Accidentally on Purpose Blog

Giovanni Rodriguez, Shel Israel and I had dinner in Palo Alto last week and we were discussing the business applications of social media.  In that discussion we touched on a number topics, but how machine-to-machine communications could be considered or at least to some extent deliver on the concepts of social media really piqued my curiosity.  By the way, this isn’t an idle question.  Machine-to-machine is at the foundation of a little thing called Web 3.0.  I was adamant about saying yes it could.   We weren’t always in agreement, and to some extent I agreed with the dissent in the conversation as much as I agreed with my own arguments.  That conversation lasted about 20 minutes before we moved on to another topic and just when I thought I had forgotten the thread, I read this important announcement from Microsoft and it got me thinking about it all over again. 

According to the MSFT press release:

“The ‘last ad clicked’ is an outdated and flawed approach because it essentially ignores all prior interactions the consumer has with a marketer’s message,” said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of the Advertiser & Publisher Solutions (APS) Division at Microsoft. “Our Engagement Mapping approach conveys how each ad exposure — whether display, rich media or search, seen multiple times on multiple sites and across many channels — influenced an eventual purchase. We believe it represents a quantum leap for advertisers and publishers who are seeking to maximize their online spends.”

What really got me rethinking the notion of machine-to-machine social media was reading this post from Josh Catone at the ReadWriteWeb, where MSFT is limiting it’s view of engagement by focusing only on how consumers interact with ads:

This type of engagement mapping tool will become really powerful when it can measure not only ad views that lead to a purchase, but also any other type of online or social interaction. This is probably the end game that Facebook is aiming at with Beacon. Imagine the value advertisers could derive from a tool that looks at how your online activity leads up to a purchase. i.e., did you see a friend talk about the product on a Facebook wall post? Did you read a blogged review? Did you see the product talked about in a YouTube video? Did you look at any ads when all that was happening?

If Microsoft truly wants to map “engagement,” it needs to include in its focus the the ever-expanding “social” networks of people who are helping fellow consumers navigate the commercial Web. 

What do you think?  Could this be the beginning of the machine-to-machine version of social media?

I suspect that many people will be tuned off by machine-to-machine approaches.  But as one Stanford professor notes (Clifford Nass), some of our best friends are computers.

A little while back I wrote a post:  What Makes Twitter So Valuable?  Well today, Twitter gave me a present.   I received a notice that someone was now following me.  I always look at their bio’s and recent tweets to get an idea of who they are in order to determine if I should follow back or not.  There was no bio, no blog listed and in fact, pretty much devoid of any way to determine who this person was.

But, one of their tweets did catch my eye:

my new favorite blog http://failblog.wordpress.com/ 11:46 AM February 05, 2008 from web 

I figured this would shed some light on who this person was — it didn’t, and while I still don’t know who it is — they do have a great sense of humor so I followed back.  I also added the failblog to my reader for those times that I need some comic relief.

Thanks @lenvt.

Tomorrow, The Conversation Group is holding an event in NYC at SAP’s Office at 95 Morton St — 2nd floor from 1-7pm.

Basically, its an examination of the ten years post Cluetrain:  What have we learned?,  What was right and wrong?,  What was left out that should have been discussed?  and What should we be thinking about for the next ten years?

If your interested please register here.  Speakers for the event include:

• Doc Searls, co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Institute
• Peter Hirshberg, Chairman of the Executive Committee of Technorati and Chairman and Partner at The Conversation Group
• Ted Shelton, partner at The Conversation Group
• Josh Bernoff, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
• Thor Muller, CEO of Get Satisfaction
• Jake McKee, Principal at Ant’s Eye View, and past Global Community Relations Specialist for the LEGO Company

I hope to see you there.

Shel’s interview with Michael Dell is an important milestone in the SAP Global Research Survey. 

Why?  As Shel stated in the post:

• It’s probably the most extensive interview with a major CEO on this subject ever. 
• He answered all questions, including a few that were tough.
• Michael is thinking broadly about this topic as evidenced by his quote below. 

You know, people talk about social media programs but I just think about conversations with customers.  We have hundreds of millions of them every year.  We listen on the phone and in the offices of our customers.  Why not improve our online listening skills and the number of ways we can do it?  We want our customers to walk the hallways of Dell.  From our engineering labs to manufacturing plants to service and solutions teams. This means that when we’re making decisions, we’re always thinking about our customers.

Thank you Michael for adding your thoughts regarding how Dell’s use of social media is impacting business and culture!  Hat tip to RichardatDell for making this happen!

Technorati Tags: Michael Dell,SAP Global Survey

Ferg Devins will be one of the 1100 Molson employees that will take to the streets of Toronto on the morning of February 5th for “Toque Tuesday.”  This is Raising the Roof’s  national day of awareness and fundraising in support of combating youth homelessness in Canada.  If your interested you can show your support by buying your toque here. 

For those of you not familiar with what a toque (French) or tuque (English) is — it came to prominence (for me anyway) courtesy of Bob and Doug’ McKenzie’s, The Great White North comedy album — circa 1981.  For those of you that don’t recall, please enjoy the The Twelve Days Of Christmas - “Kanadian Korner” style, Eh?

Follow along as Molson will be updating their community blog as to their efforts. 

This past Saturday David Churbuck posted about a new blog authored by Reid Walker, VP of Global Communications at Lenovo.  Walker’s blog is focused on the topic of Worldsourcing.  Reid deserves an “attaboy”  for devoting an entire blog to an increasingly important topic.

“What is Worldsourcing?  Walker defines it as:

Increasingly, we live in a world with just one time zone and business must source materials, innovation, talent, logistics, infrastructure, and production wherever they are best available. And they must sell wherever profitable markets exist, anywhere in the world. In a nutshell, that’s worldsourcing — a business strategy that taps global diversity and resources and distributes management, operations, processes, and production to create more efficiencies wherever they will function best to deliver the best value to customers. Worldsourcing is not about cutting costs, it’s really about growing your company’s value by leveraging the right expertise in the right places to identify and serve markets in both developed and emerging markets.

This got me thinking about the SAP Global Survey and how it was predicated on a similar idea — that being — a global company must understand the global marketplace and all of its diversity to be capable of actively participating in that global marketplace.   The “Survey” is in effect, the Worldsourcing of how social media impacts business and culture around the globe.   With that understanding, we can then leverage our resources in the right ways, in the right places and with the right people to deliver value to all of the markets we serve.

A long time ago (2005) in a place not that far away (Walldorf, Germany) I met Thomas Otter.   Funny thing was that it took James Governor of Redmonk fame to introduce me to another SAP employee.  Thomas was one of those unselfish people you meet in life that when he offers you praise or criticism you know it comes with no agenda or strings attached.  He’s a damn decent guy who’s really got his head on straight.  All he really wants to do is help you succeed — no matter who you are and no matter what you do.

It was during phase 1 of the SAP Global Survey –  Shel referenced social media as being a “Cult of Generosity”, well for my money Thomas is the embodiment of that spirit.   Today is Thomas’ last day at SAP and I for one will miss him terribly.   I don’t think I’ve told him before how much I really appreciated his tutelage and our discussions about business, social media, communications and all the other topics we’ve discussed along the way. 

Today Thomas begins his new career with Gartner and I want to wish him all of my very best!  Thomas, we will miss your presence both physical and virtual at SAP but I am sure that we will be seeing each other soon enough.   Perhaps at SAPPHIRE Berlin?  Hopefully much sooner.

Your a good man Thomas Otter — a very good man!

BTW, who is the other Thomas Otter anyway?