Social Network Analysis, can it go too far?

As social networking becomes more and more integrated into our lives the data points generated will become a goldmine for marketers and savvy business leaders. The business intelligence industry is especially well suited for accessing the information and utilizing predictive analytics and process management technologies to lead the charge on how best to make offers to prospects, to serve needs of clients or to tap into the crowd for feature and needs analysis within markets segments. The listening posts will become large highly optimized data marts and analytic databases designed to kick off processes to serve the every whim and thought of our customers......STOP RIGHT THERE! 

While I believe in the ability of business intelligence and process management to automate and define, we still need interaction from business people in this loop to maintain a true sense of touch and customer care. James Kobielus did a great article covering these topics over at Information Management and shares his thoughts on adding another "...layer of abstraction between you and your customers,..."

OMG print media is sooooo dead!!

The future of print media is at hand and paper is not involved. If Time Inc. can execute on this vision I'll never buy print again. bring on the Mac Tablet!!!

Watch this!

How to ruin a media empire...a step by step guide

Having been an active participant in both online and magazine publishing for over 15 years I feel at least a little qualified to voice an opinion on what Rupert Murdock is doing with his company News Corporation. Its clear that Mr. Murdock's view of internet based content is behind the times. While the Wall Street Journal has been an exception to the rule of fee based web sites I believe the part he is missing is why. Consumers of online information and news expect it to be free and easy to access. Readers of publications like WSJ tend to expense their access to this type of information and as times get tighter in the enterprise you can expect that these types of business subscriptions disappear in favor of free resources.

A recent piece of Forrester Research seems to back up my opinion. 80% just said NO Mr. Murdock

News Corp's latest attack against the norm is its ongoing issues with Google and their recently announced intention to stop Google from indexing their publications and to strike an exclusive deal with search engine Bing. Some analyst have estimated the change could cost News Corp up to 15 million annually. And it will reduce its overall search exposure to only 9.9% of traffic globally, Bings present search market share.

As Mr. Murdock continues to build walls around his content the thought struck me that this practice may in fact be hurting all content seeking Internet users. If this move to exclusive search partnerships actually gets traction it will hurt all of us. How would you like a future where you have to remember which search engine carries which companies content? Comprehensive content search could become a thing of the past.

I would like to see News Corporation spend its time innovating instead of hiding content behind the fiscal walls of the company. I'm jealous of Mr. Murdock and his empire if I had resources like his I would strive to be a leader in the Internet revolution not a laggard.

The full circle of early adopters

Social media and networking has spawned a new breed of early adopter and influencer. These experts are sought after by the most progressive PR firms and brought into the fold early or even before a product launch to insure that the proper coverage is given. Louis Gray wrote a great piece on this trend at his site LouisGray.com. While Louis has focused on web enabled applications the same theory works well for the pundits of the enterprise space. Its a great view into the mind of early adopter experts.

For a full explanation of the five stages take a look at his article.

 

A quick welcome

This blog is my new home for sharing information on the topics of Analytics, business intelligence, Software as a service(SaaS), open source and social analytics. I believe all of these technologies are going to play a critical role in the enterprise as well as our personal lives. I'm passionate about all of these topics and look forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas with you moving forward.

For those of you who have followed my blogging at BeyeNETWORK.com these past 4+ years I would like to extend a special welcome and thanks for dropping by.