We’ve been reading and creating a lot of chatter about “social media” for the past few years. And for the past year it’s been incessant non-stop cacophony about Twitter and Facebook and gurus and is-blogging-relevant-anymore and Foursquare and so on. Non-stop.

In all that chatter it’s been easy to miss the point of social media. The whole point of social-anything is that we all do something together. Social technologies are there to assist collaboration between people. Even if that collaboration is just to have a barbecue together.

If I had to choose whether I wanted to focus on understanding the nature of collaboration vs understanding the nature of social media I know which one I would choose.

Let’s  not confuse collaboration with the tools and tactics of social media.

A lot of my time is spent trying out and playing with new technologies to see how they might fit into my clients’ businesses. Here’s how I keep “collaboration” separate from “social media” in my work. Maybe it’ll be helpful for you. Maybe you’ve got an even better perspective (please share!).

Characteristics of social media

Social media is a specific tool or website. The metrics that are often touted as proof of a successful social media site or tool tend to be based on increasing inputs to the system: more users, more status updates, more user data input into the site. It’s not necessarily all quantitative stuff either. It could be qualitative: best users, best status updates, best user data input into the site.

What social media is typically not measured on though, is how often something really happens with all that “social” energy that is being gathered. This is why, after the algae bloom of social media gurus in the past year, we’re going to have another crop of skeptics asking a very simple question:

The thing about social media is that the goals of “media” are not always well-aligned with the needs of “social” aka “people.” People want to collaborate, but the social tools are built to generate more status updates and “active users.”

If you feel uneasy while talking about the value of social media this is probably why. Deep down many of us feel that “social” means a lot more than pumping our details into a Facebook profile.

Characteristics of collaboration

Collaboration, on the other hand, is platform-agnostic. Collaboration is two or more people working together to do or make something. Sometimes that thing they make is a barbecue or a party or even a Tweetup. Sometimes people collaborate to do business. Sometimes they collaborate to have fun. You can use Facebook to collaborate, you can use Twitter to collaborate. The world’s largest social media site, Skype, is really good for collaboration. Collaboration will continue to exist long after Facebook is placed on the shelf next to SixDegrees, long after Twitter takes it’s place next to .Plan updates.

There really isn’t a great metric for assessing the value of collaboration though. It’s not as easy as “number of eyeballs” which is, sadly, the metric that is often used for measuring anything on the web. Even after all these years.

There are attempts at calculating engagement metrics or even a return-on-engagement. But often these devolve into things like “time on site” or other things that really have nothing to do with collaboration. Looking at a website for 20 minutes doesn’t have a direct relationship to me collaborating with a real human. Could be I’m putting off collaborating with a real human by reading blog posts or worse, I’m lost in your site’s navigation.

This isn’t an anti-social media rant, I swear.

I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. I think social media tools and sites are great and can be used very effectively. In fact, social media sites and tools can be used to help us understand how we all work and make things together. And that’s awesome. Social media sites and tools, when used well, are a great testbed for understanding collaboration.

Value your social media tools and tactics based on how they can increase your ability to collaborate with friends, business partners, clients, client-alumnae and so on. Use your social media tools and tactics to learn about how people collaborate. If you chase eyeball-metrics, chase them in the name of increasing collaboration.

I was recently asked by a marketing student at one of Burlington Vermont’s several colleges whether she should spend the time learning to make things in Flash. This post is my attempt to provide some guidance. If you have some useful information or feedback, please don’t hesitate to use the comments section.

With the latest shiny object released by Apple without support for Flash, there’s been a lot of conversation about the future of Flash. But there are much larger wheels in motion than the Flash/Apple situation. But examining the future Flash does make for an interesting and useful lens on the direction of several technology trends currently in play.

Preliminary statement of bias: I enjoy making Flash projects and have been involved with the platform since I first entered Stuart Butterfield’s 5k competition back in 2000. But I’ve also been heavily involved in search marketing activities, where Flash can really mess things up.

Initial observations about Flash and online marketing

Let’s look at a couple observations that I think are relevant to the future of Flash:

• The iPhone and the iPad don’t render Flash content and it’s likely they never will unless Adobe can keep Flash from crashing.
• HTML5 is being rolled out as we speak. One of the big features of HTML5 is that the video embed method doesn’t require Flash.
• None of the HTML5 implementations of video that are available today allow for full screen viewing of video content. (See comments below–thanks to Joel for setting me straight)
• Immersive websites and other content that relies heavily on interactive and generative animation/video are a real challenge to code in anything other than Flash. Think movie websites, super brand-heavy websites and other projects which don’t rely heavily on random search traffic to reach an audience.
• Many people see social media marketing being equal to search engine marketing for reaching audiences in the near future.
• The media industry, typically supported by brand-heavy display advertising, is having trouble.
• Future versions of Flash are going to be able to compile iPhone apps.
• Mobile devices are increasingly being used to access web content.
• Adobe recently bought a top-tier web analytics software company.

Putting observations of Flash in context

Lets see what we can come up with, given the above observations. I think there’s a couple areas of specific importance that sift out of the above observations: The future of online video, the impact of mobile browsing behaviors and changes in how marketing reaches audiences.

Video on the web

Flash is likely to cede dominance as the default video platform online. This will probably be in direct relation to the rise of mobile device computing. Even though Android can accept Flash, developers and clients of developers will save their funds and roll out HTML5 enabled solutions.

Flash will probably remain in place as a video platform for destination content: anything you want to see full screen. This involves players, technologies and industries which are much larger and entrenched than Flash is. It’s also pretty volatile.

On the other hand, all those short YouTube and blog-length talking head/presentation style videos will head on over to HTML5. Bloggers and presentation content creators tend to be pretty SEO focused, so they’ll gladly jump at the HTML5 implementations for video and start doing their own hosting. They’ll do this to get search visibility from blended video results. Sure they can host their own video and start doing this today using Flash. The change of options, all at once, is likely to increase HTML5 video adoption. That and Flash players/encoders and the embed code are a real mess, making HTML5 the more likely path for the DIY set.

Watch for:

• Increased mobile device usage
• Adoption of HTML5 compatible browsers
• The effect of the internal differences in handling HTML5 among the various browser makers
• Relationships between online video destination sites (Netflix/Hulu/iTunes), the technology makers (Microsoft/Adobe/Apple), the search industry (Microsoft/Google) and the movie industry

Mobile influence and Flash

Effectively banned from the Apple ecosystem until Adobe can find a way to get Flash to not be the primary source of crashes in OSX, you might think that Flash will have little to no influence on the mobile market. First there’s Android, which I don’t think will be that big a deal for Flash because people who commission content (clients) aren’t going to commission one version of content for Android and another version for iPhone. I just don’t see it happening. And who wants a return to the bad old days of browser detection anyway?

However, Adobe has said that future versions of Flash will be able to compile iPhone apps. The real frontier and objective for most online strategies in regards to mobile is to get an icon on the user’s mobile device. One of the strengths of Flash is the ability to create good user interfaces. Flash developers should be able to leverage this in developing iPhone and other mobile applications.

Watch for:

• Will Adobe deliver on their promise to make Flash write iPhone and other mobile content?
• Will Adobe buckle down and resolve whatever it is that makes Flash content frequently crash in MacOSX (training the developers to not write buggy apps has clearly not worked)?

Social media marketing and Flash

One of Flash’s longstanding weaknesses has been it’s invisibility to search engines. I know that Google theoretically indexes Flash content, but that requires the Flash developer to make their Flash app contain text and other things for Google to index. Awareness of SEO techniques are not common in the Flash community relative to standard web developers.

However, with the rise of social media, there is an increased opportunity for Flash content to reach an audience without the need for search engine optimization features. Well-made and executed Flash projects stand a good chance of being promoted via social media channels. Tie in Adobe’s purchase of web analytics firm Omniture and the potential exists for developing some very clever content with Flash that can help marketers learn more about their audiences.

Watch for:

• Increased interest in social media marketing methods at the expense of search engine marketing.
• Whether Adobe can successfully integrate Omniture’s tracking capabilities into Flash.

Advice to a college student who is considering whether or not to learn Flash

So here’s my advice to the college student (and tangentially, to anyone considering making Flash applications):

1. The basic Flash lecture: Learn to make clean code (Flex is your friend), be aware of bandwidth and CPU bottlenecks, be involved in search engine optimization + Flash conversations, learn to tie web traffic analytics into Flash. If you don’t learn these things, your job will not be in the United States (which, by the way, isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
2. Learn the skills required to make good immersive content. This won’t be a software/technical skill so much as it is a concepting/planning skill. Learn to storyboard and make user workflows.
3. Be a student of good user interface. “Good” is always in the eye of the beholder (or the person cutting the check). But if you start with making an interface that enables achieving a business objective you’ll likely be on the right track.
4. Learn math. All the coolest Flash projects involve copious amounts of interesting math and algorithms. If you don’t learn math, make really good friends with a math person (my math friend is a rocket scientist who specializes in fluid dynamics–very useful).
5. Learn the advanced Flash topics: Augmented Reality, Papervision3D and other 3D frameworks, generative content, etc. Be prepared to stay on the leading edge of Flash.

I hope all this is helpful. Feel free to ask questions or give feedback in the comments below.

[Update: I was, of course, wrong. iPad costs $500-$800 depending on configuration options, data plans are $15 or $30 per month depending on download volume, data contracts can be canceled any time--no lock in on them.]

I think the new iTablet/iSlate/iPad thing will be free.

All the current predictions for something that’s supposed to be a game-changer seem really tame to me: “it’s going to be somewhere between the size an iphone an laptop” or “it’ll have wifi and 3G” or “it’ll have multi-touch.” I mean really. That doesn’t sound game changing. So here’s my take on Apple’s creation and why it’s going to be free.

Same basic business model as cell carrier subsidies

The iPhone is way cheaper than the iPod Touch because ATT subsidizes the cost of the iPhone. Apple’s iTablet thingy will be subsidized as well, but by the publishing industry. So instead of being subsidized by one corporation, the iTablet thingy will be subsidized by several corporations. Why will publishers want to fully subsidize the cost of making/distributing/marketing the Apple iTablet thingy?

• The cost of printing things on paper is an enormous drain on the publishing industry. Eliminating the expense of operating a printing press would free them up to focus on their core businesses: creating content + selling advertising. If the NYTimes stopped making a paper edition, they could buy two kindles for every subscriber, and that’s just one publisher. Some information from Metafilter suggests that the paper alone is running the NYTimes about $150,000 a week.
• If publications were distributed digitally it would be much easier to control subscriptions and eliminate the used market. This one hits both newspaper publishers (who would admittedly have to start using real subscriber numbers when talking to advertisers) and textbook publishers (how many of you who went to college bought new textbooks for all your classes?).
• Digital distribution will allow advertising-driven publishers the ability to align their offerings with the needs of their customers. The newspaper industry lost their classifieds section to Craigslist over flexibility in deadlines. They’re in the middle of losing their real estate section because of the inability to track ROI. Getting completely digital will give them the opportunity to try and get back in the game.
• If Apple follows the Appstore pricing model, which allows creators to price things as they wish and Apple just takes a 30% cut, then it will be the most favorable digital distribution deal around.

Why would Apple give it away for free?

Apple doesn’t compete on price, so why wouldn’t they charge something for it?

• They will make their profit on the device itself from the subsidies of the news and publishing industry.
• They will make ongoing revenue/profit from the Appstore ecosystem via their 30% cut of sales targeted to the device.
• That ongoing revenue of 30% will scale faster the more devices are in the hands of consumers.
• Who would be able to compete with Apple’s device at that price without losing money? Remember how Microsoft thought it could take on the iPod by losing money? Apple would become the ubiquitous device among an offering of has-beens.

Real issue will be one of how to keep up with demand if the thing is free. Who knows how they’ll do that without charging anything. But I’m sure they’ve figured it out. Maybe starting by only giving them out to people who are subscribing to one of the organizations subsidizing the expense.

Networked growth strategy

The strategy at play here is one of making ongoing revenue from the network and ecosystem while also making the money to subsidize the capital expense of making/marketing/delivering the device via subsidies. It can work because the subsidizers are in a tight situation: they have a product people want but the production and distribution method of that product exceeds the price their customers are willing to pay. The subsidizers will go out of business if they can’t find a solution to this problem so they are highly motivated to solve it. Apple has a track record in precisely this situation.

The value created for the publishing and news industries scales in accordance with the ubiquity of the platform, as a result of this they will be willing to shoulder the costs of making the thing ubiquitous. Apple’s ongoing revenue will also scale so they will be willing to develop the product ecosystem.

I realize this is a way out there crazy prediction. But I wanted to read at least one prediction for this big event that was so far outside the box that it might be worthy of Apple’s ability be a game changer.

It’s the time of year where everyone is either re-hashing last year or predicting next year. Here is one of the better re-caps of important technology trends, as outlined by Read/Write Web.

I’ll go through each of the five points and add some commentary.

Structured data

The trend of structured data is about distilling web pages down to the specific bits of content that make them up. As R/WW points out, this is leading to a transition from web sites to web services. Many popular web sites include an API, which is a coding tool that allows lots of different developers to make useful web tools based on the data gathered/created by the web site.

Example: The real estate industry

I do a fair amount of work with clients in the real estate industry. It’s a fairly straightforward business on the surface: lead generation for their firms and on behalf of clients for whom they are marketing houses. If you’re not in real estate, I bet you can find some similarities to your own industry.

The real estate industry is based very much in a structured data universe: housing data, geography, features and so on. For many years this data has been structured at a local level into Multiple Listing Services (MLS). However, there is little agreement on how the data is structured–there is no standard in this as of yet. My favorite example is that in Vermont, a “waterfront” field will refer to the number of feet of beachfront while in nearby NH a “waterfront” field will be the name of the body of water.

Though housing-related data is structured, it’s balkanized into hundreds of regional silos. As a result, developing useful systems that make use of the data created by real estate professionals is a challenge–for many smaller MLS regions the cost of building the system may outweigh the benefit a technology vendor can reasonably gain back.

This has led to some business pain for real estate professionals:

• Relatively high prices for real estate web sites with integrated search
• Competition for consumer attention from content businesses such as Trulia, Zillow and Google
• Operational complexity in marketing properties across multiple online eco-systems; especially problematic as marketing prowess becomes an increasingly important service for real estate professionals.

Takeaway on structured data trends

Structured data and the APIs to make use of it is definitely on the rise because it helps to solve real business pain. The battles to watch will be about how the data in your industry becomes structured and standardized. There are a ton of competing technologies and formats out there. Some of them will be proprietary, some will be open. Some will be easy to use and access. Others will be in silos that are difficult to scale (like real estate MLS data in the example above). Paying attention to how data in your industry is being structured will be worthwhile .

Read Write Web’s discussion of structured data including examples such as Google, Wolfram|Alpha and Reuters’ Calais tool can be found here.

The real-time web

As data and information become more structured it becomes easier for technologists to find and surface the good stuff. Also, as information is broken down into smaller chunks of data, it becomes easier to create content quickly. It takes less time to write a Twitter post than a blog post. Also, it’s easier for search engines and other tools to locate, store, sort and display a Twitter post than blog post. Perhaps not that big a difference until you want to scale it to the entire web.

Capitalizing on real-time web in social media

The rise of social media is playing a big role the real-time web. The “social” part of social media is people having conversations. And people would rather have conversations right now than in delayed bursts. Twitter’s growth is a big indicator of this.

Many of the businesses I’ve consulted with over the past year have gone from not using social media at all to becoming active participants. One of the first steps on this path is using social media to listen. Clients who have learned to use social media to listen have been able to capitalize on the trend of real-time web use in the following ways:

• Help a prospective customer out at the moment that customer needed help.
• Solve customer support issues early and in a transparent fashion.
• Effectively insert their brand or message into larger ongoing online conversations.

But the challenge of monitoring and responding remains large for many organizations, especially as ROI for social media is still not being measured consistently.

Takeaway for the real-time web

Conversations will be happening online in a variety of channels and consumers are going to expect to be heard and responded to. Companies who gain skills and experience in using online channels to listen and respond will be better positioned for this shift in online behavior.

Read Write Web’s analysis of the real-time web trend in 2009 includes examples such at Twitter, Facebook and Delicious. Read it here.

Personalization

This one seems as old as the dot-com era. “Some day we’ll finally get a front page made up of just the stories we’re interested in” was sort of the calling card of the portals of yore. What’s changing about this buzzword?

Well, with structured data, the way in which data can be located and distributed is changing, for one. And our increased use of social media sites is leaving larger trails of information about our own interests. It isn’t just a checklist of “what kinds of stories are you interested in” that determines how information gets to us.

The combination of who are friends are, what sorts of things we talk about and promote online, what sort of information we volunteer about a wide range of topics (many of which are not accurately reflected in the newspaper-section paradigm prevalent int he days of portals)–all of this can now used to create a sort of transparent behind-the-scenes personalization in many web applications.

Example of personalization: changing communication habits

One of the side effects of increasing personalization is that we can insulate ourselves from outside input. This is part of the whole idea-divide in politics where one can choose information exclusively based on whether they are likely to agree with one’s existing ideas. Huffington Post for some, say and Rush Limbaugh for others. We also see this offline in gated communities and those choosing to live in geographic areas primarily because of common beliefs. The desire to be surrounded by those we find agreeable is probably a built-in human trait. Technology is just enabling this nouveau tribalism.

One of my clients has a target audience of young athletes: college kids and high school kids. He has noticed that many of them don’t even use email any longer, preferring instead to use the communication system built into Facebook. One of the reasons cited is that they have explicit control over who is allowed to contact them: there are no messages from people they don’t already know or otherwise explicitly approve to send them messages. The observation of a decline in teen use of email is supported by Pew research.

Takeaway on the trend of online personalization

As computer systems get better at delivering truly personalized experiences, businesses and organizations will need to develop increasingly creative methods of reaching new audiences. You can’t personalize or opt-in for something you don’t know about. Making greater use of social networking to spread awareness and reach will likely be a big part of bridging this divide in the years ahead. Nurture your vocal audience.

Read Write Web discusses personalization including a breakdown of how recommendation systems work here.

Mobile web and augmented reality

The iPhone is already a cultural icon. Google’s Android platform will further extend the fully capable pocket-sized device market. People will increasingly want all that real-time, personalized and structured data available to them 24/7 wherever they are. Presenting that data in conjunction with live images of the real world will provide a context to help users understand their environment. Or maybe it will just help them find a subway faster.

Examples of the mobile web

As content is increasingly consumed on-the-go and on-location via mobile devices, the interface of web sites and (per structured data above) web services often needs to be rethought. Challenges include the little screens, the touch gestures, the situations  (and mobile devices) where touch gestures don’t work so well and so on. Getting content to an audience on a mobile device is a different skill set  than designing web sites, just like making a 3 minute web animation is different from making a half-hour television show.

The biggest area of difference revolves around attention. Not only are mobile devices noticeably slower at retrieving data than their laptop counterparts (witness the conversations about AT&T 3G service and rollout in Burlington, Vermont, for example), but the time users spend with the data is limited as well. This makes sense because your data is competing with the real world: a much more engaging and data rich experience.

Interestingly, some of the most innovative uses of augmented reality are also based around interfacing with data more than display of data.

Takeaways from mobile and augmented reality trends

Organizations that gain experience with deploying mobile applications (to speed the delivery of structured data to people in an information-rich real-world) and the emerging technology of augmented reality will have tangible advantages in reaching and engaging audiences vs those who wait on the sidelines. If your organization is planning to wait on the sidelines, perhaps consider buying talent from one of the more experienced firms when the time comes for you to enter mobile and augmented reality spaces.

Read Write Web discusses mobile and augmented reality here.

The internet of things

Hopefully we didn’t lose you on augmented reality. Because the internet of things is even more crazy (and important). As data becomes structured and the availability of mobile technology increases we gain the ability to create devices that make meaning from their own data and share it with a larger networked system. This is some real back-end technology that is likely to continue to go through whizz-bang fad usage, sort of like Flash skip-intros of the late 90s (before Flash became the ubiquitous workhorse of online video and rich internet applications) or like augmented reality.

Read Write Web gives more context on the Internet of Things here.

Using the stock market as a data source would be gathering information from a very distinct segment: people who buy and sell stock. Further definition and understanding of this group would help refine how you might use the data. For example children and teens tend not to be a significant demographic in the stock-buying segment.

Publicly traded stock goes up or down depending on the feelings of those trade stocks. So their activity leaves a record of their sentiment. Understanding the story in that sentiment requires analytical skills (which can be developed and practiced). It might be useful to see if any trend lines in your own data mirror those of specific publicly traded companies or industries to help provide context to your data. Then try to determine if the similar trends are causal or just a correlation.

As we all dig through Twitter and other text-based data for understanding of sentiment, it’s important to remember the big old numbers-based stock market might be useful as a sentiment index as well.

You’re probably noticing a theme in putting things in context… by channel, by the kind of satisfaction: recommendation or a simple star rating, satisfaction by how many times your content was used, expression of satisfaction by a specific individual.

You can put this stuff into context to help inform where you need to improve and what you can do to make things better.

It’s gonna require a lot of listening and sometimes it’s gonna be painful. But if you have a culture of accountability, you can be accountable for listening and making things better just as much as you can be accountable for not listening and not making things better.

• Go to the previous slide: Observations on Satisfaction
• Go to the main presentation page: Getting Started, Getting Better: Improving your social media via web analytics.
• Go to the next slide: You can develop a clear approach for aligning your social media plan with your business goals.

If you’ve been able to gather some conversion data, you can start to put in context: which channels are working best for you? Which topics? Is there a seasonality for your topics?

You can compare the acquisitions to the conversions by channel to figure out which channel gives you the most qualified leads. For example, Facebook might get 200 people to your site but only 3 fill out a form; while participating on your local newspaper blog brings only 30 people to your site but 8 fill out a form.

Figuring out quality this way can be pretty useful for informing future actions and helping you determine where to spend the most time.

• Go to the previous slide: Observations about Conversion
• Go to the main presentation page: Getting Started, Getting Better: Improving your social media via web analytics.
• Go to the next slide: Observations on Satisfaction

Once you’ve done some measuring around Reach you might want to put that data in context. Are there opportunities for growth somewhere? Say you’re a realtor in Topeka, are there lots of people involved in conversation about “single family homes in Topeka” but none of them within reach of your messaging? That sort of thing. Figure out where the best opportunities to grow your reach are.

One tip is to use paid advertising as research. Paid advertising has a great advantage in that it’s fast–it happens as fast as you can set it up. Use advertising to identify opportunities in potential channels and conversations.

• Go to the previous slide: Observations about Reach
• Go to the main presentation page: Getting Started, Getting Better: Improving your social media via web analytics.
• Go to the next slide: Observations about Acquisition