Just got buzz switched on – my initial thoughts having played around with it for 5 mins are that it looks quite interesting. I was a big fan of FriendFeed, and its a bit like that in terms of the flow. Obviously there’s a huge potential for attempting to process vast amounts of information flow – but you just got to filter out the irrelevant stuff (which can be tricky and time consuming). I think it’s interesting to have it integrated with your email account – I think most people have their email open all the time – I do. So there’s no real friction flitting in and out of buzz. I know some people have been giving out about the fact that Google have just blasted this out,  there’s no explicit opt-in, you get it whether you like it or not. Similar to what facebook have done regarding UI changes. But this does not pollute the gmail experience directly – yes, its automatically turned on within the application itself, but you still have to opt to click the Buzz link. Its interesting, once you have all your profiles set up in Google Profile its straightforward to have all those profiles aggregated.

Obviously a huge part of this is that Google now gets to see your entire social graph and digital footprint (if you add in all your profiles), which in turn will mean they can start rolling out more focused social search as well as targetting more and more ads at you.

I haven’t read too much of what others have said – be interesting to see what people think of it after using it for a while. When you think about FriendFeed, the user-base for that was tiny – max 2-3 million I think. But gmail had 176 million unique users in December 2009 so that really is rolling out real-time web to a massive audience – much bigger than Twitter which is plateau-ing at the moment allegedly.

Thats my tuppenceworth anyway

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The areas that I see that businesses need the most help and support in the online and digital sphere are around automated marketing solutions, content marketing, leadgen and lead nurturing programmes, and integrated CRM with digital, online and social channels. Coupled with, of course a strong emphasis on the need for serious digital strategy and planning, a comprehensive period of listening to the market, customers, competitors and ultimately the rolling out of tactical solutions that incoroporate all the points that I made at the start. This is a fascinating area for anyone with an interest in technology, marketing, sales, communications, organisational change etc…but yet what is amazing is that there is so much focus on the tools for the tools sake, and solutions that have not evolved over the past 7 years. I really cannot understand this.

Well in fact, I suppose I can. A lot of those who claim to be experts in all things Digital – seem to be very monothematic in terms of their skills and language that they use. They are particularly good at reducing the entire business world down to terms such as SEO, SEM, Email Campaigns, Twitter, Facebook without standing back and thinking what from a business perspective does a senior marketer, sales, communications or product management resource need and want to solve and why. There seems to be a total disconnect in the vocabularies and insights that the typical digital and online practitioner has in regards to addressing real business problems and understanding how businesses operate.

I think 2010 is going to be an interesting year for online practitioners. The business community is looking for far more integration of technologies rather than narrow focused skillsets and solutions. There’s a lot of room for improvement across the board for everyone operating in this area and those outfits who still have not migrated beyond PPC, SEM, SEO, Email Marketing solutions need to move the needle intellectually and digitally soon or risk being caught out in a very serious way.

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I’ve attached a presentation that I give on explaining social media (in its broadest sense) – i.e. social networks, digital content, listening tools, reputation management, content marketing etc… along with case studies of businesses using social media to both good and bad effect. Also covers  how social media platforms have become enablers for the mass spread of ideas and memes.  Have a read through and get back with any comments etc…

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A quick post to capture a few thoughts on what I observe re: social media prognostications and insights from people with an interest in this area. I am not interested in bashing social media gurus – like anything there’s people who are opportunistic and see an area where they can make money – and away they go – that’s life and it happens. I’m also completely bored listening to so-called experts pour scorn on anybody else who shows a professional interest in the area, as if they have a monopoly on the internet – give me a break – just because you’ve been writing a blog for a couple of years doesn’t give you the right to ridicule someone else for expressing an interest. Regarding social media, for me, its not so much about the specific tools (although they are very interesting too), but its much more about the behaviours that these tools have given rise to that is so phenomenally intriguing from a business, cultural, psychological, sociological etc… perspective.

On any given day, there are both commercial and non-commercial examples of how ubiquitous access to the internet coupled with the adoption of these newish (social) tools throws up scenarios that were just not possible five years previously. Somebody captures an incident on a mobile phone, uploads it to YouTube, gets picked up by a blogger, gets posted and tweeted, retweeted, picked up by mainstream media, and within a few hours hundreds of thousands (millions)of people have seen the original online and then it gets covered on national TV that night. A facebook page springs up and within a few hours there’s hundreds of thousands of fans. The velocity in which ideas, memes, incidents etc. can go from nothing to being a national or international story is amazing – and its going to keep on getting more pronounced as more people use these modes of communication. And of course people tend to focus on the high profile and headline grabbing examples, but of course there is also an infinite number of practical examples of social media being useful for instance when victims of floods, hurricanes, fires tweet for and receive help from emergency services – the red cross in the States use twitter as a key local tool to help out victims in distress situations.

The ability to find, watch, listen, and read the most incredibly comprehensive content is made so much easier by the usage of social technologies. This in itself constitutes a paradigm shift in information access. A lot of information was there before, but I think the whole model of following people and following the link trail they create, gives you access to information (and real people) that you just wouldn’t necessarily have found access to in Google or Yahoo – I know I certainly didn’t. So by using these tools – I think its fair to say that I have become smarter – I definitely have been exposed to a lot more ideas and knowledge than previously.

Back to the original purpose of writing this post, which is that I get tired listening to people prattling on about the tools and not focusing on the behaviour and looking beyond the obvious. Im tired of social media experts telling you how many blog posts you should post, and how you should use twitter, and how to create a facebook fan page or building a profile on linkedin. Its laughable, what anyone with an interest in this area should be looking at, is the massive shift in indvidual behavioural conduct and how millions of people are beginning to instinctively and innately think about sharing information as a matter of course, consuming and placing credibility on information sources that they didn’t even know existed a few years back, and how their ability to consume information from a hugely diverse ecosystem has evolved rapidly from a narrow set of channels to an infinite number both online and through mobile.

So it would be really nice to see more informed thoughtful debate across the board rather than one dimensional talk about THE TOOLS.

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Just testing out usage of QR codes – this one below is for my twitter account. Scan it in using a QR reader on your mobile and it should automatically kick off a web client with @kfeighery Twitter homepage. You can generate QR codes from sites such as kaywa.com

@kfeighery Twitter QR Code

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