Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience.

Brian Solis at Social Media Today writes about Forrester’s report, saying that social networks are evolving into a social operating system, and that “social networks and sites will recognize the preferences of users, but more significantly, they will also recognize personal identities and relationships to customize the experience based on preference and behavior….I believe that the combination of semantic and collective intelligence systems will improve the content and overall interaction within sites and social networks over time.”

None of this is really news, maybe clarification. I was in conversations with Tim O’Reilly and others in the early 2000s that acknowledged that the Internet/Web was an operating system and inherently social. Those conversations led to the paper Tim and Dale Daugherty wrote that loosely defined concepts labeled “Web 2.0.” The Data Portability Project kicked off in 2007, and we’ve been trying to get our heads around individual data management since the 1990s (thinking of P3P). Thinking about the semantic web has been brewing since the turn of the century. Various data interchange formats and semantic web projects have emerged since then.

What’s interesting in Solis’ piece is the concept of SRM – Social Relationship Management – vs Customer Relationship Management and Doc Searls’ idea of Vendor Relationship Management. CRM and VRM combined make a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We get to a point where customers and vendors are transparent to each other, and are part of a larger social ecosystem that can facilitate authentic and symmetrical relationships. Solis says

The biggest opportunity for the expansion of social networks is to build bridges between these isolated islands to deliver a more fulfilling, meaningful and productive experience. As I see it, we will start to see a the social web not as a collection of distributed islands, but as one greater collective better known as a human network – a contextual and relationship-based network that consists of like-minded individuals no matter where their profile resides.

The Personal Democracy Forum explores the social relevance of the decision to adopt Drupal, which is known for its interactive community features:

Let’s really try to extract the last drop of possible meaning from a choice over a CMS. Squint a bit, and it’s possible to see the White House’s move to open-source software as a move towards the idea that collaborative programming can inspire — or at least, support — a more distributed politics. That idea bubbled up in 2004, when young programmers experimented with using Drupal itself to turn the Howard Dean campaign into the Howard Dean network. [Jon Lebkowsky of Social Web Strategies was part of that effort.] This idea, that a politics crafted by the people could be a powerful thing indeed, emerged in a slightly mutated way during the Obama presidential campaign, but has arguably receded below the surface during the first nine months of the Obama Administration. First the WhiteHouse.gov CMS gets more open, then the White House OS? Perhaps.

Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.

Read the complete post by Derek Powazek.

Derek argues that most of what you need to know about SEO can be described in a paragraph or so, and I’ve said so myself. However we wouldn’t steer business clients away from SEO, as long as they understand that it’s not magic, and that it’s part of a larger strategy where the emphasis is on great content, as Derek says. For many clients, an SEO consultation or relationship with a clueful, ethical search company – Apogee Search, for example – is a path toward transformation of a good site to a great site. This is because the best SEO consultants will tell you that you have to do the things Derek mentions, and they’ll work with you on content as well as keyword development. They’ll tell you that SEO isn’t voodoo. Much of what they will do is help you determine keywords and site adjustments that are most likely to increase exposure and produce conversions.

We do something broader – help you develop a strategy and roadmap for creating a compelling presence across relevant social platforms – but we start with your web site, which is the core of your web presence. Increasingly people will find you through your social media presence, as well as search, so you have to consider both part of your strategy for building a successful online presence. We address SEO as part of our complete strategic web service, but we focus more on helping you create a compelling presence – making something great.

What we’ve been talking about is <em>social business,</em> and others are starting to pick up the conversation. The Dachis Group here in Austin has been talking about these points, prompting the Neville Hobson post “Is ’social business’ the new black,” and a response from Dave in his ClickZ column. I posted a link to Dave’s column in our LinkedIn Group and on our Facebook page. We invite you to comment either place, and join the conversation.

But as our business is more and more about marketing, and our clients tend to be marketing groups, I’m getting how easy it can be to make these mistakes. Social media marketing – and marketing in general – isn’t easy to do well and do right. Berkowitz’ list is valuable. Some examples:

We have failed to monitor social channels for discussions of our brands and competitors.

We have guessed at our target audience’s interests and activities rather than conducting research that could have provided real answers.

We have lost consumers by organizing social architectures that were impossible to navigate coherently.

We have repurposed creative and messaging from other channels when we should have adapted or created it for these social spaces.

We have shortchanged social marketing by planning campaigns instead of ongoing programs.

You get the idea. Read the whole post, it’s insightful.

because our eyes are bigger than our tummies. We have delusions of success. We take on more than we should, routinely exaggerating the benefits and discounting the costs. We over-scope, over-scale, and over-sell. At the same time, we under-estimate, under-resource, and under-plan.

He follows with another paragraph about the fundamental truth of projects:

Projects—even small ones—are complex and challenging. Interests often compete and conflict. Individual performance varies widely. Continual shifts in direction and frequent stalls that slow momentum demand constant planning, adjustment, and improvisation—skills that only come with battle scars.

He then gives an example of a project that broke the laws – the Mars Pathfinder project – and succeeded in big ways, with a combination of creativity, obsessive testing, and incorporation of speed and flexibility into the design.

(I’d like to read, or maybe even write, a whole book on how to break the laws, with case studies!)

2020 Social Position Paper Social Business Strategy

Here’s an example of a mind map for one of the ATX Equation “scenes,” suggesting how an experience ecosystem might be described:

The push for share of voice has created an arms race, where brands spend more and more to hold on their share of a slowly growing market. Like housing prices, this will sustain itself until someone — that is, the buyer — walks away from the table.

Could that moment be now? Observers are wondering if US consumers will ever return to their past spending habits. Since the last decade’s growth has been attributed to the wealth effect — households feel richer even with a zero savings rate because their houses and financial assets make them money while they sleep — it makes sense to imagine an increased savings rate following catastrophic asset depreciation.
Consumption will decrease, and in response, companies will…increase advertising?

• Time is different online. People who are always on and respond quickly experience online interaction differently than those who log on less frequently. (Gilly Salmon called this  ”snowflake time“.)
  The latter can experience a sense of overwhelm and being “left behind.” Make this dynamic visible to the group and encourage the fast posters to slow down a bit and the others to log on a bit more frequently. Understand that if this gap persists, the group may  splinter. If that is the reality, consider sub groups and weave ideas between them as their facilitator.
• Punctuate time. Alternate synchronous with
  asynchronous as a way to keep the “heartbeat” of a group going. Like a first time runner, groups “heartbeats” have to be faster at first to build relationships, establish norms and patterns of interaction. Over time as the runner “trains” the heart beats slower. So with the group.  For example in a three week online workshop I like a  minimum of one synchronous telecon interspersed with asynchronous activity. This is a simple matter of attention – which we always find is in short supply!