The Wall Street Journal’s What They Know series documents new, cutting-edge uses of Internet-tracking technology. The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed on people’s computers by the 50 most popular U.S. websites, plus WSJ.com. The Journal also built an “exposure index” — to determine the degree to which each site exposes visitors to monitoring — by studying the tracking technologies they install and the privacy policies that guide their use. http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk/

AlixCompany Dialogue Clay Langdon

(Recorded Dialogue is 23 minutes)

Our second Dialogue has been completed and this takes us beyond the one hit wonder. I am so very excited to share with you the Alix Co. Consulting Dialogue with Clay Langdon, Brand Strategy and Experience Development Director at McGarrah Jessee in Austin, Texas.

Clay and I have chatted on a couple of occasions outside of Dialogue regarding the opportunities in our business today and the opportunity for strategic planning given the social behaviors of consumers in the marketplace. He has been kind enough to offer time for Dialogue and I’m just thrilled that we have connected.

The recorded Dialogue shares Clay’s POV and perspective on the following:

1.  I understand that McGarrah Jessee is about strategically grounded ideas and creative craftsmanship. However, one might argue that our industry has largely become a factory for production and efficiencies. All things considered, how would you describe the opportunity for agencies today?

2.  I’ve mentioned on Dialogue that we’re building ‘latent connections’. That is, the value of social media connections (and other ‘social’ entities) has yet to be realized. We are connecting, but not necessary in value/benefit driven ways. Would you agree with this insight? If yes, what do you see as today’s value of these connections? What would you say are the future, yet to be tapped, opportunities?

3.  Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was recently quoted by TechCrunch as saying, “Our strategy is very horizontal. We’re trying to build a social layer for everything.” Do you think ‘everything’ has the potential of being social? In your opinion, are there lines or guardrails for social connections?

4.  Lastly, in this realm of social is the idea of crowdsourcing. One definition of crowdsourcing is (Jeff Howe) the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. I’ve seen some cool things coming out of 99 designs and a friend and I recently discussed John Winsor’s Planningness presentation on the topic. What would you say is the value of crowdsourcing?

WSJ (via SmartBrief on Social media) and Mashable are talking about Twitter. Twitter is talking about making money-

Since launching its advertising offerings in April, Twitter has signed on more than 30 big-name brands, including Coca-Cola Co. and Verizon Wireless, to test them. Early initiatives exceeded expectations. On average 5% of Twitter users who saw an ad on the service interacted with it, a rate that is “an order of magnitude greater” than most online ad campaigns.

Twitter offers “Promoted Tweets,” where marketers pay to have their messages listed as the first result when a user conducts a search on Twitter.com. Twitter plans to experiment with ads that target users based on the content in their tweets, or messages. (WSJ article: Twitter Switches Chief Executive)

Alix Co. thought: Google is doing something similar in concept with Priority Inbox. That is, ‘listening’ to emails and making connections based on words/themes/buckets. Value to consumer = time. Value to Google = (?).

Twitter launches Promoted Accounts (Mashable)
“Twitter has officially launched Promoted Accounts, a new advertising format that helps brands gain more followers by being displayed in Twitter’s “Suggestions for You” feature. Just as important though, the company has begun testing syndication of Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends to third-party apps.”
source: http://mashable.com/2010/09/27/promoted-accounts/

Alix Co. thought: this involves selling (products/services) and connecting (people/privacy). The question is, will Twitter’s connections sell? Again, the value of Twitter is real-time news and information. It all goes back to positioning- specifically, Twitter is about the latest… Also, something about ‘Promoted Accounts’ seems off strategy for Twitter. Why not go bigger or ‘newer’ anyway. Real-time x,y,z— real-time connections for purchases, passes, and sewing classes… or, the latest and greatest from x,y,z brand delivered in a social way.

Stumbled upon the graph below this morning and it’s a key of sorts. It’s pulled from “Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom” by Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, Anthony Mills

The intro reads:

There is probably no segment of activity in the world attracting as much attention at present as that of knowledge management. Yet as I entered this arena of activity I quickly found there didn’t seem to be a wealth of sources that seemed to make sense in terms of defining what knowledge actually was, and how was it differentiated from data, information, and wisdom. What follows is the current level of understanding I have been able to piece together regarding data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. I figured to understand one of them I had to understand all of them.

Source: http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm

Missed it? Go here…

update 10/20/11: post has gone missing. Perhaps I can refer you to the source for in case it goes back up- http://thinkdoer.com/