Few people realize that Google generates significant revenue from selling dedicated servers to the Enterprise market for document and email searching and archiving. These Google servers are powerful, easy to implement and work very reliably - inside the Enterprise firewall. Many large multinational law firms, who generate massive amounts of documentation, rely deeply on Google servers. By pushing Google Gears to the consumer and small business, the current ideal market space, Google gets the market to play with it and develop practical uses. All of which is monitored by Google for later implementation into Enterprise networks and improvements for Cloud Computing applications. Eventually, Google may become a viable threat to Microsofts vaunted Enterprise plays.

For now Google Gears is very viable to power Web people and to small businesses. The most practical application for Google Gears right now is Buxfer, a financial management tool. There are some time management applications as well and some integration with Zoho. There is no current integration with Gmail, but one can assume that will come. We don’t find that Google Gears is compelling enough to replace Microsoft Office yet, for either the Mac or Windows. The Mac Office2008 is a vast improvement and works tightly with the Mac OS. Sharepoint still offers better online to offline capability than Google Gears as well, at least for the larger organization.

So while Google Gears is interesting and sure to become increasingly viable, it’s still a small business product and presents little value to a company of more than 30 people with serious productivity tool needs. As more apps are built to integrate and Google ties in it’s mobile OS, Android, we may see broader uses develop. We believe the Google strategy is to see how Gears is used and thrown about to prepare it for a more industrial-grade stand-alone server option for the Enterprise market.

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The current eye is on two companies for Social Media advertising solutions; 33Across and Social Media Networks. 33Across is unveiling what it calls “Friendship Ranks”, a take on Page Rank in search engine marketing - and Social Media Networks has a patent pending on FriendRank; oh dear. The entire premise of these solutions rests on an age-old marketing premise; Market Mavens as it was originally termed. Now advertisers call them “Influencers”. These are the people who recommend products and services to friends. A lot. They can help virally spread everything from a cool/funny video to a product or service. 33Across and Social Media Networks claim to have some secret mojo that studies relationships inside Social Media networks like Bebo or Facebook, then tie in advertising. The engine turns you and your friends into automated “recommenders” of whatever is being promoted.

Advertising on Social Media networks like MySpace and Facebook or Ubu are desired because of the potential reach. But no one has really had any great success. The market segment is only 2% of US online advertising and less than 1% in Europe and the UK. Research firm eMarketer even downgraded ad spend in MySpace due to poort results.

Then there’s privacy concerns. Let’s not forget how miserably Beacon failed for Facebook trying to leverage user behaviours. Essentially, these new social media advertising apps are looking at you and your friends, developing assumptions and delivering up advertising the system thinks is relevent. Perhaps it is, but will people respond?

Our suspicion is that such intrusive advertising may just be another tool to confuse markers and will likely only attract big budget companies. What I think is missing in this case is that people make recommendations about products and services for one reason - because they want to. It is something they like to do and feel good about because they think they’re bringing something useful or good to a friend. An automated system only interprets an action, but does not understand the context.

Social Media is about context. It’s not just behaviours, and any behaviour has context around it, since it is a conversant application, it’s two-way. When a company is advertising it is a one-way activity. The entire process, even when you might be able to build your dream car, is guided and not free flowing. This is where I think the deeper issue of success will lie for companies like 33Across. It will be interesting to see how these new technologies play out. For now, we won’t recommend a spend to our clients.

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Rich Media was (and often still is) pitched by agencies as Wow Factor that you’d pay a lot more for. If the agency provides good creative, then you should. But so much “Rich Media” can be done and implemented at very low cost, quickly and easily. The term “Rich Media” may have sufficed until 2002 or so, but it really is wholly inadequate today. Mobile devices (the Extended Web) can today deliver similar “Rich Media” experiences as found on a Website. Consumers generate their own video and audio compilations without cost and upload them for viewing - Rich Media has become a catch-all that has diluted the meaning. It may be better for marketers to think in terms of Digital Media or Interactive Media, even Engagement Media; for the medium is either the Web or Extended Web, but each channel provides different opportunities and solutions to meet different segment needs. Each of these digital medias elicits different results because the message varies in interpretation and engagement.

Even the industry has generally found Rich Media to be as passe as faxed press releases. This was seen in a March 2008 survey by EyeWonder ( a leading interactive agency):

• 62% of the survey respondents agree the term “Rich Media” is too “generic and meaningless.”
• 66% of industry executives surveyed did not believe that “Rich Media” accurately defined today’s online video ads.
• 76% of agency executives did not believe it to be an adequate term to cover “emerging platforms” — mobile, IPTV, etc.
• 68% of respondents agreed that a new category name for “rich media” is needed (term “rich media” doesn’t capture where digital advertising is headed in the next five years; it is too generic/meaningless).
• 92% of agency “influencers” had a positive to neutral opinion of the term “Interactive Digital Advertising,” finding it more accurate than “rich media.”

This pretty much sums up the fact that the term Rich Media has become destitute and is now deserving to be placed in the annals of Web history alongside Boom 1.0 and Web 1.0 we believe. There may not be a catch-all new name to replace Rich Media, so much is happening across multiple platforms. But just as we have New Media, Social Media and Traditional Media, so will a new term evolve. The market, as always, will decide.

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Enterprises tend to focus on monitoring only professional media, usually as it relates to the stories and coverage the corporation is trying to get out. PR professionals use clipping and wire services to capture coverage and then use that as their success/failure metric. The standard is to look at a press release, monitor coverage by major news outlets and then say “we got coverage in 200 newspapers and 20 syndicate news stations on TV and 30 radio spots.” All ideally based around some form of press release. But rarely will a VP of public relations stand up and say “42 bloggers covered us and 6 of them wrote steaming articles and 10 video bloggers made commentaries and we had 3,000 Twitters…” The difference is the understanding of the medium, the intent of the medium and the way it works.

Professional news coverage means a journalist covers a story, hopefully putting your company’s point of view at the forefront. You can determine the number of articles and you can guess the coverage. A high-interest story may get 3-4 articles over a period of say or weeks. But in essence, professional coverage is more “tangible” and it is “finite” with an ending time frame. This makes it easier to monitor and manage and move on to the next story. It is also much easier to control the message.

With Citizen Media, this all goes lopsided. The primary issue with Social Media is twofold; 1) it is not necessarily factual, it is about opinion and viewpoints, 2) it is not finite. A blogger may cover your industry, sector or just your company, ad nauseum for weeks or months on end. A blogger is also not necessarily concerned with the facts or your angle in particular. So it is often easier, and perceived as safer, to discredit Citizen Media. PR professionals know that as soon as they “recognize” a citizen, they have transferred some degree of “power” to that blogger, which can inflame the story. A blogger, however, may barrel on anyway.

So the key difference with Citizen Media is that it is about “opinion” whereas professional media is ideally about “fact”. Consumers and readers will view professional coverage as being better and may either form their ideal impression there or conclude their impression/view there. With Citizen Media, a consumer may use that information to further evaluate their views on a topic.

Recognizing these key differentiators can help a PR professional to better “manage the message” as well as understand the “sentiment” of consumers, since bloggers will often take their cue from a press release or professional media coverage. The PR team can also pass along valuable product/service information to the marketing team to improve product development…and there’s more, but that’s where we get paid.

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What we’ve surmised is that there is a fundamental shift going on with regards to what applications or tools people use and how they use them - and this will impact the best way for marketers to leverage channels. The last few years have seen the rise of what we term Conversation Tools, in other words - Instant Messaging, TXT Messaging and Microblogging (i.e. Twitter). These are almost instant and enable 2-way communication. Then there is email, which is 2-way but is not really a “conversational tool” in that there can be network delays and email is not designed to be instantaneous. Additionally, email often has attachments and many people manage their emails through rules for incoming messages and may only check or respond to emails once or twice a day. Email has become a Secondary Communication Tool, like the telephone and voice mail.

ExactTarget’s survey shows that the under 45 demographic use Conversation Tools for, you guessed it, conversations and email for time-delayed or Secondary Communication activities. Above 45 and you see a marked, and expected, difference. Email and snail mail play a more vital role in the above 45 group. But interestingly, the under 45 shows a preference for snail mail and email marketing messages and dislikes marketing messages delivered to SMS, Instant Messaging and Social Networking applications.

So this begs the question - why? You mean good old fashioned Snail Mail Direct Marketing is still a valid tool? Absolutely, and may become even more so. Our analysis of this survey and our experience, tells us that Conversation Tools such as SMS text messaging are seen as “exclusive” applications for carrying on one-to-one personal/business conversations. People do not want to be interrupted in what is seen by them as a place and way for quick conversations. Marketing messages there are intrusive.

But Secondary Communication Tools, such as email and snail mail are easier to manage and participants/consumers, don’t see them as intrusive. Rather, we’ve come to expect to receive marketing messages. Inside Social Networks, traditional banner advertising will work, since it is expected. Getting results there comes from good creative.

So our conclusion is that marketing to Conversation Tool channels (i.e. SMS text messaging) means marketers should be more “conversational or informational” in their approach for success. Use information to drive the conversation and response, don’t use blunt trauma push marketing messages. Use the secondary tools for the traditional marketing pitch. And don’t give up on Direct Marketing via Snail Mail.

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Already, activities in social networking sites are being used as evidence in divorce court in the US and Canada. And the evidence is holding up. Youth who post pictures and videos of drunken shenanigans, may come under fire in future. Will nothing be sacred? It may well be that employers will increasingly conduct searches inside Facebook, Bebo and MySpace for applicants past behaviour. What they may find could cost someone a job. We’ve heard some stories already.

For employers, they may also risk being sued by prospective and current employees for invasion of privacy. Although an employer may ask permission, this sets challenges for employers if the candidate says “no” since it may breed suspicion, though there is likely nothing of concern there.

This will increasingly become an issue. Companies will need to have an effective HR policy with legal counsel review and decide if such a search when screening a candidate is necessary. Our advice working with HR companies has revolved around not conducting these searches and asking permission if it is felt a search is necessary. But such an activity should be explained to a candidate before hand, so that they can prepare and they have a right to take down any pictures of drunken nights if they feel the need to do so. We’ve all been there and that shouldn’t impact a hiring decision.

This issue goes deeper but senior executives will have to develop a policy at some point. It’s the nature of how it is today and more so in the future. Will the youth of today however, consider that a factor? Does this register another shift in the changing career options landscape?

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The initial assumption of most communications departments and PR agencies we’ve spoken with are that Online Reputation Management (ORM) is about “online” or “Web-related” stories and blogger only. It’s far more than that. Almost all major media, and many local professional media outlets have a Web presence and provide online content. Most major stories are distributed via the Website as well. Press releases today end up on the Web as well as editors desks. Then there’s the pick up by social media on blogs, vlogs and social networking sites. While clipping services are reasonably good, as most stories reach the Web in the same way, ORM solutions can help and reduce costs.

Interestingly, the USC Annenburg School of Communications released a study on PR metrics. Even though PR managers, agencies and departments are being pushed to provide better metrics, they aren’t devoting much time to this activity. Granted, part of this problem is that the percentage of PR budgets assigned to evaluation aren’t very significant. Most PR departments just concentrate on clippings and top tier media coverage analysis. Not enough for any true sense of contribution to key measurables such as contribution to market share or profitability or influence on stakeholder awareness. All measurements that can be very cost-effectively measured and reported through most ORM solutions.

The downside of ORM solutions however, is that there are very few of them out there. This will change as we launch our MediaBadger service in August, and change radically. There are few ORM solutions in the market, and what there are usually involve a significant amount of “human” time and consultation. In large part this is because it is a very early market space, the metrics and processes are evolving. Much like Web Analytics about 5 years ago. But ORM solutions could provide an excellent opportunity for PR professionals to develop and execute on truly measurable metrics. And that can only make the C-Suite happy.

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We discussed Molson as one example previously, of a corporation reaching out through a blog to communicate its corporate social responsibility program. I’ve monitored the Moslson CSR blog for a couple of months now - mostly because I think they are progressive in their approach - and because we’ve monitored several other companies and done our research regarding “feedback” on CSR blogs. Still, there are very little “responses” on corporate blogs and CSR blogs. Most don’t enable consumer responses and all monitor them and approve what gets posted. Conversely, GM has done very well with it’s blog and gets a fairly regular stream of comments (OK, we did some consulting here we admit) and permits negative commentary. A plus when a corporation does this, as the market sees them as more “real” and not just creating a marketing message.

Few corporations enable unmonitored comments on their blogs, and through the research that we’ve done with our clients, few people even leave comments; this is okay. Monitoring responses on a corporate blog is a good thing, since you don’t need foul language and abuse cluttering up the readership. What we have found, is that the conversation is often better served elsewhere. What this means is moving the conversation beyond the corporate blog, enabling people to share stories (precisely what we do with our corporate blog, as does Seth Godin with his blog and others) as that’s when people feel more interested in commenting - away from perceived corporate control.

By using share services like “Share This” or buttons to move the story to digg, mixx, Facebook etc., you are accomplishing two major goals - getting inbound links (good for ongoing search marketing tactics), and increasing the chance of more views. In addition, you can later see what happened on sites like newsvine, digg or mixx to see what the general public thought of your story. Keeping the conversation strictly on your blog limits exposure potentially broader audiences. Get it out there, the nature of Web 2.0 is sharing, not just comments, but links and stories as well. If enough people share your story, it’s an excellent sign of interest and can help you in planning where corporate social responsibility is placed in future.

This also follows a consumer behaviour pattern. We rarely speak our mind in front of the boss, but we’ll say a lot more at the pub after work over a few beers. Corporate blogs are best measured in the conversations that take place beyond corporate control, out in social sharing sites. We could go into our other findings, but we’re a business and that would cost us profitability. We hope you share this story…

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Most importantly, ORM is the first Web service that will help corporations, governments and organizations to learn the new corporate conversation skills they need to learn to survive in the future. By engaging an ORM application, organizations gain a new set of eyes and ears. Consumers may finally be heard in the way they want to be heard. Additionally, marketers will now be able to market “outside-in” rather than the “inside-out” approach of the last 50 years that hailed the “we say so” thinking of marketers.

ORM services and Webware applications will enable companies to gain a better sense of shareholder views (both retail and institutional), customer feedback on products and better attract potential employees. Marketing campaigns can be planned better and target markets and the channels to reach them better organized, realizing budget savings and better return on the marketing investment. ORM metrics can be tied in with Web analytics to draw better pictures of market shifts. Couple this with Google releasing competitors Web stats, businesses will really be challenged, yet have massive new opportunities.

The industry segment for ORM is very new. There are perhaps no more than 8 players and no one owns the market yet. The race is on and there will be varying levels of tools and services. Some will be completely DIY, while others will be solely “human” monitored and others a mix with value-adds through consulting. This is the new threat to traditional PR agencies who will need to further develop their practices - managing online crises and communications programs is not the same as traditional media. It is fraught with ways a crisis management program can go wrong - and the resulting feedback from the Web consumer can be worse than the original crisis.

But more importantly is that ORM tools and applications, and the fact companies are beginning to recognize the value, means that companies, whether they realize it or not, are tacitly acknowledging the need to learn how to better converse with their market. Going beyond just shopping carts and microsites and engagement tools like White Papers and reports. This is about the beginnings of a whole new conversation…perhaps a new seat on the corporate executive? The Chief Conversation Officer.

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Moving or porting applications and data into the cloud for hosting and processing by a third party brings some powerful benefits including; faster and much lower-cost scalability, access to more processing power when needed, someone else has the headaches of uptime, servicing and upgrades and reduced power costs in terms of data centre needs. A small business gains a significant advantage in being able to deliver the quality of service that before would have required a significant CapEx investment and likely meant debt financing or further investment for a start-up. Larger businesses gain similar advantages and with sales and marketing infrastructures of scale already in place can gain revenues faster.

So with all these upsides, what are the downsides? They aren’t many, thankfully, but they are critical to note and require some thought before the CEO should sign off on a move into the cloud. The primary issues we’ve identified with our clients are;

Data Ownership: With the Patriot Act in the United States, many non-U.S. businesses are thinking twice about instances where their data is stored in the U.S. for non-U.S. operations. Even if the data is not stored in the U.S. but resides there for short periods, it can be subject to the Patriot Act. If you’re a U.S. firm with much data being managed overseas, you may still want to consider cloud services outside the U.S. Fortunately, Canada has very different privacy and digital copyright laws; it is a safer, and perhaps more cost-effective bet.

Service Level Agreements: While cloud computing offers the benefit of someone else’s data centre, Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) may be very tricky with cloud computing companies. It’s vital to read the fine print, very carefully and we recommend your legal counsel take a close look. Even cloud computing giant Amazon.com has some interesting paragraphs about uptime and downtime and guarantees. With almost all cloud computing services you’ll find that if service goes down or your data is lost, they aren’t liable.

Data Movement: if you have large and complex databases and data processing requirements, finding a good cloud service will be hard. Moving that data may be a complicated and lengthy process, especially if you’re systems have legacy AS400 and similar underneath. This is one of the primary reasons larger enterprises aren’t quite ready for cloud computing prime time.

Today, while cloud computing can no doubt offer significant competitive and cost-reduction advantages, it is still in it’s early days, much like SaaS was in the days it was called ASP at the turn of the century. We have both recommended for and against cloud computing services - it really came down to business needs, foreign business operations, complexity of data and true cost savings evaluation at the end of the day. Getting to those conclusions however, takes some serious research, consideration and planning.

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