“Web 2.0 Expo, Day 1: Kristen Nicole, Dave McClure, Josh Bernoff”

As part of what seems to be a conference marathon month, socialTNT is at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week. Instead of our usual “3Q’s in 3Min,” we will be doing short video interviews throughout the conference. On Wednesday, Day 1 of the Expo, socialTNT chats with Mashable’s Kristen Nicole, Web 2.0 Expo organizer Dave McClure and Forrester’s Josh Bernoff.

Check out the video as we talk about the state of Web 2.0, find out what to do with VC money and analyze the marketing messages on the floor. Oh yeah, and we talk about the parties.

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After some feedback from friends and mentors, socialTNT is changing up the way we do videos to reflect our personality and voice–more fun, less stuffy. Let us know what you think!

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“QUIZ: Discover Your True Groundswell Technographic Profile!”

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a blogger dinner organized by Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff and Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research. While there, I got an advanced copy of Charlene and Josh’s upcoming book “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed By Social Technologies.” The book is full of some really helpful case studies and lots of good advice (full review to follow soon), but what I’ve found to be really useful is the concept of the Social Technographics Profile.

Something about the Social Technographics profiles really resonated, so I created a quiz to help you discover your true Groundswell Social Technographics Profile.

How involved are you in the groundswell? Are you at the top of the social technographics food chain? Discover your social media savvy and find out whether you are a key influencer in just a few minutes! Take the quiz and wear your badge on your blog, a forum, or your MySpace or Facebook profile. It’s fun and also educational. Here’s mine:

Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile Your Result: Creator . With all the blogging and video making you do, I’m surprised you had time to take this quiz. Whether podcasting or maintaining a website, the amount of content you create makes your Groundswell Social Technographic group a valuable target for social media marketers. As a creator, you join an elite 18% of the US online population. Now turn off the computer, your family misses you.
Joiner	.
Spectator	.
Critic	.
Collector	.
Inactive	.
Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile See All Our Quizzes

According to Charlene [Check out socialTNT’s video interview with Charlene Li from last fall] and Josh, different demographic groups participate in the conversation–or “groundswell” as they call it–through different means. Before launching a social media campaign, you want to make sure that your target audience interacts and engages through the technologies you’ve chosen for your outreach. If you can get the creators and critics talking, then the largest Social Technographic group, the spectators, will be exposed to your brand.

You can read more about this theory and others on the Groundswell blog, or pre-order the book on Amazon. Josh and Charlene have explained the hierarchy of influence of each Social Technographic group by illustrating it as a ladder, below. They’ve also included this very handy tool to determine your target groups’ Social Technographic profiles.

What do you think about the Social Technographics theory? Let us know in the comments. And take the quiz! 🙂

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“Search Wars: The Fight For the Third Page”

Get ready to add another marketing buzzword to your list.

Last week’s announcement of Google Knol launched the first bout in the struggle to control the third page. While not as electrifying as the Third Rail, not grabbing control of the third page could be equally threatening to GOOG’s quest for world-domination.

For those of you wondering what the third page is: According to Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research, “The first page is the main page of a portal; the second page is where the search results are; the third page is what you click on when you decide where to go. Google already owns the first and second page, but since they don’t own content, they have no control over the third page.”

If we strip out social networking sites, search engines and retail sites, the Alexa Top 100 shows Wikipedia and Yahoo as the dominant Third Page sites. This is followed by Go.com (home of ABC, ESPN and Disney), then , IMDB, CNN, GameFAQs, About, New York Times, IGN (home of Rotten Tomatoes), GameSpot, Reference.com, and CNET.

Take a look how this translates, in terms of traffic:

Wikipedia, alone, takes about 55 Million visitors. The majority of the other sites listed above add an additional 20 Million each. Those are a lot of eyes that could be converted to Google Ad dollars; a good reason why they would want to dominate 1st, 2nd and 3rd pages. Will the algorithm stay unbiased so that non-Google articles make it to the top?

The big question for me, however, is why would GOOG want to start with such a web 1.0 endeavor? Wikipedia is open to editing by members of the internet community. Google’s Knol will contain articles written by experts and community members. During beta–and perhaps beyond–Knol will remain closed to editing. Wikipedia (and wiki’s) are highly social, which helps ensure accuracy; if one person writes something that isn’t accurate, someone else will come along and fix it. Mashable suggests the information will be organized like a Mega-blog, but, to me, Knol doesn’t seem too different from about.com, Encarta, or any other web 1.0 experts/answers pages. With social search sites like Eurekster and Mahalo, trying to control content will (hopefully) lose to the content people find most informative.

[Above photo, “Boxing Gloves” by Addictive Picasso on flickr, used under Creative Commons.]