When it comes to looking to the future and trying to decide where to direct attention, I would be hard pressed to not include the opinions of Eric Schmidt CEO of Google for consideration.

On March 6, 2009, Schmidt appeared as a guest for a full hour on The Charlie Rose show.  Rose had been visiting with many of the dignitaries of Silicon Valley including Evan Williams of Twitter, Marissa Mayer also of Google, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Jeff Bezos of Amazon .. and a fascinating segment with Marc Andreesen entrepreneur of all sorts.

Rose started out with a brief background on Schmidt’s hiring at Google, and then launched into a complete dissecting of the business model as it exists, where it is going and what technology is doing to our culture.

There is always the push and pull tugging at the base of the brain that says “beware of Google’s power”, but at the same time, all indications point to the fact that Google does consider putting efforts towards projects for the greater good.  As you will see during his discussions about the Flu Trends project and Google Earth.

Schmidt’s term for the ability to mine all of the data that is being amassed is “collective intelligence”.

In reference to all of this information he predicted the ability to communicate globally will come about by the ability to translate all of this information on the fly.  Note the matter of fact nature of the comment where he foresees texting between two people who don’t speak the same language because the computing power will enable the message to be converted to the recipients native tongue.

Clearly, Schmidt sees the most influential technology changing the way we use the internet as mobile.  The number of mobile devices in use today are staggering, the capabilities from GPS, to cameras, to streaming content are going to personalize the experience to massive adoption levels.

To close it out, we talk about how the impact of all of this information at our fingertips has on our children.  We talked about this issue on the GeekDads@Home podcast .. in particular the conversation focused on the results that the author Don Tapscott uncovered in writing the books Growing Up Digital and Grown Up Digital.

View the Program and let us know what you think:

We start out today’s podcast with a shout out and sincere thank you from Cameron and I for the encouragement and input that we received as a result of our previous episode entitled Listener Feedback Welcome. Keep those cards and letters coming!

That lead us into the first half of our conversation about the fact that mainstream media outlets including CNN, Fox, PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS .. and MSNBC have all recently run stories about Twitter.

This topic came about after Cameron noticed a couple of my tweets while I was watching the Morning Joe host Willie Geist interview a reporter from CNBC named Dennis Kneale, who said things like “Twitter is the next Facebook” and “Twitter was invented to make me feel unhip and old” and “it’s like a new restaurant, everyone goes there because everyone goes there”.

Clearly there is a problem when CNBC’s Media and Technology Editor is oblivious to the power that the Twitter platform provides to the user base. My tweets were to show disgust that he said “it’s to make fun of people” and a reply to @hardaway that mainstream media is showing their ignorance and eventual obsolescence when they do segments showing a complete lack of understanding of the service.  Then to top it all off, Dennis Kneale admits that he doesn’t even have a twitter account himself! He is certainly a big fan boy of Facebook though as he keeps trying to compare the two.

Watch the segment for yourself here.

Comedy Central and Jon Stewart have taken on the platform for a skit which is a bit more tongue in cheek so we’ll give him credit. We also discuss an interesting interview on The Charlie Rose Show, which put Evan Williams, Co-Founder of Twitter at the table to discuss the business.

An enlightening moment arrives near the end when Williams says to Charlie Rose discussing his joining Twitter, and he says “we’ll point you out and you’ll get hundreds of thousands of followers” … which is certainly a strategy that Twitter has started to initiate where they are trying to drive up follower numbers for high profile users in a less than organic way via the suggested user list.

How do you feel about this? Is this a service that undermines the organic discovery process at the heart of what the platform does, or is it simply a good way to get new users kickstarted on their way to using it?

We next turn our attention to the social networking platform called Flickr, that has been built to compete against the photo sharing sites such as Snapfish, Smug Mug, Photobucket, etc.

I have a photostream and here is  Cameron’s photostream.

As with all social networking, there are ways to subscribe to other users photos, make comments on the photos, and even purchase the photos through Flickr.

An example of a brand strategy can be seen by what the podcasters at CoffeeCast.fm are doing with Flickr, trying to develop a social network of coffee drinkers who post photos of their experiences, and tagging them with the term CoffeeCast. Each tagged photo will appear in the Group and on the Coffeecast.fm site via a Flickr widget.  This is a great way to encourage user generated content and brand loyalty from the audience.

Cameron loves to check out the inspiration from the “interesting today” category on FlickRiver.  Other apps that we use include Flickup for the IPhone and My Flickr as a Facebook app.

(Update: I mentioned in the podcast that Flickup is a free app, but I just happened to check the App Store and it is listed as $2.99.  Not sure if I got an early free version or not, but I don’t recall paying for it. JM)

There are some great terms regarding the protections that contributors are provided when uploading to Flickr.  As you load photos you are able to decide what type of copyright protection you wish to assign to the image including the multiple variations of the widely used Creative Commons licensing. CC attributions could be a topic of multiple episodes, but we suggest looking at the development of the project and the extraordinary impact it has had on the burgeoning creative community online.

Also, keep us in mind as you post photos to Flickr. We’d love to get a link from you with your photostream .. we’ll post them here on Overflow.

This is our 23rd episode of Overflow ..  and in the spirit of good social media, we want to generate a conversation.  This is a call out to you, the listener, to request some feedback and dialogue about the direction of the Overflow Podcast.

We really appreciate every listener taking the time each week to to check out what we’ve got going on, and in order to make sure that we are addressing the topics that you want to hear, we are extending an invitation to you to contribute directly to the show.

In order to use the tools available for conducting social conversations, we are reminding you that you can use twitter to reach us at @ joemagennis or @ coolpapac.

Also, we are both going to be monitoring the hashtag #Overflow in Tweetdeck. Include that hashtag in your Tweet so that we get the message in our Twitter Search and we’ll know it’s a response to the podcast.

What do you think about posting comments on the site?  So far we have only had real dialogue take place on just a couple of episodes out of the 22 so far .. Does it work well?  If not, why not? …. we’d like to dialogue there as well.  It’s possible that the topics we are choosing aren’t generating “comment worthy” content, so let’s hear what is on your mind and we will be able to stimulate some comments.

What about a Facebook Page?  Is there a reason to use that Social Networking platform as a communication tool?

You might decide to contact us the old fashioned ways as well and call ….  404 . 875 . 1008 … or email us directly at jmagennis@befluid(dot)com & cwatson@befluid(dot)com.

What type of topics do you want to talk about?  We can steer the conversation into directions of traditional marketing if you want … how traditional media is being impacted by social media.

We can take a look at how brands are changing, how they must become more open and transparent in the face of changing expectations from customers and clients.

The Overflow Podcast is all about speaking to you .. but also getting contributions from you as well.  We’d love to hear what you think about our podcast.

During the days when we had a physical marketing agency and an office,  we had our chance to gather around the water cooler following the Super Bowl, to discuss the aftermath of the commercial blitz (and oh yeah, the game).

This year we take the opportunity to have the discussion on our Overflow podcast.

It seems we are about to enter an age where the expenditure for advertising in a mass market venue such as the big game will be followed closely by interaction in the social networking space.

The spot promoting Denny’s free grand slam breakfast for one day only, is generating a massive buzz on Twitter and blogs, anticipating and chronicling the crowds gathered to feast.

So from a measurement perspective, the best “creative” ads.. the ones that used to win the recognition…  might not be the “best” ads in terms of executing the objectives.  It will be the ads that can generate direct consumer interaction that will be recognized over the long haul as the most influential.

At one time, USA Today was the place to check for the feedback and recognition of the ads that were voted as best, however digging into the details of this year’s Ad Meter, 288 adults were given meters to rate their responses to the spots.  In this day and age of instant, real time feedback at social networks .. the results are dubious at best.

A great example of engaging the audience in real time, generating some excitement, and finally making a direct call to action after the spot aired came from ETrade.The Etrade baby was tweeting ( humorously)  as well as following up with an invitation to check out the outakes for their spot at the company web site. The Etrade baby is following 628 people currently and had engagement throughout the game.  My only advice to the company at this point is to start following people back and work on direct engagement beyond just making posts.

There was also a bit of community backlash happening during the broadcast including serious lashing out against Go Daddy. They have created these spots in the past, so is it possible that there has been this same sentiment all along and the company wasn’t aware of it due to in ability to engage directly with their customers?  Have they completely misread their audience?

A fun way to look at what was on everyone’s mind during the game is a visual tweet stream shown in a map format on New York Times.com. You can see key words in Tweets during certain moments during the game hitting the stream. Brands can gain some great insight from this viewpoint.

Where is this all headed? Are we going to see engagement at a greater level during the Super Bowl in 2010, with twitter profile names included in the spot?

….  On to Daytona

For some reason…. the word legacy has been on the brain lately. Are we doing good things with this moment in time when accessible tools for creating, communicating and collaborating (how’s that for alliteration?) are developed and refined on a daily basis?  It would seem like a wasted chance to not take full advantage of these platforms.

However, legacy as the term defined by Merriam Webster as “transmitted by an ancestor” only felt partially right for describing the sense of purpose that has been gnawing as of late.  Although, I have envied those that have achieved the great accomplishment of authoring a book or composing music that lives well beyond their physical being … where I am coming from is more in line with compiling Knowledge.

For a business perspective from the past, institutional knowledge was attempted to be documented via policy manuals. Those with the task of compiling would discuss practices with the implementers, document their findings to be analyzed and revised by higher ups in the organization, and ultimately published and distributed as a way to pass on this information.

The great missing elements were;

A) True collaboration, in the sense those with the most detailed and explicit knowledge were filtered by those that were doing the documenting.

B) Ease of access and search functionality for this knowledge was hampered by the limitations of paper in a binder.

C) Refinement of the knowledge by way of simple editing tools, which would allow for updates as new knowledge was obtained.

This great bank of knowledge was obsolete almost as soon as it was published!

This is no longer the case as knowledge can be gathered and shared in real time via blogs, audio podcasts, video podcasts and ultimately collected, refined, protected and transmitted via Wikis.

Taking the extra step of establishing a Wiki seems to be the culmination point that has been missing as we have morphed from the various stages of internet functionality … however, it represents THE ultimate purpose for all of this.  Yes, it’s great that we can shop, chat with long lost friends, build communities, and send 140 character updates, but there can be nothing more responsible than compiling and refining your personal knowledge in a way that is accessible for others.

The capability is not only limited to the demands of corporations but can be applied to social scenarios  such as parenting, the arts, hobbies, etc.

A great example of creating knowledge in a real time way and transferring that information into a searchable, cross-referenced database has been developed by Leo Laporte at his great TWiT Network.

All of the information about the hosts, shows and references from his vast array of programming can be found at the TWiT Wiki. As Leo, the hosts and guests on the podcasts discuss current topics, the information that they bring to light is updated into the Wiki as another means of distributing the knowledge.

Why shouldn’t we operate under the same premise? As we are all investing considerable amounts of time creating rich media content for the web, isn’t it our responsibility to compile the information in such a way that it can be transferable?

Blogs are a great linear form of stating facts and opinions with some level of search functionality, however the content tends to scroll off the front page and land in the archives. A wiki format creates a much simpler way to maintain and access this information .. including the ability to update and collaborate.

Just think how you would feel if you had the ability to peruse your parents or grandparents Wiki detailing all that they knew about farming, blacksmithing, pottery .. or whatever their area of interests might have been.  It would be fascinating as well as informative!

Now, go forth and Wiki ….

Inauguration Day 2009, when social networking demonstrated it could convey the principle of participatory government .. we had communications from some of the two-million people on the Mall in Washington posting to Twitter, and we had a convergence of CNN broadcast and the social network Facebook joining forces for real time streaming of events with a collective voice, CurrentTV turned on their Twitter application, plus countless other gatherings of people with the power to express their opinion.

On a day when at the stroke of noon eastern time, the web site Whitehouse.gov was revealed to proclaim “WhiteHouse.gov will be a central part of President Obama’s pledge to make his the most transparent and accountable administration in American history”.  It is a day when the Whitehouse web site includes a blog with the first post Change Has Come to Whitehouse.gov

During the Overflow podcast recorded on this morning of great change in the country, we talk about how social media tools are different for every person, place or thing. Despite some who are trying to apply do or don’t principles to using social media, decreeing a certain protocol must be followed to be true social media, we believe that each situation dictates how to use the tools that we have.

Social media is self governing in a truly democratic kind of way, which will allow everyone to have their own voice in how they wish to use the tools. Those with their own ideas should be allowed to put them forth … and should not be warped to the expectations of the few with the loudest voices.  If someone uses social media tools  in a way that is acceptable to you, follow and dialogue with that person, if not then find someone who meets your expectations.

From a business perspective make sure that as client and consultant, measurement factors are determined prior to implementation of social media strategies, with an eye towards the objectives to be achieved. It may be number of followers, community members, posts on a forum … more than simply a conversion to sales.  As long as the expectations are clear from the outset, tactics that achieve results are to be rewarded.

To tie it back to the swearing in of our 44th President, allow the tools to help provide you with  a voice and a say in the process. How much you use them to influence your community depends upon how much you participate.   There is no right way or wrong way as long as you act, just make sure you do on to others……..

In the second, first edition of the Overflow Podcast for 2009 we have to cop to a “do over” for the first edition of Overflow recorded last week.

In an attempt to demonstrate our thinking regarding the use of social media tools, we thought that it would be clever to take a look at a specific organization and bring to light our recommendations. The idea seemed to fall into the category of killing two birds with one stone … record a weekly podcast for our listeners and then re-purposing that podcast as a new business pitch. We would send a link for Overflow to that potential client that we targeted, outlining our rationale.

Upon second thought, we decided that it wasn’t fair to the subscribers and listeners of Overflow to subject you to that type of blatant pitch. Your time is too valuable and we are humbled that you choose to spend some time each week with us, and we would have felt extremely guilty if we had proceeded with our idea.

So here is our first Overflow of 2009:

We have come to appreciate Facebook as a potential network for brands to gain exposure to a potential of 150 million users and counting. Facebook seemed to be a hangout for college socialites planning the next keg party in the early days so we were not heavy supporters, however we have come around to believe that it can be a destination to build a secondary brand community complimenting the original web site/ blog.

There are still elements in Facebook that aren’t all to clear from a real business standpoint – throwing sheep, sending flair, sending drinks .. although Cameron postulates that the branding of such “features” could help promote a product.

The older demographic is starting to adopt Facebook as a great way to regain contact with long lost high school and college friends, while the growth of the younger adopters has flattened out, simply because they have saturated the space. It really is starting to hit the mainstream.

Our experience with clients advertising on Facebook has not yielded any results in terms of click throughs or conversions on the banner ads throughout the site, so there is still an entire business model to be executed for the company. However, brands who are able to interject their message directly into the news feed of users we believe will witness significant results.

That’s why Facebook Connect as an application should be immediately deployed by brands. Having consumer interactions with a brand’s blog appear directly in the news feed of Facebook users is a sure fire way to expose a message (important!!) in an actual consumer’s voice to their social group. From there it becomes exponential message reinforcement and growth as others within that friends list interact with the brand.

Also keep in mind the opportunity to post video and photography as a way to create brand awareness.

A secondary conversation to the Facebook social network is the use of LinkedIn as a complimentary way to expand your social graph. A great feature to use if you are looking to demonstrate knowledge or expertise in a category is to participate in LinkedIn Answer to gain credibility.

Have you found Facebook to be beneficial for your brand marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments.

To friend us on Facebook you can connect with Joe and Cameron

To connect on LinkedIn you can find Joe’s profile or Cameron’s profile.

We have a special guest on the Overflow podcast during the holiday break.  Randi Shapiro is the Founder and President of Recruiting Specialists, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Randi specializes in advertising, marketing and public relations placements for client companies ranging from creative shops to Fortune 500 companies.

Randi has been actively involved in the direct hire staffing business for many years, as a second generation recruiter.

The online world has allowed Randi to mine sites such as LinkedIn and Monster.com to get introduced to people who she might not have previously encountered, while simultaneously gaining insights into companies who she can help find candidates. As a relationship business, using all of these tools helps maintain contact with people and growing the extended network.

Randi stills sees hiring taking place even in this challenging economy, particularly with people who have interactive marketing experience.  She cautions candidates not to jump at the first offer simply because the need to find is job is so strong …. rather she tries to counsel that candidates should not settle on a salary unless absolutely necessary.

It truly is a collaborative effort among recruiters, candidates, and client companies so that the best placements are made for a win win scenario for everyone.

Randi’s Rules for successfully finding a position:

• Be proactive, work to establish a relationship with the recruiter so they may best represent you.

• No matter the circumstance, always put on a happy face. You can’t complain about the situation that you find yourself in.

• Have a great resume that demonstrates successes in the previous position. It is also vital to have good recommendations who will vouch for your work.

For those of you just entering the work force, Randi cautions about posting things online that may impact your ability to locate a position in the future. It may be cute and funny now, but there are employers who are constantly using Google search to find more information about a candidate than appears on a resume.

If you would like to contact Randi to see if she can help you to locate that new position, she can be reached through her web site at www.recrutingspec.com, via email she is at Randi @ RecrutingSpec (dot) com, or phone 770.392.4255

At Fluid Media we have two topics that we love to talk about .. Sports and  Social Media, and as the two start to intertwine we look at a myriad of opportunities for those associated with sports to use the tools of social media to strengthen and expand their community, or in their vernacular, fan base.

Sports organizations have not embraced the features to any great degree yet, but for entities ranging from professional teams to youth organizations there are ways to ensure the participants and fans can be integrated into the efforts.

At this stage there are many more sports bloggers who provide insights into the workings of the teams that they cover, than the actual teams or organizations themselves.  Some of our favorites are JB_Launchingpad,  Coryh64, DodgersBlog, Ducksnorts … even an auto racing blogger on twitter, Brutonnb.

For the younger generation of professional athletes, Cameron postulates that by developing and nourishing a group of followers, the athlete will gain an advantage in terms of landing lucrative endorsement contracts. Nascar auto racing is a perfect example of how the fan and player already interact and allegiances are formed, but now with social media tools the drivers who connect at a more personal level will have a long term benefit for their team and their own success.  For example, Joey Logano is a rookie Cup Driver who we have had some connection with in the past, we could see him participating directly in social media, providing insights into the inner workings of the race team, communicating directly with the fans and growing a more engaged community in order to reach the pinnacle of the racing elite.  In this sport in particular, success can be measured by how well you race and how well you develop a fan following.

As an early tactic for building these greater communities, sports organizations could provide a more in depth look at the action on the field through the eyes of the participants.  Why not have an after the game breakdown by an “insider” with details and analysis on a forum, blog or a live chat session with Q&A.  In order for it to be truly unique transparent dialogue that is the hallmark of social media, it can’t be a marketing or broadcast person assigned to interpret the situations. It must be an participant’s point of view that will gain a loyal following.

For the amateur sports or organizations such as the Cape Cod Baseball League, social media can lend itself to assisting in fund raising, maintaining top of mind awareness during the off seasons, and generating excitement for the players who will be participating on that team during the upcoming season.

This is a topic that we will focus in on with much more specificity detailing specific sports and levels of organization.

But in the spirit of the holidays, here’s to hoping that all of the listeners to the Overflow podcast have a very special season.  We truly appreciate all of you tuning in while we work through this new media, and wish you significant success in 2009!

The Social Media Club Atlanta hosted it’s most recent gathering at Manuel’s Tavern in the Highlands neighborhood. The event really solidified for Cameron and I that there is a burgeoning social media marketing scene in Atlanta.

We met some really cool people here locally who are also going through the process of establishing their networks and providing their expertise to either clients or employers.  It would be great to help us post-meeting to see info about who attended, and who we might want to connect with on Twitter and other social platforms.

Acting in our previous businesses, we haven’t attended many of these types of events because they turn out to be groups of people trying to impress one another by name dropping clients and proclaiming expertise through buzzword hyperbole.  There was some of that going on Thursday night, but actually the social media space appears to be different (at least for the time being). I think there was an attempt by many to truly get beyond the “buzzword bingo” and more after helping to develop the group expertise.

The stated topic of conversation was social media in retailing …

There are some customer service aspects to SM in retail of course that could be explored in depth:

• listening tools in order to hear the online conversations
• ways to be responsive to what customers are stating
• sharing relevant information about policies and pricing structures
• product support
• understanding customers expectations

…….. but it turned mostly to a discussion about Spam & Twitter.

One attendee brought up a project that he is working on, where during the checkout process you can tweet to your friends about the purchase and get an incentive discount. This generated a lot of discussion. His concern comes about because he has recognized an ethical dilemma in his technology. Although he can accomplish it, does he, and does the entire community want that capability to be an option during a transaction? He gets big props for even considering this issue.

In the end, I suspect the technology would end up being misused and potentially ruining the huge benefits derived from a service like Twitter.  When you are directly compensated for sending a tweet, it equates to selling out the network for a price.  You could do it, but it’s too big of a risk of turning off your entire community … It’s like hiding affiliate links in your tweet stream, or “selling Amway to your family”.

Don’t do it, there is no good to come of it. It’s the same backlash towards the Magpie ad network, which also entered into the conversation but actually did have some supporters in the group.

We were very glad to have attended the event and believe that we will be able to benefit greatly as the conversation continues to evolve within the group. We would like to suggest scheduling a followup session that excludes the dominant topic of Twitter, so that we can focus the session on all of the other elements within social media.  We could help each other determine the best practices for using all of the elements of social media in retailing.

The sponsor for the night was a blog aggregator called ReGator .. they were in the top three of Mashables Open Web Awards which should be announced later this week. (Followup note: It looks like Regator lost to Hubdub.com in their category — Congats on making it this far guys, best of luck going forward!)