While touch web content isn’t new, (the category has been around for years -even before the iPhone – especially with early PalmOS and Windows Mobile devices), Taptu’s research is particularly timely, given last week’s Apple announcement regarding the iPad and other announcement regarding tablet-style mobile computing devices.  For developers on a limited budget, creating touch-based web content has been one of the easiest ways to publish on mobile, without having to worry about the skyrocketing costs of cross-platform development.

In the report, Taptu says it started crawling and indexing  the “Mobile Touch Web” since early 2009: “We scan more than 100 million Web sites each month using specialized software that detects whether any given site is a full Web site or a Mobile Touch Web. We then categorize them by interest area and score them by quality.” One of the most interesting parts of this report is a graph that compares the size of the “mobile touch ecosystem” to the reported number of iPhone (148,000 apps according to Mobclix), Android (24,000 apps according to Androlib), Blackberry (4,000 apps), and Nokia (2,500 apps) apps available on their respective marketplaces.  In it’s most recent report, Taptu found 326,600 websites with touch screen interfaces, which is much more than the reported number of mobile apps on any of the aforementioned platforms. Additionally, Taptu says that  the “Mobile Touch Web” features more shopping and services functionality (20%) than  3.6% in the Apple App Store. Conversely, the Apple App store has a stronger proportion of games than the Mobile Touch Web (18% vs. 0.9% on the Mobile Touch Web).  Other popular categories in Mobile Touch Web include Photo and Design, Social Networking,  and world affairs.

Taptu predicts that there is  a second wave of sophisticated content coming for Mobile Touch Web. “By the end of 2010 we forecast that the Mobile Touch Web will have grown to more than 500,000 sites, and to 1 million sites by the end of 2011.” This prediction is consistent with other predictions out there that I’ve seen from folks at Google and elsewhere that predict that the mobile application ecosystem will ultimately fade in favor of sophisticated browser-based applications that run across mobile OSes on sophisticated mobile browsers.

What do you think of Taptu’s report? Do you agree with Taptu’s assessment that “With support for HTML 5 features already being rolled out in these browsers, it’s getting easier and easier to create rich touch screen user experiences with the browser”?  Are browser based applications the way of the future? If so, where does this leave applications that tap into rich, mobile device-specific APIs (i.e. Camera, etc.)? Weigh in by commenting below.

Distimo recently published a useful overview of the current landscape across major app stores including Apple App Store, Blackberry App World, Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. You can download the full report here.

Among the things I found most interesting in the Distimo report were that the UK represents 12% of publishers on the Android Market versus 20% in continental Europe, 65% in the US, and 3% in Japan.  This is a strong showing, but I expect that this percentage will grow quickly as the market opportunity with Android rises.

Unsurprisingly, given the strength of both Euro and Pound currencies, the Distimo report shows that apps that originate in Europe have a higher average price than apps developed elsewhere.  Distimo found that across app stores, European developers charge 49% more for their mobile applications than developers in the US, with an average price per app at $4.42.  The UK is not far behind Europe, charging an average of $3.31 per app.  Blackberry App World and Windows Marketplace for Mobile had the highest average app prices, at $8.26 and $6.99, respectively.  This isn’t a shock, given the cost and effort required to develop for both platforms.  I’d actually expected Ovi Store apps to be more expensive for that very reason. However, Distimo found that apps on Ovi Store, Apple App Store and Android Market had an average price of $3.50 each.

Back in 2007, I covered a study conducted by UMASS Dartmouth researchers on the use of Social Media within the Inc. 500, which concluded that the hype behind social media was real and that companies were successfully engaging with it.  The same researchers (Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Eric Mattson CEO, Financial Insite) have continued to study the Inc. 500’s use of social media for three years running.  The 2009 study is now available online, and the results show that “social media matters and is here to stay,” with 91% of respondents using at least one social media tool (versus 77% of respondents in 20080 and 43% saying that social media was a “very important” part of their marketing/business strategy.  The full study is a great read and has some very interesting graphs on social media adoption in the Inc. 500.  You can learn more about the study and download it here.

Both social networking and blogging have grown in adoption among the Inc. 500, while use of online video, wikis, podcasting, and message boards has either leveled off or declined among the group in 2009.  Interestingly 52% of the respondents in the Inc. 500 are now using Twitter to grow their business, and 62% of executives reported that they were familiar with Twitter.  This represents phenomenal growth.

I found the following charts the most interesting:

In next year’s study (assuming they do another one), I’d like to see a breakdown of “social media” types used (i.e. Facebook versus Twitter versus MySpace versus Flickr, etc.).  As you’ll note in the above chart, 75% of respondents were familiar with social media, and 62% were familiar with Twitter. And, yet, to my way of thinking these two categories are not mutually exclusive.

Again, looking at the chart above, I’d like to see a breakdown between the different social networking platforms companies use? I wonder whether respondents were considering Twitter as a social network when they responded that they use social networks, or whether they were thinking of Facebook or other mediums.

Looking at the above chart, I find it particularly fascinating that Twitter is deemed the least successful of all of the different social media mediums being used. It’s still showing strong success, but not as high as “social networking” as a whole. I’d love to see some deeper analysis on what constituted success from the respondent’s perspective and which specific social networking platforms/ techniques they found most useful.

Jeff & Lisa in Prague 2005

I rarely talk about personal topics on my blog, but today, I’m writing to ask for your help, following the death of one of my oldest friends.  Over the summer, Jeffrey B. White lost his battle with cancer at the age of 32.  At the time of his passing, Jeff was a freelance journalist based in Berlin, Germany.  His articles were published in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The American Lawyer, LegalWeek, World Politics Review, PopMatters, the international edition of Der Spiegel, Gadling (AOL’s travel blog), the Patriot Ledger (where he was once a staff reporter),  the Prague Post (where he was formerly a news Editor), and a variety of other noteworthy publications.

Jeff was an amazing guy – intelligent, witty, and he had a great sense of humor.  I’d known him since I was three years old, and together with his younger brother, Greg, we grew up together on a series of memorable family vacations which started when Jeff’s dad was transferred from our home town in California to the east coast and ended all too quickly this summer.  We managed to survive childhood, adolescence, Boston College and most of our 20s together before Jeff developed Eye Melanoma, a particularly rare and aggressive type of cancer.

On June 29, 2009, after a brave, three year fight, Jeff passed away. His death was tragic for everyone who knew him, and the timing was especially unfortunate, as Jeff had only just married the love of his life a few weeks before.  Jeff married Nicki White (nee Zimmermann) on the afternoon of June 6, 2009 at the American Episcopal Church in Bonn, Germany, in front of 60 of their close family and friends.  I was so happy to be a part of what was a wonderful celebration of Jeff and Nicki’s love and life together.  We partied the night away at Bredershof restaurant in the neighboring town of Koenigswinter, with most of the attendees (including Jeff and Nicki) enjoying the party until 3:30am.  Jeff lived his life to the end with courage, energy, optimism, and a sense of fun and adventure, and his wedding day was no exception.

I’m telling you about Jeff for a few reasons.  First, I want to remind you that it’s important to get regular and comprehensive eye exams – even if you’ve got perfect vision.  While eye melanoma is rare, it happens, and a regular eye exam (where your doctor dilates your eyes) can help discover it (and other eye problems) early.

Second, if you have been moved by Jeff’s story or his work (or you enjoy reading my blog), I want to let you know about a couple of ways that you can support two important causes in Jeff’s name…

A scholarship has just been started in Jeff’s name at his graduate school alma mater, Boston University.  The Jeffrey B. White Memorial Fund in Journalism is established at the Boston University College of Communication in memory of Jeff, who received his Masters degree from BU in 2001.

The Fund is established as a tribute to Jeff’s life and work in journalism, and preference will be given to those College of Communication graduate students in the field of print journalism who are enrolled in the Washington D.C. Journalism Program.

Recipients of the Jeffrey White Fund award will be chosen by the Dean of the College of Communication along with the Chair of the Journalism Department and the Director of the College’s Washington D.C. Program.

Gifts can be made payable to the Jeffrey B. White Fund at Boston University and mailed to:

Steve Morin

Alumni Office

College of Communication

640 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston, MA 02215

Please contact Steve Morin with any questions at smorin@bu.edu. Boston University is a recognized 501 c 3 organization.

Please also consider making a donation in Jeff White’s name either to the Jeffrey B. White Fund at Boston University or to:  Dr. Takami Sato’s Eye Melanoma Research Fund at Kimmel Cancer Center, who helped Jeff and his family during his brave fight:

Attn: Melissa Pizarro

Associate Director of Development, Kimmel Cancer Center

233 South 10th St., Suite 908

Philadelphia, PA 19107

To learn more about Jeff White and to read his work, please visit:

• Jeff’s website which features some of his work
  
• Jeff’s Flickr stream
• Jeff’s work at the Christian Science Monitor
• Jeff’s blog on Gadling (AOL’s travel blog)
• Listen to Jeff talk to Marcus Mabry, international business editor of The New York Times, from in Berlin about the German’s take on the 2008 International Banking Crisis.
• Jeff’s Obituary:
  • Jeff’s Obituary in the The Patriot Ledger
  • Jeff’s Obituary in the The Newtown Bee
  • Jeff’s Obituary in the Boston College Magazine Summer ‘09 Issue (page 30)
  • Jeff’s Obituary in the The Boston Herald

If you knew Jeff or enjoyed his writing, ping me with links to your favorite articles by or about him, and I’ll add them above.

It’s 9:30am, and we’re close to kick off…

First up Nubli - a 90 second alpha pitch…

• Nubli figures out which emails and contacts are the most important to you and presents them in a prioritized view
• Cuts the clutter in your inbox.

Next, another 90 second pitch: traffic talk

• The problem with most traffic iphone apps is that they take your attention off of the road
• This app takes crowdsourcing and makes it audio with a patent-pending voice platform
• Real-time details that get to you when you need them
• traffic talk is from a former company was called “traffic flex”
• They monetize through subscription services as well as a free version with audio ads

We’re on to a new category… “Working Smarter”

First up to bat with Answers.com:

• This is Answers.com’s second time at DEMO. They’ve been around for a while and are re-launching.
• They’re integrating a wiki based community with hundreds of sources – 1 place for all your questions and answers internationally
• “Q&A the wiki way”
• You can follow Answers.com on twitter: @answersdotcom
• They’re demoing the solution now, and it looks useful
• 4 new versions: International, French, Spanish, German

And, now Weels:

• This is a bookmarking/ cut/paste technology that lets you drag and drop videos and more into a box and get information about where to buy it…
• It also lets you share it
• Very cool stuff
• I’m told by the guys next to me that the guy demoing now is 19 years old. He’s presenting like a pro.  The guy next to him is still in high school.
• It makes browsing more intuitive.
• They’re trying to make browsing follow you from one device to the next
• It runs on top of your browsing experience – no downloads or plugins
• They’re opening an API and are looking for talented developers to extend their drag and drop technology

And now, Article One Partners LLC:

• Global community reaching 3 Million technologies that research the validity of patents
• They crowd source the validity of patents
• Beta launched Nov 2008. In less than one year, they claim to have proven their crowd sourcing model
• 2009 Start-up of the year in Silicon Alley Insider Competition
• Today, they’re coming out of Beta
• Article One Advisors earn up to $50,000 per study and share in Article One’s profits.  There are 3 million of them across the world.
• This helps solve patent litigation cases
• In June 2009, The US Patent Office determined that Article One’s crowd sourced solution has raised a question around the patent for MERK’s Singulair drug.

Now, Kryon Systems:

• Leo is the next generation of help and execution tools that will make people power users of any application
• If you open it up while you’re in Excel, it’ll help you with Excel.  It’ll give you the answers you’re looking for, and you can ask it to take over and walk you through how to do something… It’ll actually move your mouse and do the work!
• Very cool
• It even talks to you as it’s taking control of your computer and fixing the problem you’ve identified
• You can teach LEO to work with any application running on Windows without integrating into the software
• It works on Excel, and now they’re showing it to us on SAP!
• They’re launching the Beta of LEO on Outlook at this show

And now, LeapFILE – the end of file sharing for corporations

• Gives end-users direct access to open and update files in the cloud from a desktop explorer – even offline
• It gives IT departments and governance departments the ability to better control file sharing
• File transfer: local to the cloud in real time
• You always have the most up-to-date files that your colleagues have on their desktop on your desktop – in real time!
• IT gets automatic end-to-end data encryption and visibility into what users are doing 24/7. They have full control over what appears on the laptop… You can wipe the machine

Symform, Inc. is up now:

• Re-inventing decentralized cloud computing
• Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud: Now, a small business can get unlimited online storage that is secure and reliable by contributing not so secure and not so reliable storage space of their own
• Pieces of your data are sitting across multiple computers distributed across multiple networks – in case you need them for disaster recovery
• $50/month fee – 10x cheaper than elsewhere
• IMHO: If you’re relying on a bunch of people you don’t know to keep your data safe, you’re in trouble.  What happens if one of the computers where part of your files are stored break down or are destroyed in a fire?

Anaplan is up now:

• Anaplan is like building a lego model – it allows you to connect a variety of cloud-computing applications together
• You can create complex models that use things like income statements, employee costs, cash flow, budget, balance sheet and more.
• You can create a sales forecasting system, for example and see the impact on profit and loss
• $49 for 3 users

Liaise is presenting now. I saw these guys yesterday, and this is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen at DEMO so far

• It intelligently captures the text that matters within the emails in your MS Outlook and helps you create a to-do list and action lists for yourself and others
• It’s like workflow management that works in conjunction with your email.
• It learns the terms that you use to ask people to do things and the terms they use to ask you to do things and it intelligently creates a to-do list.

Now up, I.ndigo, LLC with their new product, dekks:

• It’s a collaboration tool for companies
• dekks is focused on what you need, and dekks tells you who to send it to… So, if you don’t have connections to the right people in your company, dekks will connect you with them.
• dekks learns from your behavior and who you send things to and vice versa
• It creates relationship maps to show you how people are connected within an organization

#Hashwork brings social media to business users…

• “Cure anti-social business disorder”
• This gives people a way to get to know the social profiles of people who work at their company, partner companies, or client companies.
• Employees go to the hashwork website and enter their work email address, which authenticates them as a real employee of their company.  They enter their social profile information for things like Twitter, Facebook, etc. and the Hashwork system automatically tracks what everyone in a given company is doing on external social networks
• The URL that is created for your account is associated with your company, and you can use it in your email signature and more to let people know what you’re doing at your company.
• You can also communicate privately from within your company – so you can leverage public social networks to use them in a private way.  If for example,  you send a direct message to hashwork on Twitter, it will post it as a private message to your company’s group on hashwork.
• It’s free but for a monthly fee, companies can pay to have extra features like approval rights, etc.
• Special offer to free lifetime upgrade to standard community plan. Go to the management console to upgrade use DEMOfall 09, which will be useful until the end of the month.

Gogrok

• screensharing and real-time collaboration suite
• annotate on live content like video
• You can envoke Gogrok from within your existing applications
• It looks interesting, but it’s a bit of a confusing preso

Zorap, Inc.

• Look at videos and listen to music on the internet with your friends
• Announcing Zorap for Facebook. Chat and share stuff on Facebook
• Pretty cool stuff- live video chat with drag and drop sharing of photos, music, etc…. Looks awesome
• IM chat is integrated as well
• This guy and his kids who he’s chatting with online live are cracking everyone up… The kids are sharing music and dancing.
• This might be the coolest thing I’ve seen at DEMO so far…

Faculte is up now:

• Its a useful way to produce and publish online videos – as easily as creating online presentations
• They offer a suite of creative tools to make producing videos easier

Now the judges are here to evaluate the “working smarter” companies…

• Larry from SugarCRM likes the enthusiasm of the Zorap presentation, and I agree.  He thought the presentation was more unique.  He also liked the using of community and crowd sourcing to look for patent
• One of the judges is recommending that all start-ups should look to get some percentage of people to pay for their service from the start – rather than giving everything away for free.  Another judge agrees.  Worry about making money up front. Most of the time, companies that worry about making users and not worry about money up front fail.

30 minute break in between sessions… be back soon…

And… I’m back…

Now on stage – former Palm peeps!- Donna Dubinsky of Numenta, Rob Haitani, of Vitamin D and also Dick Lyon from Google.

Numenta:

• Very early stage company in research phase
• They make a learning system that finds systems in very large data sets
• It’s a platform company – not an application company
• It’s generic to any sensory domain, but the first system is vision systems
• It’s not specific to any application domain. They’ve worked with all sorts of companies from financial companies to web companies
• Demo #1: Numenta Vision Toolkit
  • It can do things like recognize objects -  chairs or people
  • You can train the system to recognize objects without any programming or understanding on algorithms and send it up to Numenta’s web server and use the image recognition technology in your web, mobile or desktop application
• Demo #2: Numenta Search and Sort
  • You can train the network to sort your photos by indoor and outdoor photos
  • You can train the network to determine whether your parking spot is free or not (if you’ve got a camera on it), and set up a script to SMS you when it’s free
  • You can train it to recognize people and name them when you upload new photos of them
  • Cool stuff
• Rob Haitani, of Vitamin D is up now:
  • Showing a video surveillance tape
  • In surveillance streams, it can recognize moving objects, and know whether they’re walking upright or crawling
  • With object recognition, you can distill hours of video into minutes of useful clips
  • He’s showing a cool technology where you can search video by drawing an overlay over areas you’re filming to only yield results of clips that show people go in/out of specific areas, save that clip for profiling.
  • Public beta of Vitamin D is coming out this fall.

Dick Lyon from Google is up now

• Pattern matching everywhere:
  • in universal search and specialized applications
  • Why not search sounds to improve contextual understanding of what’s happening inside of videos?!
• Strategy for “machine hearing”
  • “Leverage machine vision and machine learning techniques
  • base the analysis and features on a good model of human hearing
  • train on LOTS of data”
• So, for example if you’re looking for videos that show roosters, it might be helpful to search for the rooster sound, as that video may not be tagged with the word “rooster”
• “stabilized auditory image”: for speech, music, sound in general… turns a sound into a visual map or video that can be searched.  Sort of like looking at a finger print of the sound.

Great demos/ interesting stuff in this last segment.  An audience member has just asked about how synesthesia (where your senses cross over  – you hear colors and taste sounds) plays into the research Neumenta and Google are doing.  The answer is that it doesn’t really play into it, but it’s a fascinating issue.

And, onto the next topic: 90 second alpha pitches:

Melior Technologies is talking about gurustorms.com

• It’s a crowd sourcing platform that allows you to pay people for their ideas and help in answering questions

ShareGrove is up next:

• real friends meeting for real conversations on the web
• have real-time real conversations with your real friends over the web
• seamless inline sharing of personal and media content
• They make money by getting commission off of word of mouth transactions that happen from the platform

Next up – “APIs, Platforms and Services”

80legs is up first…

• $1.1 Billion dollars each year spent on web crawling, and many others are prevented from crawling the web because doing so is expensive
• Web scale crawling will be come a necessity for companies who can’t do it right now
• They’ve got a “better way to crawl and process the web”
• Puts the power of 50,000 computers to use for you
• Stitches computers together to deliver improved performance at reduced cost
• It has sentiment tracking so that you can determine what people thing about specific topics across the web
• You can write your own application and run it over 50,000 computers and billions of pages of content
• The guy likens the performance to what only Google has been able to achieve so far.
• in 2 months, they’ll be launching an app store where users can purchase apps that were created using 80 legs.

Scientific Media introduces Dotgo, “the internet for text messaging”:

• Many companies have shortcodes:
  • Fandango: FNDGO
  • Starbucks: MYSBUX
  • Google: GOOGLE
  • etc
• fundamental flaw with shortcode phone numbers is that they’re hard to remember and hard to find
• Dotgo makes it easy to remember shortcodes. All you need to do is name the company in the first word of your text message and send it to:
  • DOTCOM -338226
  • So, for example,
    • Fandango: Instead of texting “FNDGO,” Text “Fandango” plus whatever you were going to text to “FNDGO” to DOTCOM -338226
    • Starbucks: Instead of texting “MYSBUX,” Text “Starbucks” plus whatever you were going to text to “MYSBUX”to DOTCOM -338226
• You can set up text messaging sites very easily – if you have a dotcom domain – without getting your own shortcode.
• Launching Dotgo in the US only today, but hope to launch to more countries later.

Now, VicMan Software:

• Launching Pho.to today at DEMO: Edit photos to create funny photos – manipulate expressions, put makeup on, create animated gifs
• Audience laughing a lot because their demo is hilarious.  Looks like they’ve got some great editing options
• They white label their solution as well.
• You can automatically add photo enhancements facilities to your own website.
• This looks pretty cool!
• They’re launching a Facebook app today called “Funny Pho.to“  (though after a quick search on Facebook, I don’t see it)

Zuora is back for their second DEMO:

• Free is killing the media industry
• Newspapers and other media are looking for ways to monetize
• Zcommerce For Media can help media companies monetize
• This solution targets newspapers and magazines who are struggling to make money offline and need to move to online subscriptions

NativeTung is up now… I met these guys yesterday – great stuff:

• NativeTung is a global management platform that will allow any website to create multi-language content channels.
• It leverages Google and Microsoft tools to translate websites into other languages on the fly
• The publisher can now support customers in multiple regions in real time
• It has the added benefit of enabling websites to be in local languages and support local ads in multiple languages, increasing revenue
• Real-time translation increases engagement of foreign audiences

Digitrad Communications presents Organip:

• With so many ways to connect via social networks, it’s hard to find people’s latest phone numbers
• Organip is the “easiest way to make a phone call” – no phone numbers, no missed calls.
• 1 name, 1 click, 1 call – all you need to know is the person’s name
• If you know someone on any social network and you can send them a message, Organip can initiate a phone call with them by sending them a link to start the call
• They’re now demoing a mobile address book application on an HTC phone (not sure which OS- possibly Android?) which looks awesome.  It will initiate a call with someone on any social network.
• This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen so far at DEMOfall 09.
• Launching a public trial.

CallSpark!, Inc. has taken the stage

• “CallSpark! does for phone calls what Google did for search”
• Instead of calling 411, you use CallSpark! and it gives you the result you need
• They have a salesforce.com integration with data on latest scheduled events and contract information
• This looks cool – it searches across your various networks and email address.
• Facebook integration
• Twitter integration
• More
• Sweet!
• You can create something called a “Ringpage” and customize it so that when someone with CallSpark! calls you, they see your customized Ringpage (especially useful if you’re a merchant).
• They’re about to announce their first large scale carrier deals, and they’re looking for additional carriers
• They are launching an app
• They have a developer program

And, now “Smarter, More Social Marketing”…

First up, Burt AB with its new product “Rich”:

• “First campaign statistics tool agencies like and use” is called “Rich”
• It highlights: view-thru, engagement, visibility, and click-thru
• It tells you whether people paid attention to your ad or not.
• It highlights a dimension of online advertising that’s been ignored – brand advertising
• They’re in closed beta right now… They’ve run a 3 month test so far. They’re opening up for 10-15 more beta testers for October. You can sign up for an invite on their website.

ePulze is taking the stage…

• It consolidates opinions, comment, and sentiment from across multiple websites
• compare sentiment for 2 or more subjects
• I’m curious how many sources they crawl to get this information
• Company from Malasia – they want to create a platform to create customer recommendations

Glam Media, Inc. is now presenting their spin off product, Tinker.com:

• Live today – version 1.0, Tinker allows you to search the top conversations on social networks and make it friendly for advertisers
• ad supported platform
• embeddable by any website
• I’m just trying Tinker right now, and it’s not working…Site is super slow  – So slow that I couldn’t get to work. Though Matt Marshall says it’s interesting

RumbaFish Technologies, Inc.

• RumbaFish is an engagement platform that gives users incentives for spreading information virally
• They provide real time analytics on how viral campaigns are running
• Seems spammy to me… less about conversations and more about pushing out ads

Alpha pitches up…

Dubzer:

• This looks a lot like NativeTung – it’s focused on making your website readable in multiple languages
• Private beta is up and running

EnRoute Systems Corp:

• SAAS service that helps companies ship more effiiently
• Launching “Shipit” today at DEMO:
  • portal
  • platform: web services apis

Demo judges recap… I’m taking a break from the live tweeting…Lunch is next – see you back here at 3pm.
And, now, for the lifetime achievement awards… I won’t be live blogging all of this, except if anything interesting happens…

The show is starting now… First up an introduction video.

Now the intro to the conference – Chris Shipley and Matt Marshall are thanking partners and talking about the format for DEMOfall 09.  VentureBeat has launched DEMOBeat.  VentureBeat also talking about VentureBeat Profiles, which is the integration of their Profiles acquisition.

Chris Shipley says now is the best time to be starting a company and innovating.  Hewlett-Packard Co is first up to bat… They’re a DEMO veteran.

HP introducing HP SkyRoom - allows you to enjoy HD video conferencing experience and share real-time media with up to 300 colleagues across the world on your PC. Images are updated 4 times faster than the blink of an eye. $149.

• No subscription fee.
• On Oct 1st, HP Skyroom will be included free on HP machines.
• Connect with up to 3 different locations.
• Users connect through IM-like contact list.
• This looks much like a conferencing-focused Skype-like VOIP video conferencing and document sharing tool from HP.
• Minor demo hiccup… eventually started working
• It will run on any Windows XP or Vista machine that meets minimum specifications.  Skyroom will be optimized on a quodcore system or better.

Next up… indoor Location Based Services: Micello.

• Doing a comparison of Google Maps vs. Micello… Micello takes you indoors. They call it ‘Google maps inside a building’.
• It uses Google Maps to hone in on location and then take you inside the building… malls, campuses, etc.
• iPhone application – Allows you to search for items inside a mall… Click on any store and find out information about that store.
• User generated crowd sourced information.
• Using an example of the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, CA… Showing how users can search for shoes, music, games, etc.
• Stores color coded so that users can see which stores are having sales, etc.
• Each user’s experience is customized based on
• It takes 4 hours to make an indoor map including user design. They offer a map creation tool.
• Within a year they anticipate having 5,000 shopping malls 10,000 college campuses.
• “Google maps are for your car, Micello maps are for people.”

Next up…Cloud computing and video monitoring with a smart architecture…Viaas: Video Intelligence.

• Cloud based SAAS Video monitoring.
• Installation is simple – open box, mount camera, plug it into ethernet and power connection.
• You plug the camera in and it just connects to Viaas service.
• Intelligent object-based motion services
• Uses 10-20x less bandwidth than traditional video monitoring solutions
• Real-time monitoring shows you real-time highlights…Only pays attention to motion.
• Get a real time screen at any time
• Forensic uses. Use recorded video to see what happened in the past
• Everything securely recorded to Viaas’ cloud based video vault.
• Download video
• Annotate events to show what you’ve discovered
• Access annotated events using tags to build evidence for an investigation.
• $294.95 plus $24.95/month SAAS fee.

Next up…Collaboration solution, Fuze Box:

• Mobile and social collaboration service “so easy a 5 year old can master it”
• Works on Windows, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry
• Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, AIM, MS Live, etc.
• Company owns Liberty Telecom, so telephony is integrated
• They’re doing a demo over iPhone, which allows you to collaborate remotely… Showing a video over iphone.
• Showed demo video of 5 year olds using Fuze Box over iphone, but it’ll work over desktop
• Works with video, film, ppt, documents, x-rays, and more.
• No software to download or install
• Browser based
• Synchronize contacts across social networks  – linked In, Gmail, AIM, Facebook, and more to make it easy for people to quickly see buddies across networks and invite them into a meeting in one click
• Take a link from your meeting and promote ad-hoc meetings, webinars, and demos on Twitter.
• Pricing: $29/month based on an annual subscription
• @fuzemeeting on Twitter.
• So far – this is the coolest/ best demo I’ve seen today.

TravelTrac, LLC is up now…Share travel information from your trip as it happens.

• iPhone app and web based interface
• Add GPS, photos, travel journals, etc. – Update anywhere anytime.
• Offline mode allows you to use the app – even when you’re out of cellular coverage zone
• Friends get email when you make changes to your profile
• MotoTrac -for offroads
• TrekTrac- for land based travel
• SailTrac -for sailing, boating, and on water adventures
• Shows your trip on maps, and updates with new position or location.
• Share video up to 20 MB files at a time
• Post to Facebook and Twitter.

Contact management systems up next at DEMO…

MyOwnRealEstate.com Corp up first…MORE Management

• Trying to show the site… But it looks like it’s down (or there are connectivity issues)
• Online property management including mobile access via WAP.
• Demo is a little hard to follow because it isn’t working.
• Not sure why it isn’t working… Internet seems to be up for me!
• Poor guys -didn’t get to show much of anything of their product, but Chris Shipley says it’s cool and worth looking at.

WhoDoYouKnowAt, LLC is up now…

• “Contact Data Integrity Management”: Allows you to control who has your latest contact information…
• Update your latest info with the people you care about, and leave the stalkers behind.
• They’re a private application – targeting a different group than LinkedIn – like sales organizations.  This looks a bit like LinkedIn with more robust privacy ratings and something that allows you to choose how much access your colleagues / friends have to your connections.  No more awkward requests for referrals from people who don’t want to help you connect to others.
• Integrating with Microsoft Server Software. Integrating with ERP systems.
• Allows your trusted colleagues to see your contacts and know how close you are with specific contacts.  Give people in your address book a trust rating.
• This guy keeps “Emiriling” with BAM, BAM, BAM! proclamations
• This sounds interesting, but a little complicated for the average person – LinkedIn is easier.
• Use code DEMO2009 for free gold access for 3 months if you sign up before October.

Lunchster, currently in private beta, is demoing now…

• Simplifies and automates getting together with friends and colleagues on a regular basis for lunch
• Facebook Connect app
• Selected as on of top 50 Facebook Fund apps in 2009.
• You don’t need to keep going back to Lunchster.com.  You can manage invites through Outlook or Google Calendar.  There are links embedded within the invites that make adjusting your lunch schedule easy.
• Yelp integrated within the service
• Doing live interactive demo
• Just send email to your friends and cc: lunch@lunchster.com and it’ll do the rest… apparently.

iPhone app from Tungle is up next

• Tungle is a “Calendar Accelerator” to eliminate scheduling pain on iPhone or Tungle.com (web).
• You control what you share with who.
• Works with Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal, Entourage, and soon IBM Notes.
• See other’s calendars in your trusted networks to propose a meeting
• Propose as many times as you like for meetings to see what works for others
• You can also shake your iPhone, and Tungle will automatically pick times for you based on other’s availability and your own.
• Looks like an easy to use calendaring tool – even for people who are non-Tungle users
• User base doubling every month since April
• Free with no advertising
• Coming out with premium features in 2010

Rseven up next:

• Life streaming service.  See what you’ve done on your phone and when…
• Chronicles activity on your mobile phone.
• Share that activity with your social networks
• Share stats between friends that describe your mobile activity
• There’s a mobile app and a web-based client
• Seems clunky… Not sure why someone would want all of these features.
• You can record all of your incoming and outgoing calls and access them later… Not sure how legal that would be in California, but interesting feature.

dotSyntax, LLC is up now. They make Digsby.

• Digsby is an IM client, email, and social networking manager.
• Set status on all IM and social networking accounts
• They’re launching a new Twitter application – “designed from the ground up for a mainstream audience.”
  • Oldest tweets on top – rather than the new ones… so read conversations in order
  • Digsby tracks what you’ve read so that you don’t have to read the same things twice
  • You group least important and most important people as you see fit, so that you see most relevant conversation

Traackr demo:

• Social media monitoring tool
• Traackr is an online authority list that helps brands connect to the biggest influencers online
• Which conversations do you need to be a part of, and who do you need to listen to?

Waze is up now

• Waze is a mobile application that allows you to track traffic in real time
• It is crowd sourced real-time traffic information
• You can run it in passive mode to let people around you know how fast the traffic is moving on the road you’re at.
• It’ll re-route you if the traffic is bad where you’re going
• It’ll warn you of speed cameras, etc.
• I met these guys at breakfast this morning. They’re a nice group.  They just released a client for Nokia E71x (AT&T). Unfortunately, I found a glitch using it on the unlocked E71 (not x), but I’ve seen it running on other handsets, and it’s pretty cool stuff.
• You can download it to your mobile phone on m.waze.com
• It learns from the way you drive. You can add new roads, etc.

Early stage start-up “Alpha” 90 second demos are up next.

• First demo was very confusing… didn’t catch a word of it.
• Keen Systems: “Revolutionizing Print Commerce”
  • Web-to-print: #1 opportunity for print companies
  • ecommerce is key: From order to shipping – reduces costs increases efficiencies
  • Useful for small companies of 3 people to large enterprises
  • Designed by print industry insiders
  • Just launched pilot with live, paying customers
  • Looking for funding

Next up “Sounds like Fun” consumer apps to be demoed…
First up… MyVocal Holdings:

• All you need to know is how to press dial on your mobile phone
• It uses voice interactivity to allow you to manage and listen to your playlist.
• For example – dial the number for MyVocal Holdings, say “CNN” and get “CNN News” read to you
• It makes it easy to get your favorite periodicals converted to speech and read through your mobile phone

TuneWiki just took the stage…

• Social media music player – combines legally licensed music and lyrics with maps and social features
• Debuting social media player using Nokia X6 phone
• Announcing full support for all Nokia Operating Systems including Series 40
• TuneWiki Lyric Search is available for all Nokia Symbian Series 60 phones
• Get lyrics and translate them into your language.

RadioWeave is being demoed on iPhone…

• Use case – in car driving
• Mixes internet radio, traditional radio, and social media
• RadioWeave Pipes – You know the real size of your audience… Get more users and target ads and content to them.
• Create a micro channel for any topic.

Next company combines real tangible cards with online aspects: enthusem

• Send friends, family, partners, or clients printed greeting cards from the web.
• Printed greeting cards extended with online content for under $3
• Easy to use interface: Select name of someone from your address book, pick a picture for the card, upload or add content and click send – done.
• They’ve got an API that makes it easy for any web-based application to send printed cards.
• They’ve got an iPhone application that will allow anyone to send an enthusem card from their iphone
• Looks a lot like Touchnote but with more robust functionality and an open API.

Twirl TV takes the stage

• Hulu competitor
• Online TV -growing at a huge rate.
• For the YouTube generation, it’s growing at 85%
• Twirl TV beta is Social TV
• Watch TV on the web… get recommendations customized for you of things to watch
• It’s a TV experience online… Browse shows and continue to watch TV in a live video in the corner
• see which of your friends has watched or not watched a show and share that info
• see what your friends like to watch…
• Linked with Facebook.
• There’s a what’s hot tab that allows your friends to recommend shows to you.
• 3 core values: choice, camaraderie and convenience.

Emo Labs is kicking of their demo:

• Solving the problem with wires and big boxy speakers
• Imagine an invisible speaker with real stereo
• Invisible speaker systems embedded in TVs, Monitors, even picture frames
• Zero footprint design means it disappears when embedded into TVs
• Makes sound better on flat panel TVs, etc.
• Size and placement matter – mini speakers that are hidden don’t work.
• They’ve developed new speaker technology that delivers sound in a new way.
• Microflexing membrane generates sound waves that mean better sound
• Looks like a thin, invisible plexi glass picture frame.
• It really sounds good!

HandEye Technologies, Inc.

• Making interactive TV happen with your mobile phone
• Use your mobile phone to interact with content you’re watching
• Watching a mobile commerce platform in action
• mobile couponing
• search, enter contests, and interact with social networks

Now, there’s the DEMO Judges Recap… I’m taking a break…

The DEMO Pavilion is open, followed by lunch. I’ll be back at 2pm Pacific.
It’s 2:05pm Pacific, and I’m back… The afternoon session is running a little late. I’ll be live blogging as soon as it starts.

90 second alpha pitches starting now…

Pinyadda up first:

• Saving you from information overload…
• Commit Pinfidelity

Ringful

• Turns any mobile phone into a personal healthcare device
• Preventivecare.mobi is a suite of mobile applications that lets doctors and patients
• iPhone and Android

And now, Safe and Sound… Security products

First up, Armorize Technologies, Inc.

• Malware Driveby download is their solution
• Just by browsing a legitimate website, your information could be vulnerable
• This solution targets corporate websites
• Hack Alert is a 24/7 malware monitoring service. It monitors and prevents driveby downloads for major websites by notifying you if someone hacks your website.
• It shows you the exact lines of code that hackers have inserted into your website and lets you triage them.

Webroot is up now…

• Webroot Internet Security Complete

Intelius is up now with DateCheck mobile demo… This is hilarious.

• iPhone app
• Lets you screen your date – do a criminal check and more – just with a phone number.
• Loving the “sleaze detector”
• See if he lives in his own home or in a trailer
• Does he have a wife? Does he live with his parents.
• This app searches social networks to produce a summary of your prospective checks
• “Records don’t lie, but people do.”… “Look up before you hook-up.”

I’m still laughing at that one… but now, onto more serious topics

EthicsEd made by MicroAssist, Inc.:

• This product trains teachers and coaches to ensure they know what acceptable vs. unacceptable behavior is to ensure that they’re not accused of sexual harassment.
• It’s cheap – $8
• To get continuing education credit, they need to take a test afterward.’

90 second alpha pitches are up next…

Cardagin Networks talking about their demo.

• Loyalty marketing for local business
• Local loyalty digitized
• They charge business a monthly fee to digitize and advertise
• They charge consumers not to track their status

Gelato Dating…

• Stream dating
• Gelato is changing the way people think about dating… To something more authentic, real, dynamic
• Launching today at demo
• See what’s in someone’s life stream and decide whether you want to date them… Go beyond conventional online dating.

Smart money is the next topic…

First demo focuses on smart money so that any organization can issue their own credit cards for their customers that address their consumer’s needs.  Freeddom:

• Without any change to your phone, merchants can turn SIM cards in phones into credit cards… They no longer need to rely on Visa or Mastercard
• All transactions PIN authorized on user’s mobile phone
• Clever solution – looks interesting…

MoLo  Rewards

• Mobile couponing
• Utilizes NFC phones
• MoLo Rewards RFID tag sticks on the back of your phone. You can tap it on places that track the tags
• MoLo Rewards automatically sends all coupons relevant to your location and purchases to you on your phone
• Earn points to earn more MoLo Rewards incentives
• This product has lots of dependencies… Companies that will put RFID tags on products and use MoLo’s product, etc.  I don’t see this as being particularly useful or relevant unless a TON of companies sign on.

Point of Wealth Systems is up now…

• Point of Wealth Register “POWR kiosk” is like an ATM for the workplace.
• Allows users tipped workers to move their cash tips to/from their different bank accounts – IRA, Savings, and Checking without leaving the workplace and without having to go to the bank.

Taking a bit of a break… I missed 3 presos…

Up next… Local Dirt.

• Farming is an inefficient market place based on word of mouth and pen and paper
• Local Dirt is a buyers and sellers marketplace that allows you to find local food vendors
• Cool idea.

TotalTrainer is up now…

• Offers training and dietary information that gyms will offer clients
• Allows gyms to better serve their clientele
• New integrated fitness approach
• Like getting a personal trainer at a fraction of the cost
• Revenue share model with gyms + a small set-up fee

Sorry – missed another company…

Infochimps.org is up now.

• Find, sell or share datasets online

Now, there’s the DEMO Judges Recap…

• With Mobile Payments, different payment systems for different countries are a real issue. Plus, anytime you deal with carrier billing systems, there are big challenges
• Mobile money market has been notoriously difficult to tackle… No matter how clear your product is, if you can only use it for one product in one town, there’s an issue. You need wide distribution.
• Betting on RFID adoption is a big bet.  Getting distribution is challenging.
• Sleaze Detector feature of Date Check has been the prime source of everyone’s amusement all afternoon.

Next up enterprise demos…

SAP…

• SAP is doing a demo of their monitoring tool.. interacts with Twitter to see the status of the tools’ workers are using in the field
• Their demo is having issues, and it’s a confusing demo.
• It allows you to control mechanical tools (i.e. saws, etc.) in the field through SAP.

Microsoft…

There’s now a Microsoft demo going on of image recognition tags “Microsoft Tags” that can be scanned with a mobile phone camera to deliver more information about an ad to a user’s mobile.  Looks very similar to technologies that already exist.  Why do we need more of the same from Microsoft?  Apparently, because it works.  Ford Car Marketing Communications guy Lew Echlin is now up – talking about why Microsoft Tagging technology is helpful to them. They’re re-launching the Ford Taurus. With Microsoft Tags, they’re seeing 90% engagement. They’ve doubled the number of people that think that the Ford Taurus is for them.

That’s it for today… More tomorrow.

Of the organizations studied in 2008:

• 81% said that “social media is at least ‘somewhat important’ to their future strategy”.
• 89% use social media including blogs, pocasts, message boards, social networking, vlogs, and wikis (versus 75% in 2007)
• 79% use social networking and video blogging. Social networking was up 47% in 2008 from what it was in 2007. Video usage in 2008 was up 38% over 2007.
• 57% blog
• 67% had an RSS feed of their blog (versus 58% in 2007)
• 56% allowed email subscriptions (versus 23% in 2007)
• 37% podcast
• 16% use wikis
• 45% say social media is important to their fundraising efforts

In the 2007 study, UMASS Dartmouth researchers found that the largest US charities were most familiar with blogging (62%).  However, in 2008, the top US charities surveyed were most familiar with social networking (70%, representing an increase of 21%).  There was also an increased familiarity with how to use video in blogs (65% of respondants saying they were familiar with this medium in 2008 versus 40% in 2007).  While “familiarity” and “usage” were unrelated in 2007, this changed in the 2008 study, with the charity execs interviewed saying that the technologies they were most familiar with were the ones they were using.

Perhaps most interesting of all of these findings is the way that the top US charities’ usage of social media to monitor buzz about their organization and supported cause compares to organizations in the Fortune 500, Inc 500, and Higher Education. According to the report:

“In 2007, 42% did searches manually using basic search engines like Google and appropriate key words. In 2008, that dropped to 36% while the number of charities automating their searches climbed from 34% to 42%.”

Compare this to how higher education and the Inc. 500 are monitoring their brands in social media channels, and large charities are significantly ahead (see graph below from the UMASS Dartmouth study):

According to the report, “Google alerts were the most popular automated searches.” I’d be curious to see which of the top charities are using more sophisticated social media monitoring tools – not just Google Alerts.  There is an opportunity for organizations of all types and sizes to reduce workload and generate more actionable insights from social media by using more robust applications like those I discussed in my recent post on 20 top social media monitoring tools.

While the 2008 report shows that the top US charities are leading the pack in their usage of social media, I can’t help but wonder how much longer this will continue to be the case as big companies like Dell and others increase their investment in social media upon realizing the significant dollar benefit that a well executed investment in social media can make.

One company that is talking openly about their social media ROI is Dell, who today announced that since June of 2007, they’ve earned more than $3 Million in revenue via Twitter alone.  Dell uses Twitter to actively promote it’s online outlet store on Twitter (@DellOutlet) and answer customer queries.  Dell offers refurbished Dell products in its outlet store.  Because the number of available refurbished units fluctuates, prior to Dell’s active Tweeting, it was difficult for users to find out when new product were available or on sale… Customers were discovering most deals at the Dell Outlet based on chance. Twitter is proving a great way for Dell to inform customers of new buying opportunities.

Dell now has more than 626,000 followers on Twitter and has realized more than $2 million in sales in the Dell Outlet from people who have clicked on links in their tweets. Even better, they’ve seen a further $1 million in sales revenue from people who initially clicked on a DellOutlet link in Twitter and later went on to purchase something from elsewhere on Dell.com.

In the announcement today on Dell’s blog, @StefanieAtDell describes how they grew the number of Dell’s followers on Twitter from 11,000 to over 600,000 in just three months by providing more Twitter-exclusive offers to the Dell Outlet, which were frequently re-tweeted.  Check out the graph:

@DellOutlet followers

@DellOutlet followers. Source: TwitterCounter.com

While @DellOutlet is the most popular Dell Twitter property, Dell is also promoting its US products and offers through @DellHomeOffers and @DellSmBizOffers.  They’ve also regionalized their tweets to target users in other geographies:

• UK: @DellOutletUK
  
• Ireland: @DellOutletIE
• Australia: @DellHomeSalesAU
  
• Mexido: @Ofertas_Dell_MX
  
• And other countries as found on the Dell website: Dell.com/Twitter

Today, Dell gave companies everywhere 3 million good reasons to invest in Twitter, but Twitter is just the tip of the social media iceberg.  When developing a social media marketing strategy for your company, don’t just Twitter… Evaluate the many social media channels and invest in those that make the most sense for you.  Consider your target demographic and develop social marketing campaigns that address the groups and geographies you most want to engage.  Forrester Analyst, Jeremiah Owyang provides one of the most up-to-date directories of social media statistics I’ve seen to date.

Unconvinced?  If you’re based in America, how many times in the last six months have you heard a friend utter the word “Snuggie” or a “ShamWOW!” versus the number of times you’ve actually seen an advertisement for a “Snuggie” or “ShamWOW!”?  If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard the words uttered and seen them printed on social networks more than you’ve actually seen the commercials.  Brands infiltrate both in person and online conversations every second of every day.  While you can’t eves drop on every voice to voice conversation about your brand, it’s now easy to find out what people are saying about your brand online.

Chances are that if you work for a big brand, your PR agency is listening to what the media and big bloggers say about you.  But, is your PR agency tracking social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and are they reporting the aggregate data from ground level conversations to you?  If you work for a smaller company and don’t use a PR firm, you’re even more likely to miss the aggregate of important conversations people are having about your brand online. Why should you care about these conversations?  In aggregate, these conversations are either helping or hurting your brand.  In addition, if conversational data is mined effectively, it’s possible to extract themes that can proactively inform both marketing strategies and product road map decisions. Also, tracking conversations people are having about your competitors and comparing them to your own can give you a much better understanding of how you stack up against your competition.

There are painless and time-efficient social media monitoring tools that you and/or your PR agency can use to learn about what people are saying about you.  You don’t need to get sophisticated all at once.  You can start small, using free tools, and build your social media monitoring strategy from there.

By one count, I’ve read that there are over 100 social media monitoring tools out there.  The following 20 tools are a great place to start.

Free tools:

BoardTracker: This search facility allows you to effectively search forums and discussion boards.  You can use it to set up instant alerts that notify you right away if your search term is mentioned.

BlogPulse Conversation Tracker: Run by AC Nielsen, this tool allows you to search for a company name and see a threaded view of the conversational graph that emerges.  So, you can see which blogs, news posts, etc, are fueling the most conversations about your brand online.

BlogPulse Trend Search: “BlogPulse Trend Search allows you to create graphs that visually track “buzz” over time for certain key words, phrases or links. Compare search terms/links in isolation, or use all three fields to compare search terms/links against others.”

Google Alerts: Set up a Google Alert for a specific name, word, or phrase, and Google will send you an email every time there is a new mention of that search term.  You can set up a daily or weekly digest email or an “as it happens” alert.  You can do a “comprehensive” search of the term or ask only for an alert when the term is mentioned in news, the web in general, blogs, online videos, or in online groups.

Google Video: Want to know when someone mentions your name or tag line in a video? You can search for it on Google Video.

Jodange: Leveraging the investment Cornell University has made in sentiment analytics, Jodange’s TOM (Top of Mind) solution can be used to extract opinions from online content and drill down to its underlying sentiment about a particular brand.

Lexicon: A Facebook tool that allows you to see how particular words are trending on user’s Walls over time.

Monitter:  Helps you track three separate words or terms simultaneously on Twitter and monitor real-time results.

Oodle: You can learn a lot about about your competition’s future plans (and see what the competition may be guessing about your future plans) by keeping up to date with the jobs they’re posting online.  Set up an RSS feed to keep up to date with the job vacancies of your competitors – Get better at seeing what type of skills they’re trying to acquire and guessing what product changes they’re planning.

Seeking Alpha: This site will allow you to search for your company name or keywords in the conference call transcripts of public companies

Technorati: Lets you search and track what’s happening on blogs across the web.

Trendrr: A useful site that allows you to track and compare trends:

• “Track the popularity and awareness of trends across a variety of inputs, ranging from social networks, to blog buzz and video views downloads, all in real time.
• Compare trends to one another, monitoring and evaluating their status across a variety of sources.
• Share favorite trends with friends and other users and discover new trends that other users are already aware of and tracking.”

Twendz: This is a Twitter mining wet app from PR firm Waggener Edstrom.  It leverages Twitter Search and extracts sentiment out of up to 70 tweets at a time, showing popular sub-topics and popular words within tweets that mention a specific topic.

User Name Check: This site allows you to search across social networks to see who, if anyone has hijacked your brands across social networks.

As and when you’re looking for a more robust end-to-end solution for social media monitoring and don’t mind paying for it, try one of these solutions.

Paid apps:

CI Listen & CI Learn: Collective Intellect makes two products.  CI Listen lets you track “activity, sentiment, author demographics, and emerging conversational themes” from “digital blogs, boards, news, and micro-blogs”. CI Learn consists of “standard and packaged reports combining auto-generated consumer perception metrics and graphs with key insights and recommendations from CI’s digital communications analysts.”

SM2: Techrigy makes SM2, which enables you to “track conversations, reviews and positive/negative sentiment for your brands, clients, competitors and partners across the eco-system called social media: blogs, wikis, microblogs like Twitter, social networks, embedded video and more – in real time.”

Radian6:  Tools to listen to conversations people are having about your brand, measure buzz across social networks, manage a response plan of attack across your team, and create actionable data reports.  As an added bonus, Cision now has an integration with Radian6. In March, they announced, “Through the CisionPoint dashboard, communications professionals can now access vital data about the most influential people and outlets in their industry across the print, online, broadcast and social media included in CisionPoint’s best-in-class Bacon’s Media Database.”

Scout Labs: Like Radian6, Scout Labs is a tool that allows you to track buzz around your brand, but it also tracks sentiment. (Note: for a great article and comment conversation on Radian6 vs. Scout Labs check out this post…)

Spark by Spiral 16: This solution allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your social media strategy, understand the sentiment behind conversations online and mine large amounts of data. It utilizes impressive 3D displays and useful dashboards.  You can see a demo online… Impressive stuff.

TruCast: Visible Technologies’ TruCast product allows you to monitor conversational trends regarding your brand and identify social media influencers online.

There are too many social media monitoring tools out there to mention them all in this post, but the above list is a useful sample of some of the most useful.  I’m always interested in hearing your thoughts… If you’ve tried these or other tools that you find useful, post a comment.

“As one of, if not the, first studies of social media adoption with statistical significance, this research proves conclusively that social media is coming to the business world and sooner than many anticipated.”

The full results of the study will be published throughout 2007 in a variety of journals.  Keep your eyes peeled for an article in The Journal of New Communications Research coming this March. The researchers from U Mass have promised to send me a link the the article soon as it is available. When they do, I’ll post it in this blog. In the meantime, the executive summary is well worth a read.

Included in the summary are several interesting graphs. The highlights include:

• When asked how important social media was to a company’s business/ marketing strategy, most respondents felt that it was important:
  • 26%= Very important
  • 40%= Somewhat important
• When asked what type of social media companies used, responses were as follows:
  • 33%= Message/Bulletin Boards
  • 27%= Social Networking
  • 24%= Online Video
  • 19%= Blogging
  • 17%= Wikis
  • 11%= Podcasting

I can’t help but wonder: Did social media help propel the responding companies into the Inc. 500, or is it just coincidence?  Then again, I’m still wondering, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”