A Response (The Unfulfilled Promise of Analytics 3)

Joseph Carrabis just published the final in his three part series, the Unfulfilled Promise of Analytics.

It's worth a read.

Pop some corn and leave a thumb ungreased to pound that space bar.

Joseph concludes with an invitation for others to carry on where he left off.

So here goes:

Where to from here?

A point of view.

In my view - analytics is a science that is in service of an entity. It's not about the pursuit of truth but rather the pursuit of competitive advantage. Anything that stands between us and that goal is an obstacle to be obliterated. There are 7 axioms that I consider to be the most relevant foundations and anchors.

I'll add more axioms as I encounter ideas along the way.

The science of making data talk is pretty straightforward. The art of communication is not. That doesn't mean that we can't apply science in understanding the art of communication. Isn't that one of the whole premises of marketing analytics?

(Of course it is.)

And what of the social-institutional problems that continue to plague? Do we throw our hands up and scream about those? Or are those barriers that block the path to sustainable competitive advantage?

If we can agree on a common goal-set, it become a lot easier to chart a course around the obstacles.

Of course, you'd have to agree with the original premise of analytics in the first place. It's purpose.

In sum, perhaps we should be using the same tools we use for the benefit of others, for the benefit of ourselves? Imagine. Practicing on ourselves what we preach to others.

Finally, a thank you -

The quality of thought and the degree of time and effort that Joseph put into those posts is significant. I thank for him for it. It's has had an effect.

The Social Analytics of #ChangeCampTO

#ChangeCampTO happened last night in Toronto. It was a gathering of some 240 people ranging from engaged citizens, community organizers, public sector people, private sector people, social media technologists, journalists, and yes, the social analytics guy in the room.

The purpose of the gathering was to develop a civic engagement toolkit.

The overarching goal of this movement is fairly ambitious - we want the headline on a newspaper, the day after the Toronto civic election, to read: "wholly shit, people care".

I was at Table 13, and did I ever luck out with my group. We spent the time actually talking about tools - focusing on the how instead of the issues. It's this leap to go from issues-based thinking to meta-based thinking, but our small group certainly overcame that.

A lot went right at #ChangeCampTO. And I'm going to focus on that.

A lot of really great output was produced. People came together and were heard. They actually talked to one another. Many people met each other physically for the first time, cementing their digital ties that much more. I think a lot of people got what they wanted out of it.

Now it's up to the organizers to consolidate and re-engage.

There's a Social Analytics to all of this.

The first question is how to measure the success of #ChangeCampTO. To that end, there is a draft Goal Alignment Strategy.

The second question is whether or not any participant identified measurement as being an important tool in their toolkit. This notion of using measurement to inform evidence based public policy is so completely esoteric that I'd be surprised if it even came up. The notion of evidence based community engagement optimization is even further remote. I can see the utility.

It, too, feels meta-meta-meta. Perhaps two degrees of meta too far.

I'm looking forward to the next round. Thanks to the team that organized it.





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The #olympics

If you're in the #smm or #measure community, you know the impact that tweeting has had on the English (written) language (online). Never before has the @ and # been (ab)used so much. But what about the impact it has had on how we consume media together?

Twitter is an awesome utility. Through it, we find out how our friends are doing, organize trouble, learn, alert, shout, entertain, push, prod, pull and otherwise - communicate. People are amazing adapters. We had to be over the past million years. It's our competitive advantage. We're always finding new uses for things and repurposing them. Twitter is no exception. We'll find some new way to use the medium.



During Friday night, and continuing on until February 28th, people are watching the #olympics and tweeting about it, reacting live.

What was astonishing, on Friday night, was just how many of my friends were live tweeting the #olympic opening ceremonies. And it was a hoot. In 2008 I was pretty much alone in live tweeting during a TV show (and roundly boo'd for it too!). In 2009 I was joined by four or five people.

On Friday night, I was joined by a solid 40 people, reacting to live events, in real time. It wasn't everybody controlling time with a DVR and having a disjointed experience. Rather, it was a simultaneous, real-time, mass social experience.

The volume of comments produced is impressive. Since Friday, up until right now at the time I'm writing this, fewer than 72 hours, there have been 232,347 tweets using the #olympics hashtag.

It's a major mine of data and yours to explore.

In the meantime, enjoy watching #olympics with everybody else.



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Web Analytics Wednesday Toronto: February 2010 Summary

A massive thank you to Patrick Glinski (@glinskiii) for hosting Web Analytics Wednesday (On a Tuesday) last night. The venue was great and it was all well organized. Also a big thanks to Jim Sterne (@jimsterne) for coming out and Lee Isensee (@OMLee) from Unica for sponsoring the event.

I didn't expect to join the panel - but it was nice to have been loudly trolled up (eh - @Jason_Dee ?). I also enjoyed giving the first stabs on what are really hard and really early solutions. What I wanted to talk about, but couldn't, was the launch of our product socialTALK™ today.


It's exciting because it addresses the human process issues that are common in social media marketing. It's an important instrument in closing the execution gap between insight and action. Since you won't improve what you won't measure - we've included metrics right in there. If you're executing a social media strategy, you need socialTALK.

Check it out.

While I would have really loved to cause trouble and leak the news, a few other themes did manage to dominate:

The discussion started off really technical - especially around the most complex topic - sentiment analysis. We talked about the problems with the English language and meaning and how humans, in general, are the source of a lot of error when it comes to the summarization of what something meant. Error is okay, so long as you know it's there and you're consistently erroneous. Consistently erroneous data produces a trend you can use to gauge success.

And we're never going to eliminate complexity and error in language. But we can manage it.

We all generally agreed that it wasn't so much about the data inasmuch that it was about the insights and what you do with them. This notion of social media is about people and social media measurement is about people became recurrent after Glinski pointed it out.

He went onto to emphasize that his not-so-hidden agenda was a desire to see everybody make more money. That prompted more discussion later on in the night about collective challenges.

There was an electricity in the room about the opportunities in social media measurement. People were happy and genuinely alright with missing #lost.

I had good conversations with @june_li , @jonlitwack @web_analyst , @jntn , @will_lam , @marktoronto , @SionneRoberts , @mmonaa @dynamicdeanna and @jenvetterli and Debra Luneau, among many others. Those are just the tweets I found during the night. The Syncapse team had a great time too.

It was a great event. Last year when Jim was in town at about this same time we talked about a lot of things - but social media measurement really didn't feature all that prominently.

What a difference a year makes.

A big thank you to all who came out and all who engaged. I look forward to seeing you at the next one. ;)


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Web Analytics Wednesday Toronto...On A Tuesday!

Tonight is Web Analytics Wednesday in Toronto...On a Tuesday!

This is quite a big deal for us, especially since it's really the first time in the past two years that we've hosted it on a Tuesday. So, we'll probably see new faces. Hopefully they're all smiling.

Jim Sterne will be there. Last years' Web Analytics Wednesday panel was quite fun and it's great having Jim back in town.

I imagine that social media measurement will be all the rage. I look forward to those discussions, and I'd like to pick up on some of those and share them on back in this space.

If I'm seeing you tonight - great. If not, see you next time.


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Blippy, Twitter, and Social Analytics

On the Report, Colbert pokes fun at the proliferation of ever seemingly invasive social network technologies. I want to cover off Blippy, Twitter, and go into the impact for social analytics. I'm excited. I think you should be too.

Exhibit: Blippy

http://blippy.com/

Why would anybody do this?

Because shopping, for many people, is social. Paco Underhill has argued, at least on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, that people continue to go to malls just to be around people. And, while I've never claimed to understand why certain groups of people like to shop with one another and 'try on' clothes and so forth, I've certainly observed that behavior.

That's why I could foresee a constituency of people who would want to follow the purchases of their friends. Oh - I see that you've bought Call of Duty 4. Interesting. Oh, I see that you've bought such and such a song. Awesome. I'm going to comment on that.

Ramram923, I thought you were going to to stick to that diet, why the hell are you eating at FatBurger?

So there you have it. This is just one model of why anybody would do this.

Should people use such a medium?

Now let's get into judgement country.

You say potato, I say social utility, you say social surveillance, I say tomato. Let's call the whole thing off.

I'm going to use a juxtaposition here and talk about Twitter. Should people use Twitter?

There are plenty of opinions about how and if that medium should be used, and, indeed, there are plenty of uses and much more disuses. All of those opinions doesn't prevent people from tweeting all sorts of things - from how much they enjoy their baked #potato, to how awesome the lamb is at an Indian restaurant in Leslieville. From rants about #measure, to hawking our latest models - we invent many ways to use the medium.

I'm much less concerned about whether or not a social network should be used for anything and more fascinated with the fact that it is being used for something.

Same logic applies to Blippy. It's not so much that people should use it or not. It's the fact that it is being used.

What's the impact for social analytics?

I'm not making any claims about adoption. If you look at the technological adoption S-curves for a whole bunch of products, you'll find different saturation points. There's enough literature elsewhere that covers that off. I'm not saying that Twitter will go to 40% saturation and that Blippy will go to 10% or even 1% for that matter. Though, it is possible even if I don't think that it's probable. (Note the language. Slippery aren't I?)

Rather, the notion that 0.25% actively tweet and that perhaps 0.00001% actively Blip is of no small significance. Sure, these are tiny figures. But consider that your average poll of 'randomly' selected people is just 1000/33,000,000 in Canada (1000/300,000,000 in the US). It's alright that the n is small.

The impact, for social analytics, is very profound. It represents a dataset we didn't have just a few years ago. It represents an expanding frontier of well-ordered information. And while I'm presently living through the intellectual purgatory of explaining instrumentation and perception error, I still come into work with a smile upon my face. It's data that will enhance our understanding of the world for the benefit of our employers, employees and everybody else.

It's not so much that I'm concerned with the other 99% of us who don't use it. It's that I'm more interested in the 1% who do. I'm a modern analyst - I can handle error and ambiguity. Most of you can too. I know you can handle it.

I hope you're all as excited as I am.


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