I'm currently away at the Online Marketing Summit in beautiful San Diego. Just wrapped up the education portion of Day 1 and I'd give it about a 7 on a 1-10 scale. The day started out real strong with a presentation by Catfish on SEO. The guy is brilliant and the education I picked up from him more than paid for the entire conference.

In all, there are about 400 online marketers in attendance so lots of great networking opportunities. During the Q&A session for an advanced paid-search presentation (advanced was a very loose term at this particular presentation) I was speaking to the lady who happened to sit next to me. She pointed out something very interesting trends in the questions coming from the audience. Everyone wanted the magic pill. They wanted actionable and measurable things that they could do right now in order to be successful. The waters are so murky in the online marketing world that these people are in over there heads and don't know who to trust. They read one thing, but the data tells them another thing. They're on short budgets and need results fast. The sad thing I realized is that things are better than they used to be, but I don't see them clearing up anytime soon.

Hopefully next week, I'll be able to share with you my findings and give you some great insight that you can actually use right now in your day-to-day business. Stay tuned.

Tags: Community, Bob Hazlett, Google, Tools, Search Engine Marketing

Work and the holidays have really been taking a toll on my mood and energy levels. With that in mind, I'm taking a break for the next couple of weeks to relax, touch base with the family and reenergize. I promise to come back stronger, post more often and with better content in 2008. If you're still looking for great social media and marketing minds, check out the sites below.

Chris Brogan - Chris Brogan advises businesses, organizations and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships and deliver value.
Jeremiah Owyang - Jeremiah discusses how web tools enable companies to connect with their customers.
Seth Godin

Tags: Bob Hazlett

Yesterday, Google along with a host of other major social networks (MySpace, Bebo, SixApart, Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle) announced OpenSocial – an initiative to share an open API amongst across multiple sites. This will allow developers to create applications or widgets that can efficiently extend their website experience to existing communities on popular social networks.

What this means for you?

• We no longer need to have a MySpace strategy, a LinkedIn strategy, etc, but rather we can develop one application or widget that can be accessed throughout all services. A standard API will greatly reduce development time.
• Harness existing communities. We don’t have to go out and build an audience, but rather we can leverage what’s already there.
• Combined, the core group of networks involved represents over 100MM subscribers.

Challenges

• The open API was just released yesterday, so bugs may occur
• Inconsistencies may emerge – not all applications may behave the same across all platforms
• No two networks are the same. LinkedIn and MySpace have 2 different user bases.
• Facebook, Yahoo! and Microsoft haven’t bought in yet.

This is a major announcement and something that I feel could really benefit your online strategy. The possibilities are endless. I suggest sitting down in the coming month with someone who actually understands this and how it can affect your business (or contact me) and see how you can be proactive and tackle this head-on. Trust me, its going to be worth it.



Additional Resources:
Wired covers the aspects of Open Social
Open Social FAQ's
All the Children are Insane courtesy of Magnus Kjall

Tags: Community, Google, Bob Hazlett