least a “1″ or more helps to keep us on track to keep us from “over-following” and helps us illustrate that we’re growing our Twitter following thoughtfully.

It seems like an useful additional number that we might use is an Engagement-to-Follower Ratio. This could track the increase in interactions with one’s following, commensurate to the growth of one’s following. As the number of followers an account has grows, however, can the number of engagements (retweets, @ mentions, etc.) grow at the same rate? And how do we factor in the additional work it takes to maintain or increase engagements?

Using the theories outlined in Julien Smith’s “Follower Hyperinflation” post, it stands to reason that you cannot keep up with growing your following at the same rate over time while having the same access. And you can’t produce enough content, status updates and interactions with your following at the same rate over time to maintain the same engagement-to-follower ratio — it’s just not sustainable.

Given the many variables of growing and managing your followings, here is one more way to frame social media measurement, basing it on Amplification, Conversions and Transactions:

Amplification: How much is your message being spread (or “amplified”) because of your social media interactions? You can benchmark your “social media influence” today with free tools such as SocialMention, Twittergrader and Vitrue’s Social Page Evaluator and paid apps like Radian6 and Attensity360. How do the number of retweets, shares, likes, etc. increase over time? How many more mentions of your message or brand are you seeing online?

Let’s face it: It is far easier to measure to watch the digital trail of pass-along messages (retweets, shares, blog posts references) than the assumptions we make about the reach of traditional advertising. If we advertise in a magazine, why do we trust that the magazine that our ad will reach, be seen and acted upon by other people through offline “pass along” and how do we measure that? We use a formula instead of concrete numbers. When we pay for a television ad campaign, how can we know for sure that the people who see your commercial will not only act on what they see but then tell others about it offline? We can’t, and yet for some reason we trust those things are happening when we’re sold those ad spots.

Conversions: How is your following helping to convert others to becoming fans and eventually customers? We could also call this “Recruitment.” While this number is harder to measure concretely, you can easily run an “experiment” about the willingness of your following to help you build an even bigger following. Simply post a status update to your Fan Page on Facebook asking your existing friends to suggest your Page to their Facebook friends. Pay attention to the increase of fans after that. “Warm” referrals and recommendations have so much more value than those you obtain though cold calling or by paying for, right?

Then go a step further and note who mentions that they did, indeed, suggest your Page. Your social media “superfans” will often comment to let you know they did what you asked, happily. Think about recognizing them for their efforts somehow; perhaps surprise them with a gift. Not an incentive, mind you, but an unexpected “thank you” after the fact. You read more about your social media superfans in “How to Convert Your Facebook Superfans Into Brand Ambassadors.”

Transactions: After converting interested people to to loyal followers, you want them to do something more — some kind of action or transaction: hire, buy, donate, sign a petition, etc. This is an easier number to benchmark and monitor, but it also tends to be the number that is slower to grow, particularly in the beginning. Placing a social ad on Facebook that leads to a shopping cart to buy doesn’t work as well as leading people to your Facebook Page to become a fan, converting them to Superfans and inspiring them to convert others, and then gaining transactions over time.

While time always seems to be “of the essence,” any company that has been in business for a long time will tell you they didn’t grow overnight and that the value of loyal customers far outweighs the one-time customer who responded to an ad but never came back to buy or interact. Repeat customers — and referrals from satisfied customers — are still the “cheapest” marketing we can hope for, but it does take time to cultivate them.

Not everyone has the patience for the cultivation and care social media marketing requires to do it well. They look for short cuts because they are fixated on the wrong numbers and placing value on the wrong things. For those with patience there are rewards, though: There are many case studies out there to prove that social media marketing can be a valuable addition to a company’s marketing mix; it can enhance and amplify their traditional and online marketing efforts and can have a positive impact on a company’s brand, customer service capabilities and, eventually, sales.

What are some concrete examples you have for positive returns on your investment and real value in social media marketing?

stock xchng image by user thegnome54

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking?

You may have heard Peter Molyneux’s “virtual boy” Milo. He’s the uncanny valley’s answer to the Tamagotchi, and the latest project to take advantage of the Xbox’s “Project Natal.”

You can see Milo in the video below:

Here’s what I find particularly interesting about Milo. Milo learns.

According to James Orry at VideoGamer.com, no two Milos will be the same, because they are customized to the environment and the players on each specific Xbox. But not only will they learn from their players, but also from each other, connected via the Internet to communicate with other Milos in the cloud.

This brings up broader questions about cloud computing and cloud based data. While there are many obvious advantages to cloud computing (being able to access your data from anywhere with an Internet connection), and obvious disadvantages to the technology (being unable to access your data if your Internet connection goes down), one aspect of cloud computing that is, quite frankly, breathtaking, is the ability to gather data on the performance of the applications as a whole, and to roll out updates to all users simultaneously.

In the case of “Milo and Kate,” this takes the form of taking the data from thousands of instances of Milo, processing it, and then re-uploading it from the central server back to Milo, to be improved on again. Iterative, automated improvement.

This is not only useful for video gaming. One client I had operates a cloud-computing based monitoring tool for their software, and, through being able to see the aggregate problems of the entire user base, they can make a much more informed decision on how to improve their products and offerings to help the most people at the same time – then seamlessly roll out the improvements to the customers in one step.

This is partially why Google is so dominant in technology at the current time. Search, of course, only works “in the cloud,” and they are able to take the data from billions of its users and sort through that information in order to figure out what people are searching for, when, where, and maybe even why. They’re able to then take that data and improve their algorithms serving ads alongside search results.

Amazon already has adopted a framework that allows people to do datamining on the already existing Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 cloud computing services. Some more technical views on data mining for the cloud (at least for SQL Server based clouds) can be found at DM(X).

[Picture source: Flickr (CC)]

You may have heard Peter Molyneux’s “virtual boy” Milo. He’s the uncanny valley’s answer to the Tamagotchi, and the latest project to take advantage of the Xbox’s “Project Natal.”

You can see Milo in the video below:

Here’s what I find particularly interesting about Milo. Milo learns.

According to James Orry at VideoGamer.com, no two Milos will be the same, because they are customized to the environment and the players on each specific Xbox. But not only will they learn from their players, but also from each other, connected via the Internet to communicate with other Milos in the cloud.

This brings up broader questions about cloud computing and cloud based data. While there are many obvious advantages to cloud computing (being able to access your data from anywhere with an Internet connection), and obvious disadvantages to the technology (being unable to access your data if your Internet connection goes down), one aspect of cloud computing that is, quite frankly, breathtaking, is the ability to gather data on the performance of the applications as a whole, and to roll out updates to all users simultaneously.

In the case of “Milo and Kate,” this takes the form of taking the data from thousands of instances of Milo, processing it, and then re-uploading it from the central server back to Milo, to be improved on again. Iterative, automated improvement.

This is not only useful for video gaming. One client I had operates a cloud-computing based monitoring tool for their software, and, through being able to see the aggregate problems of the entire user base, they can make a much more informed decision on how to improve their products and offerings to help the most people at the same time – then seamlessly roll out the improvements to the customers in one step.

This is partially why Google is so dominant in technology at the current time. Search, of course, only works “in the cloud,” and they are able to take the data from billions of its users and sort through that information in order to figure out what people are searching for, when, where, and maybe even why. They’re able to then take that data and improve their algorithms serving ads alongside search results.

Amazon already has adopted a framework that allows people to do datamining on the already existing Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 cloud computing services. Some more technical views on data mining for the cloud (at least for SQL Server based clouds) can be found at DM(X).

[Picture source: Flickr (CC)]

The ideas powering the open source movement have spread from programming to publishing and beyond. The idea of it having penetrated the world of foreign intelligence might seem unlikely, but it has, with the Central Intelligence Agency's Open Source Center.

"OpenSource.gov provides information on foreign political, military, economic, and technical issues beyond the usual media from an ever expanding universe of open sources. Our website contains sources from more than 160 countries in more than 80 languages and hosts content from several commercial providers, as well as content from OSC partners."

Sponsor

Open Source Closed

Before you get excited about joining "the OpenSource.gov community to get access to the latest open source reporting and analysis," you should know . . . you can't. The OSC is open only to U.S. government employees, contractors, foreign liaisons and employees of the BBC Monitoring Service.

Interested civilians are, instead, referred to the U.S. government's World News Connection, which is described as "(a)n extremely valuable research tool for anyone who needs to monitor non-U.S. media sources." Information on the site, which is translated into English or comes from English-language sources, is run by something called the National Technical Information Service. Although it is powered by information provided by the OSC, you do tend to wonder what's been omitted.

You also have to ask why is information that is publicly-sourced off limits to non-governmental visitors? Is there an admixture of secret materials? Is the analysis classified. The site lists the type of information available.

• Reporting and Analysis: More than 9 million products dating back to the mid-1990's
• Digital Video: Live foreign TV broadcasts, video reports, compilations, and internet clips
• Translations: Sources in more than 80 languages
• Geospatial Products: Media mapping, hot-spot and network analysis
• Topical and Regional pages: More than 80 actively updated pages containing worldwide coverage, reports and analysis on regional developments, terrorism, narcotics, and proliferation
• Commercial Databases: Analytic content from commercial research databases on a wide variety of topics are available to select account holders
• Blogs and Wikis: Blogs written by topical experts and a collaborative wiki space on MediaPedia to share media expertise

The Walled Garden for Which It Stands

The idea of openness is a one-way street with most governmental organizations and those who work within their structures. I had the opportunity to observe that first-hand as a speaker at the Conference on Blogs and Democracy, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the C.I.A. There, a number of us argued for the practicality of participation and dialog globally to communicate the benefits of democracy. The post-conference discussion, communicated via a dedicated website, was suddenly and permanently shut off to all outsiders. In this case, every single speaker was an outsider.

Unfortunately, the largest walled garden in the Internet world today remains our government.

We have contacted the Open Source Center to ask them why information gathered from open sources is not available for non-government employees to consult. If you work in or for the government and have an opinion on this, please chime in.

Discuss

Curt Hopkins04465595735933027021105312610698434592200479101645636465230103573529146980714171

YCombinator-funded company Leftronic launches today, offering up software that makes it easy for companies to aggregate data in their ambient displays, i.e. a displays mounted on a wall. Founded by Lionel Jingles, Rajiv Ghanta and Jyotindra Vasudeo, the company is in the same space as Geckoboard and Panic Software. While many...(author unknown)

Nearly 50 percent of the mobile workforce carries more than three devices, causing them to stay connected longer, according to the latest quarterly Mobile Workforce Report from iPass, a Redwood Shores, CA-based enterprise mobility service provider. This combination of technology and connectivity blurs the role of devices between work and home. Signs are indicating that after the smartphone, the future enterprise device of choice for mobile workers will be an iPad.

Breaking the chain of connectivity is increasingly difficult for mobile workers — of the more than 1,100 mobile workers surveyed by iPass, 94 percent are always connected or occasionally connected, even while on vacation. When iPass asked why the disconnected are pulling the plug, the responses indicated more situational reasons such as a lack of signal, as opposed to a conscious effort to stay offline.

While 97 percent of survey respondents carry two or more devices, iPass finds that those who carry a single device are opting for a smartphone over a laptop. A few years ago, I would have expected more workers to choose the laptop in a single device scenario, mainly because of the software and functionality benefits that a portable computer offered over handsets at that time. But the combination of fast-maturing smartphone hardware, a greater range of wireless broadband coverage and more complex software applications has altered the device of choice. The smartphone isn’t yet replacing a laptop for every task or for every mobile worker, but smaller and thinner mobile devices are reducing the relevance of bulkier notebook computers.

In line with a theme of laptop replacement are tablet PCs — which have existed in the business world for nearly a decade — and Apple’s iPad. When iPass asked mobile workers if they planned to purchase a Tablet PC or iPad in the next six months, 26.3 percent said they intend to purchase an iPad while just under 7 percent are planning to buy a Tablet PC. These purchases aren’t all fun and games though — 90.6 percent of those who have or plan to get an iPad are expecting to do some work on the slate device and nearly 20 percent said the iPad would be mostly for work or solely for work.

The intended use for iPads in the enterprise should concern traditional PC makers for a few reasons. The iPass report results aren’t an outlier — today’s Wall Street Journal confirms that both employees and employers want iPads for productivity, citing several examples of how businesses are adopting the tablet. And as previously noted, the Tablet PC — a Microsoft Windows platform that debuted in 2001 — had relatively little traction in the past and is now getting relegated to a has-been by many mobile workers. Thanks to various remote desktop solutions and improved support for enterprise-level security software features in iOS 4, Apple’s iPad appears poised to invade the Windows workspace.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Why the iPad is Right for the Enterprise

With Google announcing plans to hire 200 more staff into its European headquarters in Dublin, which already holds around 1,500 (not all developers I might add), it’s clear Dublin is emerging as a strong force in the European tech scene.

Although there is a big mapping operation in Zurich, this is the first time Google’s location-based products will have had Dublin developers at real scale.

And Dublin’s events scene has had a shot in the arm recently with the arrival of the excellent Dublin Web Summit events.

So consider this. I recently had a long chat with a startup about where they planned to base their headquarters. They could go more or less anywhere. So where?

The upshot was that Dublin came out on top in Europe, with London and Luxembourg (forever a low tax region) also up there.

The simple fact of the matter is that Ireland remains a low-corporation tax country in Europe, and is in the top 10 of European countries in terms of ease of starting a business according to the World Bank. It’s also English speaking, has a highly educated population and since the property bubble burst, it’s much cheaper to locate an office there.

But Dublin is not the be-all-and-end-all in Europe, a complex place which does not stand up to broad generalisations, whatever you might read from Robert Scoble about Europe being “anti-failure”. Hey Robert, we all read English ok, we know how you Valley guys do this now.

In fact, Europe is starting to look increasingly like it has three important tech hubs: Dublin for the above reasons (but mostly tax), London for the sheer access to capital and people (London is the acknowledged ‘Trading Post’ of Europe), and Berlin as the emerging creative tech hub on the borders with Central Europe where many European startups are also developed.

On that latter point: While Germany is not the most business-friendly in Europe (an aversion to risk is a hangover from it’s history), many Berlin-based startups are in fact incorporating as UK Limited Companies. One desk in London later and you have the best of both worlds: a vibrant Berlin talent pool, cheap offices and an exit route via a UK LTD. Or swap out London for Dublin and do the same.

(At the same time I want to point out that Germany is again more complex than I might indicate to non-European readers unfamiliar with the scene here. Hamburg and Munich too have their own startup eco-systems and local VCs. So it’s not ALL in Berlin by any means. But Berlin right now has, in general, the most internationally-focused startups).

Outside of this triumvirate we have sprinklings of the Nordics, Baltics, CEE, and any outliers that appear from Southern Europe. All of them have strengths and weaknesses in their own ways but each hook into other hubs as needed (e.g. Madrid into Barcelona and Latin America, Milan into London etc etc).

Yes indeed, Europe really is starting to kick ass.

About four months ago we decided to take a look at our logs to see how many people were visiting our site from the iPad. At the time, the device wasn’t even a month old, so it was surprising to see that it had already surpassed Android in terms of visitors to TechCrunch. Some attributed this to the fact that it was a great web browsing device. Others thought it was because there was an initial surge of purchasers (especially among tech early-adopters) who were browsing a lot to test it out. So let’s take a look to see where things stand now, shall we?

I’ll cut to the chase: the iPad browsing traffic is surging. In the past 30 days, it’s up almost exactly four-fold from what it was back in April. It’s now the fourth most-popular OS that people browse TechCrunch from — last month it surged past Linux machines. The only devices more popular to view TechCrunch from are now Windows machines, Mac machines, and the iPhone.

The iPad is also quickly catching up with the iPhone. And when combined, iOS devices are now well past 10 percent of browsing share.

Below, find the percentage numbers for the past 30 days:

1. Windows – 55.20%
2. Mac – 26.88%
3. iPhone – 6.13%
4. iPad – 4.51%
5. Linux – 3.38%
6. Android – 2.08%
7. (not set) – 0.69%
8. iPod – 0.60%
9. BlackBerry – 0.37%
10. SymbianOS – 0.08%

Let’s look at those compared to the numbers we published in April 2010:

1. Windows – 59.68%
2. Mac – 27.78%
3. iPhone – 5%
4. Linux – 3.72%
5. iPad – 1.18%
6. Android – 0.99%
7. iPod – 0.67%
8. (not set) – 0.54%
9. BlackBerry – 0.28%
10. SymbianOS – 0.07%

Now, it’s important to note that traffic as a whole to TechCrunch is up quite a bit in the same timeframe, so it’s not like people are no longer using one platform in favor of another — all boats are rising. But based on these numbers, we can see that iPad is very clearly eating into both Windows and Mac share in this regard.

The iPhone continues to rise, up over 1 percent in the same time span, it’s just not rising as quickly as the iPad. Android is gaining as well, up over 1 percent (which more than doubled its browsing share).

Based on these numbers, the iPad’s initial surge clearly wasn’t some fluke by early-adopters testing out there device. Sure, TechCrunch has a highly tech-savvy audience, but it’s also a large and rather broad audience.

Just for fun, let’s look at some numbers from the past as well. Here are the browsing share numbers from November 2007 (when the iPhone first showed up as a somewhat significant share of browsing traffic):

• Windows – 81.12%
• Mac – 14.80%
• Linux – 3.05%
• iPhone – 0.52%
• (not set) – 0.21%
• iPod – 0.07%
• SymbianOS – 0.04%
• PalmOS – 0.04%
• Nintendo Wii – 0.04%
• FeeBSD – 0.02%

Clearly, the times they are a-changin’.

CrunchBase InformationiPadiPhoneTechCrunchInformation provided by CrunchBase