Carmine Porco from Prescient Digital Media is talking about How to Measure Web 2.0 Content.

The big ideas:
– social networks … the power of group … the wisdom of the crowd. “Who wants to be a millionaire: the crowd gets it right 91% of the time”. Google gets it … utilizes page ranking to gather collective intelligence.
– social media is about promoting networks of relationships; a variety of tools
– various social media forms, eg, social networks, RSS, open source software, blogs, etc.
– 6 of the top 12 sites visited on the web are social media sites.
– social media is about the transition from publishing to participation. Web 1.0 stuff gets pushed at you, and Web 2.0 enables you to talk back.
– BBC, “we don’t own the news anymore”. BBC is now a “facilitator of the news”
– social media is an important channel for managing reputation
– … eg, think of the Kryptonite lock (2004) problem. The firm had to replace 380,000 locks
– the Internet is widely used … for online purchases, for decision-making research, online banking
– word of mouth is a very effective form of advertising
– an example … BT’s My Pages … business links to documents that may be interesting, pages I’ve created, stuff I’m working on
– … also BTPedia … has become the central platform for enterprise-wide wiki-based collaboration
– … other examples … Sun Microsystems (Community Equity tool), WebNext (Project 90/10, 90% of the intranet home page is personalized for each user), IBM’s ThinkPlace (grassroot idea collection), IBM Sametime 7.5 (VoIP for free calling), IBM Second Life (online virtual meetings), and Sabre Town (ask questions and post questions; 60% are answered with an hour)
– Red Cross is actively recruiting bloggers, because it helps with fundraising.
– intranetblog.com is Presient Digital Media’s blog. Went to 4000 people in 400 days, and Google rankings for “intranet consultant” and “intranet consulting” went to #1. Increased corporate consulting revenue by 40%. Has become a primary source for winning new clients.
– don’t use a wiki as your content management system; use it for a collaborative workspace.
– communities of practice … for subject-matter experts to share practices

How do we measure all of this?
– see Melcrum Publishing (July 2008), the “Intranets and Social Media Survey”
– track who is talking about you or your industry … blog services, message boards, bookmarking sites. Have to monitor the tools to track the conversations. Will need dedicated personnel and a process.
– tools to use … Hitwise, WordTracker, BlogSquirrel, and CNW.
– see Google Keyword Tools, can see search frequency for certain and related links
– http://www.wholinkstome.com

… and more.