Web 2.0 expo is in full swing right now in New York, and so are the idiots that can make social media and Twitter a train wreck.  I’ve been dialed in pretty much this whole week and I wasn’t really going to blog about it until I read this from danah boyd on her blog.

Unfortunately, my presentation at Web2.0 Expo sucked. The physical setup was hard and there was a live stream behind me. I knew something was wrong because folks started laughing in the audience. Unable to see anything (the audience, the stream), I found myself closing down. And so I collapsed and read the whole thing, feeling mega low on energy and barely delivering my points. Le sigh. I feel like I failed the audience so, if you were in the audience, I’m sorry. But hopefully you’ll get more out of reading the presentation than I got out of giving it.

Are you kidding me? danah thinks it’s her fault? What happened was there was a live “unfiltered” Twitter feed streaming behind her as she was talking, with bullshit snark flowing down the screen. Just a solid flow of criticism. Was she at her best? Maybe not, she was nervous, you could tell, but the people in the audience were watching the stream and not paying attention to her. Huge fail. Not sure who I’m more angry at, the folks controlling the screen over on the right side or the Twitter hacks. If you’re not going to cut danah some slack, then I sure as hell can’t let the folks at Web 2.0 expo off the hook.

I will say it again as I’ve said it before, this person is doing more in the areas of social network research herself, than armies could do. She’s smart. She get’s it and she deserves better than what she got.

I’ve done it. I’ve changed the design of my blog. Out has gone the masthead that has loyally followed me for the first tempestuous 11 months in the blogosphere. And in comes a new one by Claudia Moeller (who Tweets @ludg8cre8ive).

Why did I do it? 

I loved my original social media identity, used on my blog’s masthead (above) and as an avatar. The photograph that I used was taken during UBM Live’s first ever Digital Achievement Day.  I got a call to go down to another floor of our office and everyone (I mean everyone!) was wearing a paper mask of my face. I am the digital director so it showed that “we are all digital now”.

Very On Being John Malkovich.

I loved that photo. My reason for plunging into the social web in the first place was to find out what our company needed to know and work with my colleagues to make the social web fun and profitable. The photo made me feel that my colleagues were holding my hand in what was, at first a pretty, lonely place.

Then a month ago, I attended the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. It was the first time I had had the opportunity to transform many online relationships into face-to-face. One of the people I met up with was Hollis Thomases (who Tweets @hollisthomases) who just could not see the similarity between my social media identity and myself in person. Peter Kim has recently given this phenomenon a name and a definition:

Headfake, noun.  A situation in which you are familiar with a person’s avatar picture, which gives you an inaccurate idea of how that person appears in real life.

Luckily Hollis grabbed her iPhone, took a picture and my new social media identity was formed. My social media avatars now look like me and, finally, so does the masthead of this blog.

The strange this is, I should have worked this out for myself. I have spent 14 years as an editor of three different B2B magazines. Each one bore a photo of myself as editor. Every time I attended an industry event people would come up and start speaking as if they had known me for years. In a way, they did know me. For, just like social media, the repetition of my photo and my weekly or monthly leader plus personable, if not personal, words made them own a little of me. 

So why should you change your design? Not because it might attract more readers (they probably read you in RSS). Certainly not for vanity. But for what we are all looking for on the social web – authenticity.

I must just make sure I do not have a haircut anytime soon.

As more and  more brands take the leap into Social Media we continue to hear  horror stories.  Some brands think that they should jump on the Social Media Bandwagon, create a community  – set it, and forget it.  BIG mistake.

While attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco  I sat in on a session regarding something that I didn’t even know existed before  – Community Managers. The title of the session was What would the Community Manager Do?  Micki Krimmel @mickipedia presented ideas that are worth restating there, and are certainly appropriate consider all of the brands jumping on the Social Media Bandwagon.

The 4 Tenants of the Community Manager:

1. Creators
2. Empathizers
3. Pattern recognizers
4. Meaning makers

Community Advocate – Listening to what the community wants – solving customer needs

Brand Evangelist - PR Events and Panels, participate, vision and personality – admit mistakes

Flexible – Can’t just be a megaphone for the PR company

Communication – Shape editorial, new media tools, responsive, 2 way street

Gathers Input – Actively seek input, build relationships, ask questions, report feedback

How do you hire a community manager?

The person you hire for this role MUST reflect your brands core values.  Micki shared a job offer she received from Tesla car company. She knew instinctively that this was not the appropriate role for her because she isn’t passionate about cars.  If you’re a brand looking for a community manager you must hire your biggest fan.

How do you fit this role into your company?  The community manager must be offered 4 “luxuries” in order to be successful for your brand.

1. Autonomy
2. Authority
3. Agency
4. Accountability

Your Brand can’t have a “build it and they will come” attitude. Your brand must focus on the little gestures. The conversations, interaction and nuances of your community. Hire the appropriate person in this role, and gain commitment from the whole company/brand to be advocates.

Case Study:
Zappos –

A woman purchased a wallet via Zappos.  She didn’t like the wallet purchase so she returned the wallet and mistakenly left $150 in the wallet. The person that recieved the returned item sent back the $150 to the woman.

You’re successful when EVERYONE is a community manager

At the Web 2.0 Expo recently, I was pleasantly surprised to see the increased focus on social media offerings for the enterprise space.

So when I heard about Vignette’s introduction of Community Applications 7.1, as part of its Social Media Solution, I sat down with Gerardo Dada and Lee Shepstone from Vignette to learn more about their Social Media Suite for the Enterprise. 

My first question to them was How can Vignette’s new solution help large enterprises?

Gerardo Dada referred back to the beginning of the web, when companies wanted to capitalize the web content and Vignette started by helping folks manage their work flow and make the experience be more personal. He sees the same trend today in media and video. Vignette is leveraging its expertise in content management systems to help companies better manage social interactions in an efficient and user-friendly manner.

The advantage Vignette enjoys is its existing relationship with key brands and expertise in content management for large enterprises. In addition to enabling the creation and support of Web 2.0 capabilities such as blogs, wikis, forums, ratings and reviews, the solution allows companies to quickly and easily create unique social micro sites.

It also allows aggregation of content on global sites which allows global companies to leverage information across countries. However, the ability to translate and search multiple language sites is still limited but their in-country offering is quite robust.

 So my next question to them was, What makes Vignette’s solution better than thousands of other enterprise social media offerings out there? 

According to Dada, the Vignette offering is much more comprehensive and eliminates the need to cobble together offerings by different vendors.  The company has incorporated advanced search and analytics feature into its social media offering that makes the solution very robust when it comes to finding relevant content.

Shepstone described how the Vignette solution allows companies to create an unified social microsite for their web audience that includes social features and tools like wikis, blogs, forums, and video-sharing capabilities. 

He went on to say that these flexible sites combines microsite features with social-centric benefits such as idea management, calendars and events and the sharing of multimedia-rich assets including videos and podcasts.

What impressed me about Vignette is that it’s still a fairly small and nimble company with about 700 employees it operates with the efficiency of a small company, yet it has the depth and breadth of experience working with larger enterprise companies.

What are the key challenges that an enterprise faces today in this social media age?

Dada was blunt in his assessment that many companies still lack a cohesive social media strategy, which is a great challenge and he went on to say, “..social media can not be done in isolation and you can not have community on the side. Community and social media content has to be a central part of an integrated strategy.”

At the end of the 90s, businesses needed enterprise grade vendors who understood web as a space. Today’s there’s a similar need for experienced vendors who can manage, govern, and publish end-to-end solution for enterprise social media. Here is Dada’s presentation – 20 Social Media Trilogy Vital Components for an Enterprise Strategy  on creating a social media strategy and building a community.

For anyone working for a large enterprise, one question always comes to mind, so How about those legacy systems?

Shepstone said that the advantage of the Vignette solution is that it can work with any legacy system. Even companies without a content management system can use it because it can be deployed as a standalone sytem. Existing website integration very flexible, modular. The goal is to bring the customers back to the site. There is content out there, where all commuity can host content, doesn’t need to be one place. Widgets and gadgets are used to share content in a single place for connecting around product. Integration of  content happens around community, be it external or internal community.

What does deployment , cost, & support look like?

The solution includes Portal license so it’s included at no additional cost for that. The solution costs approximately $50K (perpetual license)  and support is available at 20% annual cost. The solution comes with web API and advanced API, making it easier to integrate with other vendors. Vignette, says Dada, “..Drinks its own Champagne” and uses social media tools that it advocates for training and support.” They use wikis for training documentation on the product, making it easier to update and provide training to their customers.

The thinking among Web entrepreneurs is changing. Online advertising is out and premium services are in.

With more newspapers and news organizations talking about imposing online subscription fees, one might think the Web is headed toward a future of private clubs and walled enclaves.

Online advertising is losing favor, but subscriptions don't appear to be the answer

But most entrepreneurs appear to believe a combination of free and for-fee services might be the key to their digital futures.

This thinking was reflected in a survey of attendees at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The study, commissioned by Yola, found that 78 percent of respondents believed the combination would help them weather the downturn.

In contrast, 42 percent believed a subscription model would be the fastest way to profitability.

This change in thinking could still alter the freewheeling, everything-for-free environment of the Internet. And it could prompt a shift away from online advertising.

The same survey found that only 39 percent of people believed hosted ads would bring profitability. And only 8 percent said online auction sites would grow this year.

The Internet appears poised for another key shift in thinking. It is time to noodle on that.

Tony Uphoff runs UBM’s TechWeb (a sister company to my own) which runs Information Week and the Web 2.0 Expo co-produced with O’Reilly Media.

Tony is very active in social media with a blog Uphoff on Media and a Twitter. Here he talks about how he uses Facebook and Twitter to network before and during business-to-business events.

This is my sixth and last interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and my second interview with Tony.

There is not one single week, I miss this formidable speech from the energetic Gary Vaynerchuk . He delivers some powerful messages for any wanna be entrepreneurs. I used to think he was just another wine guy, lame friend wth Kevin Rose.

Legacy is greater than currency. Your great children are gonna watch what you’ve done. I think about that every single day.
It’s massive opportunity. In the old days to become a brand, you needed a lot of media mainstream attention. But now if you ‘re talked enough, you can build your brand.
I don’t want to hear about this 2 jobs thing. If you want this, if you’re miserable, if you have a passion for something else. You work after hours, that’s plenty to do damage

Watch the last minute, I LOVE that phrase.

Everyone has time, stop watching f’ucking lost!  If you want this, if you want bling bling, if you want to buy the jets, if you want do shit! WORK, that’s how you get it

I’d love to attend next Web 2.0 if I could. I come to realize that few people grasped Internet is the new gold rush. If you’re not going to do what you’re about, somebody is gonna take it.

My work colleagues never grasp the potential of social network. I talked about Obama was on every front: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Linked, Youtube …. he let users engage conversations. That was a huge advantage to catch voters attention.

I’ve just returned from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Before I left, I exploited my existing social media activity. I did not approach any potential contacts directly but used social media in what I called the etiquette of permission networking.

I got my digital kit ready for the Web 2.0 Expo: I would use Twitter for networking and microblogging; I also intended to shoot several short interviews on a Flip camera.

Web 2.0 Expo is an impressive four day event of workshops, lectures, networking and an exhibition (disclosure: the event is co-produced by a sister company of my own). What struck me most, however, was the wall of social media that surrounded the event at all time.

Whether it was projected Twitter feeds, such as #smfail for a session with Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim and Charlene Li, or Nancy Duarte’s use of Meebo’s Brainstorm, the conference not only preached social media. It lived it.

You might start out with 300 people in one room all linked to each other through their laptops or mobile devices. But, as the session progressed, we were joined by hundreds then thousands of others from across the world who followed and then interacted with the Twitter feed. 

So, how did I do? Was my permission-based approach to networking effective? Was my digital kit the right approach?

1. Permission networking rocks. Every single person who approached me for a meetup, showed up.
2. Online networking can never replace face-to-face contact. The most intense moments were when I met people I had only known online. 
3. Be ready for people’s assumptions about you. Listen to their view of what is the difference between your online and your real identities. If they make sense, integrate them into your social media profile. For example, I’ve changed the photo on some of my profiles since people said I did not look like my picture.
4. Video posts are not a time-saving device. Uploading the videos onto Vimeo always took longer than I thought. The checking and double-checking of headlines and links was as intense as for a written post.
5. Do not let “cabin fever” during a conference influence your media strategy. As the week went on, my subscriptions declined dramatically. I use Feedburner so I am used to dramatic ups and downs but I began to think my subscribers hated what I was doing. I stuck to my guns and my subscribers returned to normal.
6. Remember to disable existing feeds if you change kit and platform. I forgot to disable an earlier process for video interviews on my blog that I had set up six months ago.  So, one morning, I was alarmed to have sent out three Tweets with links to my Vodpod (video host) profile. It looked and felt like spam and was entirely my fault and oversight.
7. Do some traditional note taking. Most delegates spend every session with their heads over a laptop, interacting with the speakers online. It is very addictive. But you are far less likely to walk out with decent notes or even listen properly. So, just occasionally, close down the laptop, shut off the mobile device, ignore the Twitter feed and open a notebook instead.

Surviving (and thriving in) the online identity wars fué otra conferencia que asisti en el marco del  Web2.0 expo en esta platica de Joseph Smarr de Plaxo da algunos puntos para lograr un mejor desarrollo de sitios sociales como  por ejemplo:

• Personalizar la experiencia de usuario para cada proveedor que mejor se adapte al target de usuarios de nuestros sitios  (FB, MySpace,Twitter, linkedin…) dentro de el sitio (como ejemplo plaxo).
• Utilizar openid para enlazarse con esos proveedores.
• Implementar FB Connect y Open Stack o utilizar terceros ( RPX, Google Friend Connect)
• Enfocarse en generar flujos de actividad para correr el virtuoso ciclo de que están haciendo los usuarios en mi sitio.
• Utilizar todos los medios de distribución posibles, trabajar con la mayoria de los lectores de feed del web.
• Construir API’s alrededor del contenido único del sitio y servicios y hacerlo con los estandares comunes.
• Utilizar OAUTH.
• Poner mucha atención en el Web  que rapidamente evoluciona.

La platica como todas fué  muy interesante, dejo en claro algunos conceptos  y reafirmo como se estan construyendo muchos sitios sociales proveiendo API´s para que los usuarios o desarrolladores puedan utilizar sus objetos sociales en otros sitios web,  Flash lanzo hace poco un API  que se llama AS3 Facebook API para poder construir aplicaciones Flash-Flex-AIR utilizando llamadas directas a Facebook,  soporta 3 API’s (Canvas, Connect, y Desktop). Para mas información pueden ir directo al sitio de adobe donde esta mas detallada la información

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook/

o para  empezar a desarrollar ir a

http://code.google.com/p/facebook-actionscript-api/

La presentación.

Otro taller del que tuve la oportunidad de asistir en el marco del web 2.0 expo  fue el de “Designing Social Web Sites” impartido por Christina Wodtke autora del libro Information Architecture el cual me regaló  una  copia  por una participación que tuve en el taller ,  Christina definió web social como un espacio digital en donde los datos acerca de las interacciones humanas son tan importantes como otros tipos de datos.

Mostro una ecuación (Lewin’s Equation)que dice que el comportamiento es una función de una persona y su ambiente (Behavior is a function of a person and his enviroments), el ambiente es la parte que nosotros diseñamos.

B = f(P+E)

Hablando de comportamiento menciono un post de thor muller en donde comenta 13 razones de mal comportamiento según el equipo de facebook y que deshabilita la cuenta.

Recomendo también dos libros:  Made to stick de Chip Heath y Dan Heath y A pattern language de Christopher Alexander los cuales son de gran ayuda para tener un mejor entendimiento y poder conceptualizar mejores sitios web sociales de acuerdo a comportamientos de personas.

Comento que los espacios sociales estan relacionados con tres factores importantes: Identidad, Relaciones y Actividades.

• Con la identidad estan relacionados tres temas: Perfil, Presencia y Reputación y recomendo leer acerca de Clay Shirky y su plática: A group is its own worst enemy, la dinámica en esta sección fué la de formar un grupo de 3 personas y responder cada uno: que elementos necesito para creare o mejorar la identidad, perfil, presencia y reputación dentro de los sitios en los cuales trabajamos.
• Con la sección de  relaciones estan agrupados otros tres temas: Atención, Grupos y Contactos. En esta sección la dinámica fué responder dentro del mismo equipo de 3 personas que tipos de relaciones soportan o soportaran los sitios en los que trabajamos. Habló sobre diferentes sitios como  43things o dogster,  en los cuales la gente se relaciona con diferentes temas y se crean grupos relacionados a un mismo interés.
• Y con la sección de Actividad agrupa otros tres que son compartir, colaborar y comunicar, hablo sobre la identificación de los objetos sociales y actividades que se realizan dentro de un sitio web, la pregunta de la dinámica fué la de identificar quienes eran los usuarios de los sitios que desarrollamos, que es lo que hacen esos usuarios dentro del sitio y definir cuales eran las actividades de estos sitios.

Putualizo que lo mas importante que debemos hacer a la hora de diseñar sitios web sociales es basicamente:

• Identificar los objetos sociales que van a interactuar con los usuarios del sitio.
• Seleccionar las caracteristicas del sitio.
• Crear conexiones emocionales con los usuarios. (tomando en cuenta normas y administración comunitaria)

Un enlace que recomendó y que en lo personal me gustó mucho es el de bokardo.

Christina Wodtke Firmando el libro que me regalo

Celebrando el regalo con una cervecita en la cantina mas cercana al Moscone West Center

Acerca de redes sociales y solo por diversión… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs

Dentro del marco del Web2.oExpo, tuve la oportunidad de asistir a el taller de Erin Malone y christian Crumlish que se llamó:

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Best Practices and Patterns for Designing the Social Web.

comentaron primeramente las 4 partes para diseñar un patron:

• Que : Definir el problema, que es lo que el usuario quiere hacer, ejemplos visuales.
• Cuando: Cuando el usuario  usará la solución, esto es el contexto.
• Cómo: es la solución detallada que decisiones en la interfaz necesitan hacerse, que elementos necesitan existir, que comportamientos necesitan ser soportados.
• Porqué: el porque es importante el uso de la solución ó porque es la solución correcta

Un patrón describe una solución optima para un problema común dentro de un contexto específico, un tema bastante importante en estos tiempos de Web 2.0 es el diseño social, ellos hablaron de patrones de diseño social como colaboración, identidad, participacion, reputación, presencia, marketing, social networking por mencionar algunos.

A continuación muestro dos diagramas que mostraron en la presentación que me parecen muy importantes para ejemplificar mas a detalle,  el primero es un ecosistema de media social y el segundo como implementar lo social en las empresas.

Patrones sociales para las empresas.

Ellos estan desarrollando una wiki de patrones para desarrollo social (ir ahora) los cuales estan en un libro que proximamente saldrá a la venta, hablaron de los principios, representaciones del ser (self), actividades que involucran a objetos sociales y dinamicas de grupo.

Dentro de los principios hablaron sobre:

• Diseñar para todos.
• Hablar como persona.
• Ser abierto.
• Ser un juego.
• Etica.
• Email.
• Cargo Cult antipattern (ver definición)

Dentro de la representación del ser hablaron sobre:

• Engagement (ver definición)
• Identidad
• Presencia
• Reputación

Algunos de los patrones de los que mencionaron en esta parte fueron: Signup, sign in, invitaciónes, profiles, avatar, etiquetas, disponibilidad)

Dentro del tema de  Actividades con objetos sociales hablaron sobre:

• Colecciones.
• Publicación y transmición.
• Comunicación.
• Retroalimentación.
• Compartir (sharing).
• Colaboración.
• Media Social.

Y sobre dinámicas grupales hablaron sobre:

• Relaciones.
• Grupos.
• Moderadores de comunidades.
• Lugares, geo-locaciones.

Y finalmente explicaron posibles escenarios y que patrones utilizar en cada caso, un taller bastante interesante muy entretenido y  con mucha nformación útil por parte de los autores, en lo personal creo que es muy importante a los que desempeñan cualquier tipo de actividad para Web, conocer estos patrones ya que nos ayudan bastante para conceptualizar nuevos proyectos orientados a web 2.0.

Ligas:

Sobre los Patrones y los autores. http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns.wiki

Presentación: http://www.slideshare.net/emalone/social-patterns-talk-web-20-version

 Ver mas presentaciones de Erin Malone.

TechieDiva ha effettuato un nuovo video del Nokia N97 hands on…Web 2.0 Expo

Fonte:TechieDiva

Joining us for a post-Easter Sunday edition of Gov 2.0 Radio on Monday night (8/11 eastern) are two awesome women making social media and e-governance happen out in the big wide world offline. I’ll be hosting with Steve Lunceford of GovTwit and Steve Ressler of GovLoop.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Liz Rosas, e-Gov program manager for the County of Santa Clara, at the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Liz is also a member of the Federal Web Managers Social Media Subcouncil (and we’ll forgive her unfortunate school of choice, Stanford). She’ll join us from her home in the San Francisco East Bay.

Andrea Baker is a Renaissance woman, geek grrl and director of Enterprise 2.0 for Beltway-based Navstar Inc. She’s also a Gov 2.0 junkie and has worked with the federal government since 1994. Andrea joined us briefly from South by Southwest last month for our Gov 2.0 Radio demo show, and she’ll be back talking about  internal solutions for agencies looking at Web 2.0.

“With all the social media buzz about using tools that make government more transparent, we must not forget how Enterprise 2.0 solutions for business are increasing in successful case studies,” Andrea said. “It’s not about doing something new for the sake of new, but its about considering open source solutions as cost effective productivity tools.

“The tools are also social in nature and as the business community adopts them, old ways of doing business are replaced. The infusion of new business practices increases the transparency of work accomplished.”

Be sure to tune in!

Recap from CNet’s Rafe Needleman via video interview with Brady Forrest, show co-chair.

Trends emerging, based on economic impact, at the Web 2.0 Expo 2009

1. Buckle down with business plan
2. develop non-advertising revenue model from the beginning
3. design for multiple platforms
4. cloud computing
5. mobile, mobile, mobile

And on the mobile front, PhoneGap given Launch Pad award — an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript!

Analysts believe accurate voice search could boost Google’s business

Google has said it sees voice search as a major opportunity for the company in building a presence on the mobile web.

The company’s vice president of engineering made the comments during a wide-ranging discussion at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

“We believe voice search is a new form of search and that it is core to our business,” said Vic Gundotra.

SearchEngineLand editor Greg Sterling agreed: “If done right, it could be a valuable strategic feature for Google.”

Mr Gundotra acknowledged to the audience that “voice recognition in the early days was a nice trick but not very usable”.

There were early complaints that Google’s offering could not understand accents other than American and that results were often garbled.

“Look how far we have come. I get the advantage of looking at daily voice queries coming in and it’s amazing. It’s working. It’s reached a tipping point. It’s growing and growing very, very fast and we are thrilled about it,” said Mr Gundotra.

He declined to share figures about just how many queries the company deals with via voice search.

However, Mr Gundotra did say: “It’s one of those technologies we think gets better with usage.

“We launched it on the iPhone and have seen a 15% jump in accuracy because, as more people use it, we collect more data and our accuracy gets better.”

‘Queen’s English’

In 2002, Google Labs introduced a service that allowed users to search with a simple phone call. The company admitted it “wasn’t very useful because the results were displayed on your computer and Google discontinued it”.

Six years later, the search giant introduced an improved feature under the Google Mobile App for the iPhone.

Vic Gundotra says “voice search is core” to Google’s future mobile plans

It is also available on the Android based T-Mobile G1 and last month was introduced on the BlackBerry as a free download. The New York Times’s Gadgetwise blog rated the BlackBerry version the “App of the Week” earlier this week.

Early iterations that worked best with North American accents had problems understanding other accents, including British. BBC technology cCorrespondent Rory Cellan-Jones reported in November last year that his attempts to use it were “pure gibberish”.

For example, his query about the next train, West Ealing to Paddington “delivered some useful information about ‘neck strain’ – but no train times”.

Those problems have since been largely ironed out and Google said it was continuing to work on improving the accuracy of the service. This, Mr Sterling said, is crucial if the company wants it to give them the edge in the marketplace.

“My view is voice search could be a strategic differentiator if it works well. It depends on how much better Google’s system is compared to, say, Yahoo’s or Microsoft’s.

“If they come up with a really great version that is really accurate, it could retain users and likely increase search usage for Google,” said Mr Sterling.

“Stay tuned”

At Web 2.0, Mr Gundotra also talked about a web-based version of Google’s e-mail service, Gmail.

Google’s “technical prototype”, coming soon to the public

He demonstrated a “technical prototype” on the iPhone and the G1 and said “Stay tuned” for a release date.

Mr Gundotra said the prototype used HTML 5, an as-yet incomplete version of mark up language of the world wide web.

He revealed that Google would create a whole suite of offline apps using HTML 5 and that “we are going to be leaders in taking advantage of HTML 5″.

Mr Gundotra also said that engineers were working hard to bring the Chrome browser to the Mac and that while there was no date for delivery, “we are making progress to get it out as fast as we can”.

Twitter purchase

During a question and answer session, Mr Gundotra was quizzed on rumours circulating in the blogosphere that Google is looking to buy the micro-blogging service Twitter.

Google said “no comment” on rumours it may want to buy Twitter

“I’m a big fan of Twitter but we don’t as a policy comment on rumour or speculation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has said that he has been “flooded with requests for a response to the latest internet speculation about where Twitter is headed”.

In a blog entitled Sometimes We Talk, Mr Stone wrote: “It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects.

“Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we’re just getting started.”

The Government 2.0 movement – revolutionizing government service through technology, collaboration and transparency – is taking off, big time.

Join us Sundays at 2/5 p.m. Eastern, as we discuss this peaceful revolution with world leaders on the subject.

This week, we’ll be talking about Web-based activism, new efforts by government Web managers to open up their thinking to the populace at large, and two great recent events, Gov 2.0 Camp and Web 2.0 Expo.

Jeffrey Levy of the Federal Web Managers Council will join us, along with Web 2.0 strategist Ari Herzog. I’ll be co-hosting with Steve Lunceford of BearingPoint and Steve Ressler of GovLoop.

We welcome your calls to (347) 539-5704 during the show!

For more on the Gov 2.0 tribe, check out these great Twitter resources: WeFollow Gov 2.0 & GovWiki.

David Cohn’s Spot.us is an experiment “to preserve investigative journalism” in the San Francisco bay area. 

This is how it works. Members of the public choose which topic should be investigated by a journalist, pledging anything from $5 upwards. 

Listen to how David sees his idea taking off and his plea that journalism will only survive if others are as experimental. 

David’s Twitter handle is @Digidave, here are his Shares, which I have written about before, and he writes a blog DigiDave.

This is my fourth interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

I vowed not to be delinquent in writing but hope to be excused as I’ve been consumed by Web 2.0 Expo connections where my 10 year journey became clear in 10 days.

Less is more was the theme and while I didn’t get to experience all San Francisco has offer, I’m heading to the airport fulfilled, inspired, and surprisingly energized after numerous amazing #sftweetup.

What started with storytelling and ended with passion will be digested on the flight home. There’s been so much to process I’m thinking in tags. Goto, Cale, cowbells, mission, flow, context, trust, transparency, release, knowledge, support…the list goes on.

Who brought it all together for me, 72 year old legend J.J. Cale – talk about passion and connection.

I’ll be back to wrap up what’s been an amazing week.

M.

***Cross posted from Vocenation.com****
Spent the day at Web 2.0 Expo (along with several thousand of my closest friends) sitting in social media sessions, networking and checking out the exhibitors on the floor.

I’ve heard murmurs that this year’s event is a much leaner showing than years past — but the folks who did make it are still happy with what they’re seeing. After all, the theme for the conference IS “The Power of Less.”

For those of you who couldn’t be here I wanted to share a quick recap from two sessions:

[1]. “Why Social Media Marketing Fails – and How to Fix It“
and
[2]. “Beyond Buzz: On Measuring a Conversation“

The first session featured Peter Kim (Dachis Corporation), Charlene Li (Altimeter Group), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research) and was focused on avoiding the basic pitfalls of social media.

The discussion centered on 4 main questions:
“How do I get my culture involved?”

– Get executive buy in first. Having the “big guns” involved will motivate the rest of the teams.
– Show the company that there is value in adoption by mapping to existing corporate goals. Show how SM will help achieve corporate goals, in a measurable way.
– Avoid pegging one person as the only SM leader. In order for social media to really work for a company everyone needs to be involved.

“How do I get campaigns to work?”

– First and foremost, don’t look at social media like a campaign. To have the most benefits, it needs to be a longstanding initiative rather than a one-off campaign.

– Think about and decide on what kind of relationships you want to build. It’s not about the technologies, it’s about how you want to engage with your community.

– It’s not about YouTube or Twitter, it’s about new ways to foster engagement.
– Tie your initiatives to your community’s lifestyle

- “What am I supposed to measure?”

– First, answer the question “What is my objective?” Then measure based on that.
– Mirror how you are already measuring the reach and effectiveness of your business.

- “Does social media even matter?”

– Looking at the Motrin moms fiasco we see that at least initially there wasn’t that much attention–only within the echochamber. But the buzz was eventually picked up by mainstream media, and thus entered the public eye
– Yes, but if you’re engaged in social media you have to be able to fail. You have to expect to fail. And,you have to know that if you’re not failing you might not be doing SM correctly.

Lots of generalities tossed around in this session, but I think they did reiterated the point that you need to focus on your existing corporate objectives, and who your community really is, rather than specific tools. Lots of folks who are just getting into social media now overlook these basic steps and get caught up in shiny-object-syndrome.
___________________________

The “Beyond Buzz: On Measuring a Conversation” session was the most technical look at online conversations I’ve ever seen. I’ll be honest, I walked in the door feeling pretty confident–I mean, hey I love metrics, right? Wrong.

This was a Ph.D level conversation focused on social mapping, linguistics and three dimensional views of networks of connected individuals. While I won’t presume to say that I can effectively summarize all the data Kate Niederhoffer (Dachis Corporation) and Marc Smith (Telligent Systems) conveyed, here are a few takeaways worth sharing:

– In terms of relevency in conversations, you should let data speak for itself and then approach it from a more openminded perspective. The data doesn’t have to be one dimensional – you can combine two sets of data in order to give the overall set more context.
– You can look at the types of words community members are using to get information on what demographic they come from, what world they live in and their personality.
– Even in the workplace people need personal social interactions in order to get ready to foster productivity. According to the presenters, most real work occurs at the end of the day, and more specifically at the end of the week

I recommend checking out the Twitter feed of folks who used the #w2e hashtag to get the community’s (sometimes colorful) recaps from today. In fact, Twitter seems to be the means of communication of choice for both attendees–using it to meet each other and share feedback–and the panelists–who were taking questions from the crowd, live and in color.

O’Reilly Media, Inc. e TechWeb producono e presentano dal 31 Marzo fino a giorno 3 Aprile il Web 2.0 Expo. L’Expo è ospitato dal relativamente famoso Moscone Centre West di San Francisco, California e si svolge nello stesso spazio espositivo che solitamente vede l’Apple e Jobs presentare i suoi prodotti più famosi e popolari, dall’iMac all’iPod e iPhone.
L’evento propone i modelli commerciali del Web 2.0 più recenti, i paradigmi dello sviluppo software e tecnologico, assieme alle strategie di design e le linee di programmazione della futura generazione Web. In altre parole, a San Francisco si cerca di delineare quello che verrà fra poco tempo, fra una nutrita serie di persone e idee, contatti, stand espositivi di prodotti, ditte, ecc.
Qui appresso il link diretto per seguire le presentazioni in diapositiva, Pdf, e audio.

The Web 2.0 was about harnessing the collective intelligence of users. The next Web will about taking advantage of sensor data, Tim O'Reilly predicts

But before that, he reminded his audience of the origins of Web 2.0.

“Web 2.0 was never intended to be a version number. It was really a reflection of what happened after the dotcom bust. There were some companies, some projects that seemed to survive when others were flatten. Why was it?” O’Reilly pondered.

For O’Reilly, the companies that survived the Internet bubble learned how to use the web as a platform. “And in particular they understood that the heart of that was to harness the collective intelligence, that is to get their users to add value to what they were doing.”

O’Reilly talked of “information shadows”, “electronic sensors coordination”, and statically extracting the “meaning” hidden in all the data that is being collected, gathered.

In a nutshell, for this Internet visionary, Web applications are going to be more and more driven by sensors and not by people typing on keyboards. A major shift from Web 2.0 applications today that heavily rely on user inputs.

There is power in less

Another of O’Reilly’s theme was how to apply Moore’s Law to the world’s hard problems.

“In the technology industry, we take for granted that we get more each year for less. But it doesn’t work that way in the world. The whole basis of our economy is that more will be spent, that things will be bigger, and cost more, and economy will grow.”

Part of the power that we have, is to take these techniques that we’ve developed in the consumer Internet and start to apply them to big hard problems, added O’Reilly.

There is a new trend that has been quite popular at a consumer level but is starting to rapidly grow now at the enterprise level. It’s enterprise mashups. Mashups are when you take two isolated pieces of data and “mash” them together to form something that is bigger/better than the sum of it’s parts. We’ve seen examples of this at the consumer level with sites like Zillow that bring Google maps together with real estate data and now it’s coming to the enterprise.

John Musser, the founder of Programmable Web, gave 5 characteristics of mashups.

1. Combine data & services from multiple sources
2. Created in days, not months
3. Uses Web Oriented Architecture (WOA)
4. Often uses web service
5. Often utilitarian, not sexy – get job done