Digital Influence Mapping Project

5 Things to do at the Wake (of the Web)

Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff's yin yang article on The Death of the Web captured a bird's eye view of what we are all adapting to everyday - the evolution away from PC-accessed Web sites in favor of many-device accessed applications. The authors do a great job of framing up the limitations of an experience we have all put up with over the years not the least of which is a piss-poor advertising solution - display banners - that doesn't seem to serve anyone well. 

The Mobile Internet

If you are thinking about your future digital strategy, these articles are a must-read. Finally, the promise of mobile is actually changing how we behave and what is possible. As Chris Anderson puts it: 

"And the shift is only accelerating. Within five years, Morgan Stanley projects, the number of users accessing the Net from mobile devices will surpass the number who access it from PCs. Because the screens are smaller, such mobile traffic tends to be driven by specialty software, mostly apps, designed for a single purpose. For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible."

Look at Facebook and Twitter usage even today. The Facebook app on the iPhone is widely thought to be far and above the most popular app. As reported in CIO:

"Facebook has about 150 million mobile users, up from just 100 million in April, and is counting on cell phones as the key platform for the future, according to the social-networking giant's head of mobile products, Eric Tseng."

And the Twitter blog reports:

"Total mobile users has jumped 62 percent since mid-April, and, remarkably, 16 percent of all new users to Twitter start on mobile now, as opposed to the five percent before we launched our first Twitter-branded mobile client."

Fast and useful

My Tweetdeck app on my iPhone does a great job of aggregating my Twitter and Facebook experience. Seamless app updates delivered to my phone surprise me with new and simplified features. Brands who are not grinding away right now to make their product and service experiences simpler and more useful to customers are missing the boat. The writing is on the wall. A recent HBR article on customer loyalty dispelled the myth that "delighting" customers builds the loyalty bond when in fact making the customer experience simpler appears far more powerful. 

Mr Anderson sums it up. 

"We’ll pay for convenience and reliability, which is why iTunes can sell songs for 99 cents despite the fact that they are out there, somewhere, in some form, for free."

B2B and B2C Brands should get busy. Spending all your time and energy primping a corpse (your Web site) will not bring it back to life. Beyond the loftier and highly relevant conclusions in the article, I would suggest that brands do five things from now on to keep up and maybe even get ahead of where this is all heading.

1. Put a Content Activation team in charge of external digital platforms like the brand web sites. 

 The teams that control the Web sites inside brands are powerful groups. Especially for brands engaged in ecommerce. For ecommerce, selling experts should be in charge and for the most part they are. For non-ecommerce brands or sites, we need to build an expertise within brands to deliver content and experiences to their customers and constituents via multiple platforms. Why "activation?" In my mind, the charge of this group is the creation (and collection), publishing, distribution and promotion of content. Content must be designed to be delivered to the right user at the right time and place to serve its purpose.  

2. Create a distribution mix-model for your brand

Think of your website, mobile app users, Facebook page and app users, partner sites and apps, Twitter and more as diverse distribution and engagement landscape. How will you distribute content or a particular experience for your customers, followers, fans? Your Web site will continue to be one platform yet not necessarily even the central hub of any experience anymore. A distribution mix-model causes you to look across all platforms and pay attention to how people are using them. 

 

3. Redefine creativity in marketing to mean utility or entertainment

The history of creativity in marketing is dominated by the big advertising idea. We have created entire organizations to support the pursuit of this type of creativity. Well, as a creative director, I can tell you that we need to change our thinking. Creativity now is about delivering something useful or something delightful to users. It requires new skills and ideas. It needs a new level of listening, curiosity and compassion for people (think of David Ogilvy's often quoted "the consumer is not a moron, she is your wife..." and multiply by a factor of 100.)

4. Commit to finding a new measurement model by 2012

Theoretically you have already budgeted marcom for 2011. It is pretty likely that a significant number of your brand marketers still believe that Web site metrics are the primary indicator of positive results. Clearly that doesn't hold water any more. If the Web site is no longer the center of our universe why should traffic there be the ultimate measure? Facebook engagement, word of mouth online, application usage, mobile subscribers are all examples of new measures that will eclipse site traffic.

5. Start exploring what social crm means and how it can move your business forward

If "content activation" is a more relevant purpose to managing your website(s), then crm or social crm is a key driver of that content. In the future, brands will manage relationships with customers not to simply drive revenue directly but to also drive advocacy. Brand content serves three purposes - builds presence in search engines, provides an engaging experience for "visitors" such that they develop consideration and even preference, and inspires people to share or advocate. Social CRM is the next logical step in managing long term relationships with customers who talk and buy. 

Time to start planning and executing for a post-Web world. 

The Next Media (from Brands, too) Delivers Value First

Lee Rainie, Director at the Pew Internet & American Life Project put together a nice presentation about their latest study on how media consumption has changed since 2000. Towards the end, he offered a slide on a different model for the media organization of tomorrow (really today). 

 

This is a perfect outline for the role of the news organization and for the brand stepping into the content creator role. Almost all of these eight functions can also be played by a brand. The one exception is "watchdog" as that role inherently begs for a third party whose interests are only on the public good. 

Here is the full presentation:

How Media Consumption Has Changed Since 2000

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

How We Get News and Information

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released some interesting research about how Americans are getting news. No big mystery that the Internet is more and more the center of that universe. But interestingly, there is also some tension between our habit of foraging around to many sources - online and offline-  and our sense that we only go to a few sites to get news. 

"The process Americans use to get news is based on foraging and opportunism. They seem to access news when the spirit moves them or they have a chance to check up on headlines. At the same time, gathering the news is not entirely an open-ended exploration for consumers, even online where there are limitless possibilities for exploring news. While online, most people say they use between two and five online news sources and 65% say they do not have a single favorite website for news. Some 21% say they routinely rely on just one site for their news and information."

The report also identifies our other big behavior - making news a shared experience. 

"To a great extent, people's experience of news, especially on the internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their Tweets and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads. For instance, more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails."

"...And 50% of American news consumers say they rely to some degree on people around them to tell them the news they need to know. Online, the social experience is widespread:

• 75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% say they share links to news with others via those means.
• 51% of social networking site (e.g. Facebook) users who are also online news consumers say that on a typical day they get news items from people they follow. Another 23% of this cohort follow news organizations or individual journalists on social networking sites."

What the report doesn't adequately answer is any measure of how Google serves as the first stop when someone wants news or information on a subject. I am going out on a limb here to suggest that Google remains a top referrer to most news sites followed closely by the rise of Facebook. 

The Next News: 5 Trends & Implications for Communicators

We are all living through the long reboot of the traditional media and news business. Being in the midst of the change makes it difficult to recognize on a daily basis exactly where the broad media world (publishers of news and information via broadcast, print and digital channels and platforms) will end up any time soon. It's too easy to shake our heads at the apparent resistance of the newspaper industry to change while the business disintegrates. While there may be resistance (there is in every established business), there are plenty of smart people inside that industry exploring answers. Just look at what the Knight Foundation is funding in terms of media experiments. 

Communicators need to change, too

Marketing and communications specialists are no different. There are plenty of forward thinking innovators just as there are plenty of folks relying on past models to carry them through. To be ready for change and to willing to make that change, we need to recognize the implications of how media is changing to understand how we might adapt and take advantage of that change. Ross Dawson had a useful article creating the Future of Media. I wanted to look at what these things mean for communications professionals who work on behalf of clients/brands. 

Here are 5 trends and their respective implications for communicators:

Outsourcing to content networks

This past week, Demand Media made news with its planned $125m IPO. They provide content and social infrastructure applications via their own content sites and partners sites like the San Francisco Chronicle. Their manifesto reveals the principles drive a new media company:

• Start each day by listening to the customer
• Make content that is unequivocally useful
• Build superior web experiences
• Invest heavily in our professional freelancer community
• Focus on the economics
• Never rest

They are doing what established media companies find so difficult - scaling content development via a network of freelancers, balancing community and content, and delivering value as defined by the user. There are others in this space. Examiner.com maintains a network of hyperlocal writers creating news distributed through their Web site in a scalable model. Even Huffington Post is praised for its mix of community and scaled content from a network of writers.

Implication: If a percentage of content on the San Francisco Chronicle comes from Demand Media, who should communications pros be pitching stories to? How can they connect relevant brands with niche writers? It's going to take a more thorough indexing of individual writers - sometimes within networks -  and its going to take a new approach to the working with a combined paid and earned model. 

Maintaining a database of the hundreds of thousands of citizen journalists out there is a Herculean task, never mind building relationships with them. In the Long Tail world we rely on business like Demand Media and Examiner (and Huffington Post and BlogHer) to aggregate them. Sometimes they are also the branded portal (e.g. Huffington Post), sometimes they are the unseen guts of other media properties (e.g. Demand Media). Communications professionals will need to think in terms of a blended paid/earned model to get access to these experts. Each of these businesses see themselves as gateways to their writers and discourage communicators from reaching them directly (or more aptly, the effort of reaching out to them directly doesn't match the return). Communicators need to think more creatively about combining paid media and earned media that deliver a value all the way down the chain to the consumer/customer/public. 

Scaling via consumer generated media

Most media properties have incorporated some degree of consumer generated media. Whether it is CNN's iReport or the New York Times, media properties have embraced consumer generated media as a supplement to their main editorial and as a way to reward engagement with their content (if my content is featured there, I will promote it). 

Implication: As the best writing continues to be curated and aggregated by those who have reach, brands need to refine their approach to influencer outreach. They need to get to the writers before they are aggregated.  A two-tier effort can help optimize coverage for a brand. The first tier is very close, personal relationships with the top 10, 20 or even 50 high-reach and relevance writers (influencers). The second tier is less intensive and includes a longer list of relevant influencers who may want to stay connected with what the brand is doing. This is the evolution of media relations and not a new concept.  

     

Our News Feed is in Facebook (and Facebook mobile)

There's a reason, Mark Zuckerberg calls the feature in Facebook 'News Feed.'  More and more people rely on the updates from their social graph - all of their friends, colleagues, influencers - as they appear in their social network updates. How many times has Twitter been cited over the past 2-3 years as the channel for breaking news? Well, all of that gets funneled through the Facebook News Feed. If my friend "likes" or shares a story from the New York Times, it shows up in my News Feed and I may click through to the story. If my friend "likes" or shares a story from TheFordStory.com (client), it shows up in my News Feed and I may click through to the story. 

Implication: Social networks make us all curators on behalf of our extended 'friends.' Brands can be content creators and/or media publishers themselves by following Demand Media's principles of listening to what their customers want to know about and publishing that. So, first, let's start behaving like the best content creators and publishers out there. Then, lets get that content into the hands of people who want it - where they want it.  By developing an approach to "social grassroots" brands can develop an authentic following (one based on delivering true value not corporate messages) via social networks and earn a place in the News Feed of customers and prospects. A third and final point, part of making the most relevant and useful content is formating it for delivery the way we all consume content. Make it work on mobile devices and you will up your reach considerably. According to Pew, "33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones."

Our news on-demand is in Google

When we want to know about something - news or information - we go to Google or whatever major search engine serves our market. 

Implication: While "universal search" in Google displays true "news" content under that header, it does so on the same page that all the other results appear on - thus universal search. Consumers may distinguish between what the New York Times has to say about a product recall, but they may also be interested in what the company says about it. Brands must take up the challenge to be prolific content creators and be expert at multimedia search engine optimization. This must start with what we call "Consumer intent modeling" or the simple process of paying attention to what people are searching for to match their needs better with our content. We need to work hard to have our content show up on the first two pages of Google search results for the terms consumers find relevant. That's how they find news and information they are looking for. 

The coming renaissance of professional journalists

I grew up admiring journalists like Tom Wicker and David Halberstam. They played a role that I valued. While the headlines around news and media is dominated by shrinking newsrooms and troubled business models, I believe that overlooks a coming renaissance for quality journalism. Yes, the kind of stuff I would pay for. 

Implication: Traditional 'earned media,' where a communicator connects the needs of the audience, the journalist and the brand and does so without hyperbole or spin, is not going away. Just as there will be a premium of great journalism, there will be a premium on great communicators willing to earn their way into stories through relevance and value more than anything else. 

Social Media Today - A Valuable Human Filter to Content

 

There is a great new version of Social Media Today and I would strongly recommend that you grab the feed and make it a regular read and engage. Basically three reasons why I recommend:

1. Robin Carey is driving this and she has a keen eye for editorial value. Yes, it's true - she asked me to be a part of the offering as an Advisory Board member and writer. I am flattered and grateful. But I am not sucking up to her for that. I think her editorial eye is clear in all the work she has done not just on on Social Media Today. Just look at valuable thought leadership plays like The Energy Collective.  Think of her as the credible human filter we all need to point us to good stuff out there. 

2. There are great stories from a variety of voices who are not the same old, same old pundits. Here's a short collection of headlines I like:

• Target your local media with the help of social networking sites - filled with practical tips on the hardest part of 'social' - local.
• The 3 Most Effective Content Marketing Principles - important basics that we should never forget
• Why we follow brands on Facebook and Twitter - a bit about what consumers expect from brands

3. They have a valuable Webcast archive that's just the right size and has solid shows like this one from Evan Cook: Leveraging Your Social Media Assets Inside the Company

Go to the site. Or grab the RSS feed. 

Understanding Twitter Influence

Do the number followers in Twitter matter? How many messages are retweeted? How many followers of my retweeters? We are constantly updating our model for assessing influence  via social media. All sorts of numbers can affect influence. Those numbers often are specific to the platform people are using. For example, inbound links matter to assessing blogs, followers matter to Twitter. While it's easy to list out the data points that are reflective of influence what's not easy is reducing that long list to the ones that really matter, can be inventoried and actually be used. 

We plot our influencers on a XY axis of "influence" and "relevance". Each of those measures is comprised of 3-5 data points - thorough but not a complete pain to apply to our daily work. It works. Within the context of a client engagement, we know who is more critical to our success. 

Klout has developed a simple dashboard that will crawl a user Twitter account and return:

1. a Klout Score: a composite number comprised of data points rolled up into three categories - "true reach," amplification and network

2. an Influence Matrix: a Klout Classification and list of those who most influence you and those you most influence 

3. a Content Analysis: essentially the most mentioned terms

Best Parts

The Klout Score includes unique retweeters, number of retweets, unique mentioners and list memberships. These are all indicators of how people are interacting with your tweets. And no mention of the number of followers. Not sure I agree with that but I see where they are going. If the true promise of social media is interaction and dialogue then let's stop evaluating it by simple reach terms (like the number of followers). 

 

The Klout Classification plots you on an rather complex XY axis and then offers a bit of a profile describing you as a "specialist" or a celebrity or a tastemaker. That's an excerpt of my Klout profile at the head of the post. I am happy enough to be plotted as a specialist. (Really, I am just glad not to be in the first quadrant). 

I like Klout. At the end of the day they are using some of the most relevant data points to gauge influence from behavioral data. And like any model, including our own, the most useful scale - Klout Score - only makes sense if you use it all of the time to judge relative influence. It is not a portable value per se. If you buy into its source data, it can e a helpful model when you compare a variety of people's Klout Scores.  

4 Simple Steps to Maintain Relationships with Influencers

We are really good at identifying and engaging influencers. So good that I often open up a client presentation with that thought. I believe strongly in the discipline of Influence Planning which is a model of making influencer engagement work better and be more impactful without robbing the practice of the human soul that brought us here. I realize that last phrase seems a little off the marketer's beaten path. But it is what attracts many people to the two-way dialogue inherent in lots of social media - it forces us to be more human, more personal and to hide a little bit less behind scripted 'official-speak' or marketing messages.

But what does it really mean to maintain those relationships? We still live in a marcom world dominated by campaigns. Campaigns are bursts of activity often defined, sadly, by paid media spend. The world often revolves around the media "flight" - a short lived journey to piqued awareness. Our influencer engagement too often maps to that burst. Influencers - "high influencers" - are those bloggers, Twitter-handle owners, message board-mavens who rank high in our influence mapping scale.But in campaign-based world, the risk is that we only reach out to influencers when when we want them to "activate" as if they were just waiting to hear from us. 

Deliver Continuous Value

When we say we "identify and engage" them with a brand, it is completely understood by my team that we have thought (and discussed with them) long and hard about the true value they will get from talking or receiving content or experiences with a brand. We cannot trick influencers to be engaged nor would we ever want to try. That only explains how we get them involved in the first place. Now, how do we actually maintain that connection in a way that they find valuable?       

If you want to walk the walk of influencer relationship management, you actually have to do stuff besides agonizing over which database to store their information in. 

1. Continue to connect them with valuable content and experiences they have expressed interest in from the brand

Simply enough - think beyond the campaign. If you are reaching out this month because of a tie-in with a tennis event, that same tennis blogger may be interested in your tennis sponsorship four months later even if you are not producing a big marcom campaign around the next event. 

2. Go beyond the brand engagement and connect them with other content and experiences they may find valuable that has nothing to do with a brand

Are their things that your company (brand or agency) is doing that might interest the influencer that is not toed into a campaign or marcom effort but that they might still find valuable. For an agency, it might be something tennis-related from some other brand. 

3. Pay attention to what is happening in their lives and reach out from time to time

It's impossible to maintain deep relationships with lots of people just as its impossible to read hundreds of influencer blogs to keep on top of what they are up to or wrestling with. Spot-checks of blogs and twitter feeds are all many of us can even for the folks we do know best. Read their blogs once a quarter or more often if you can. Follow their twitter handle and reply or retweet when it is natural to do so.

4. Send them an email twice a year to remind them to send you feedback on how the brand/agency is doing

Time slips away from all of us. If you make it a habit to send an email to a selection of influencers 1-2 times a year just to ask them how you or your team is doing in their side of the relationship, you will likely learn valuable feedback and demonstrate that you care. 

Happy Birthday? 

I stop short on sending birthday greetings. I don't want to turn personal outreach into a "cue" delivered via a script of "how to be more personal." that just feels disingenuous. I am certain we all know who we should be wishing 'happy birthday' to out there. 

Influence Planning Requires New Discipline: Part 2 Tools & Skills

This is Part 2. Part 1 is here.

Any good planning discipline develops tools and methods to make planning more effective. Influence planning is no different. Over the past five years or so, we have been creating tools and processes that help us deliver a more predictive result. Instead of relying on publishers and broadcasters self-reporting on audience demographics or independent databases to then place messages as in most media planning, we are looking directly at what people are thinking, saying and doing and then engaging with them around ideas, tasks and ambitions that are important to them.

Influence planning is on the rise as a complete discipline and serves as an alternate or companion to media planning. This latter function has dominated marketing budgets and therefore has become a self-fulfilling practice where all innovation is some form of paid media. "Iinfluence" is more complex than that. People's hunger for transparency from the brands they do business with and the advice of their more trusted peers calls for a different marketing model.

Here's a quick survey of tools and skills for influence planning. This Part 2 in a series that started with a new  research focus. 

Listening for insights
Clearly "listening" serves research. It goes beyond what we usually think about when we plan research, though. It is more than that preliminary step you take once or even periodically to inform your messaging. Today, listening is its own discipline that can constantly pay attention to what people are saying and searching for across the Web. This 'always-on' practice pays dividends everyday by delivering consumer feedback and trends that can guide not just messaging but overall strategy. When we started noticing how one of CNN's twitter handles vastly outperformed all fo the traditional media outlets jumping on Twitter last year, we added simple @andersoncooper(for example) outreach to our own efforts to keep these folks informed and fuel the significant retweeting from that handle. That's an example fo a simple action taken from ongoing listening. Marketing has done a form of this for years via direct response marketing. You put messages and offers into the marketplace, see what people respond to and then adjust.

The analogy in communications and PR is typical crisis management where you manage a live listening post for media and consumer generated media (cgm) and make adjustments on a daily or even hourly basis. Does it pay to apply this same intense listening to brands not in crisis?

For a typical brand with 3-4 relevant topics and a collection of 20-30 keyword combinations, a weekly report complete with action steps can be drafted and delivered in about 3-5 hours.If your effort the following week gains in effectiveness it is likely worthwhile.

We do the same thing with search. Consumer Intent Modeling has been fine-tuned by our search group, GSI. They know how to quickly analyze what people are searching for and we can then use that information to fuel our strategy and content development.

Influencer mapping & segmentation
There are a lot of schemes for analyzing the most influential voices online and rank that influence. Some are good. Some are suspect. Some are just plain silly. Many of the syndicated listening tool and service providers - Visible, Radian6, SM2 - have some type of proprietary rank for "influence." My only suggestion is to always unpack the recipe they and others use. If you don't understand and respect it, don't use it.

We create Influencer Maps. We look at 5 data points to tell us that an online influencer is, well, influential. We look at another 4 to determine how relevant theyare for our brand or project. We have fine-tuned this model a few times over the years as new behaviors and platforms have come online. It will always be evolving like Google's algorithm.

So much of what we do is contingent on great matchmaking between brands and influential people online that we have gone to great lengths to adjust and improve our approach. We put influencer public datainto our database and the net result is that we have developed a substantial directory of great bloggers, Twitterers, forum participants and more. They are segmented based upon their stated affinities (design aficionados, green enthusiasts, parents, etc...) Our database is another tool-of-the-trade.

Engagement planning
What 'creative' is to media planning, 'engagement' is to influence planning. Figuring out what influencers and grassroots consumers will find attention-grabbing and worth their investment of time is hugely creative. It is also where there is as much art as science. 

Are we simply inviting people to experience our product? If so, how does it arrive? What is that out-of-the-box experience that contributes to the talkable moment? Have we created the world's largest tweet-up? Are crowdsourcing a movie for dad's day of "one thing my dad taught me"? The sky is the limit. the guiding principle is always how we can deliver value to the end user.

Tools we use:

• To help plan, we have developed "value exchange" criteria to understand if we are delivering enough value
• We have adapted Emanuel Rosen's drivers of WOM to use as a checklist for activation (will our program drive influencers to share, participate and recommend?)
• Conversation Calendars plan our a la editorial calendars what we plan to release to our followers and influencers that they will find valuable enough to pass along or otherwise participate with.

Conversation management

This is really a form of engagement. I call it out here as it has evolved considerably with the emergence of Facebook and Twitter. Brands now have the opportunity to manage an ongoing relationship with customers and constituents. This is not necessarily about diehard fans. Nor is it quite the same as serving a distinct few by stewarding a community.  Both of those efforts can be hugely worthwhile.

Conversation management is that "everydayengagement" most easily recognized in Facebook walls and great email CRM programs. The Conversation Calendar mentioned above is a staple tool. Two others include the actual role of theConversation Manager and the social content management system (social CMS), we use to make publishing across platforms more efficient.

Next up: Measurement

This Week at PRWeek Lab: 12 Lessons on Socializing Ford

This Wednesday at 11:30am ET, we will be presenting a session in cahoots with John Stoll, Manager of Global Corporate News at Ford on socializing the enterprise. Originally billed as "5 Lessons", we will actually deliver 12 lessons from our experience.

This is part fo 2 says of an innovative virtual event hosted by PRWeek called PRWeek Lab. While I have participated in virtual events before, they remain a bit of an experiment. We will be online live from 11am to 4pm ET each day June 2-3 running our own presence - Ogilvy's Innovation Academy - where you can experience 3 short samples of the curriculum we use for our staff and clients.

But back to the main session. Here's the skinny:

Socialize the Enterprise: 12 Lessons Learned Applying Social to Business

Featured speakers:
John Stoll, manager, global corporate news, Ford Motor Company
John Bell, global managing director, 360° Digital Influence, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Ford has applied social media more strategically and thoroughly than other leading brands. In 2009, the Social Media Index named Ford the top automotive brand in social media. How did Ford apply social media in a most critical year? How has it changed their communications function, team and mission? Join John Stroll, manager, global corporate news, Ford Motor Company and John Bell, managing director of Ogilvy's 360° Digital Influence team as they offer a peak beneath the tent. What five lessons did they learn that surprised even them?

Please join us at the event. You can find out more here and register.

Social Shopping Experience at the Social Graph Symposium

Great panel sharing their experience "doing" social shopping. Here's thegroup at Rapleaf's Social Graph Symposium:

• Shawn Bercuson - Principal at Lightbank
• Joe Davis - CEO at CoreMetrics
• Jon Kubo - CIO at Wet Seal

Jon Kubo at Wetsealis sharing about their intent for thier iPhone app to drive people into the stores. They want folks to have an outfit-matching utility but more importantly, they want to have folks publish their shopping activity out across their social graph. They created an app where two people can essentailly "Webex"-style converge on a ecommerce page and see what each other is doing (e.g.circle a product).

I love that their Facebook pagedrives people to "Like" to unlock the experience (it only appears to do that). When I asked him about Facebook's new Open Graph initiative, he acknowledged that this model may be more of a threat. He is pretty far along with implementing social features for his site/apps/etc... and surrendering the primary "login" to Facebook may present a problem as big as the benefit. But his biggest problem is the realization that social activity on an ecommerce site diverts people away from buying.

Oh, and they are now getting more traffic from Facebook vs. Google

Grouponwas Lightbank's first B2C play. It grew from 400 in 2008 to 5m today. Shawn, a principal at Lightbank, really emphasizes connecting and activating your brand ambassadors. This is a guy trying to drive business results (to reap return on his investment). It's refreshing to hear a business person place such value on "influence planning" (our term today)

Joe is all about measurement. He has an approach to 'intelligent offers' which is a great sound bite - The right offers to the right person at the right time - or something along these lines.

Another sharp session.