I had a very nice conversation last night with some clients from BlogHer. The topic, like that of many conversations among those who work in social media here at Ad-Tech Chicago, was: Should we use the same metrics to measure social media as we do more standard online media types? This dovetails off of my post a couple of weeks ago creating a taxonomy for media properties.
In response to these conversations, I’ve started a list of metrics we should be tracking for social media buying and selling. The first is virality, the amount a blog is linked to. Influence is another one (although we’re still working on the best way to measure it).
I’m open to suggestions. What metrics are you using to sell your social media site? Send them my way, I’d love to build this list and make these metrics available for custom runs of data.
I just spent a lovely two weeks in the northern wilds with my family. No Internet and, aghast, no cell phone. We did spend a bit of time in the airport however, which led me to some thinking about the direction of the Internet and the importance of the current incarnation of search. But first a story:
My wife and I were sitting the middle of an AirTran flight and I was looking up at first class (yes, they do have 1st class in AirTran flights - news to me). I saw a distinguished looking older gentleman whom I recognized, but didn’t know where from. As soon as we got off the flight in Burlington, VT the gentleman was talking to a news crew. Still, I recognized him, but had no idea from where. My first thought was that when I got home I would Google him. But alas, there is no way to Google “older guy I recognized on flight to Burlington” and have it be remotely meaningful. Since I appear to have outsourced my ability to remember things to the Internet, I never got my answer.
This is because, as we all know, Google, and most search for that matter, looks for words. We’ve found work-arounds with tag clouds and other forms of meta-data, but no real answer to the root problem.
Why should we care now? Well total time spent watching Internet video us up more than 30% over 6 months according to VideoCensus, versus, basically flat overall Internet time. The image based (non-text) Internet is growing. Given that we are still lacking (good/real/useful) meta-data standards for video we have a problem.
We can’t search it.
I think this might be a problem.
