Seth Grimes on the semantic web – but is B2B media ready to benefit?

Seth Grimes, an analyst specialising in business intelligence and text analysis, gave a fascinating presentation – “an introduction to the semantic web and text-mining” – last week in London.

I will try and give you a flavour of his presentation and Peter Thomas wrote it up. But he certainly got me thinking about whether B2B media is ready to benefit from the semantic web.

What is “the semantic web”
When you look up a key word or phrase on Google, the search engine returns content on the basis of the frequency of those words within the text and the links to it from other sites, among other things. The semantic web takes that concept further, returning content by recognising not only the frequency of the words and calibre of the links, but also the context of the request. In short, the semantic web aims to understand user searches in a more human way, adding context to queries.

Seth kicked off with an article by Hans Peter Luhnin the IBM Journal of 1958 which has Luhn, the pioneer of information services, complaining that “no attention is paid to the logical and semantic relationship the author has established”.

Hans Peter Luhn, “The Automatic Creation of Literature Abstracts,” IBM Journal, April 1958

Seth argues that even then Luhn was perceiving a time when “sense making” would matter:-

Statistical information derived from word frequency and distribution is used by the machine to compute a relative measure of significance

Today that need for sense among all the disorder of content is even greater with the “unstructured data challenge”, as Seth called it, of blogs, emails, surveys and office documents.

Ever more relevant today

Seth used, as an example, a Twitter application called twitrratr which assesses Tweets for “sentiment analysis”. But, using the word “kind” as an example, he showed how difficult it is to do that with the multiple-meaning English language.

Sentiment analysis by twitrratr of the word "kind" by Seth Grimes

“Is seach up to the job?” he asked.

Only if it provides content semantically enriched with linked data, that is context sensitive and location aware.

And the sooner media companies get in on the act, the better.

The digital universe by industry 2007 from "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe” IDC, 2008

Seth quoted from a survey  by IDC to show just how little those who are responsible for content benefit from it.

The broadcast, media and entertainment industries garner about 4% of the world’s revenues but already generate, manage, or otherwise oversee 50% of the digital universe

Finally Seth went to push textmining on sites using automatic content categorization, text augmentation and information extraction (disclosure the presentation was sponsored by text mining platform Nstein). The market, he argued, from a study (partly funded by Nstein) he had published “Text Analytics 2009: user perspective on solutions and providers”,  was worth $350 in 2008 and due to increase by 25% in 2009.

Seth’s own research showed…

Yet, surprisingly, when clients were asked about relative importance of several online qualities, clients placed content management a lowly fifth below brand values.

"What are the primary applications where text comes into play?" survey by Seth Grimes

But, interestingly, clients were more likely now to analyse social media content than traditional news articles.

Is B2B media ready to exploit the semantic web?

B2B media is the opposite of mass media, the former a mass of sites for small but very well defined communities rather than the latter with its few big sites for millions of people. Indeed B2B sites do not want millions of the wrong people coming to their sites but rather few of the right people. Users’ familiarity with an existing print brand, social media activity, all help to refine those who get to the sites. But key to this refinement is search.

Take SHP, a B2B site for the safety and health professionals, as an example. It boasts articles on stress. We do not want millions of people finding the site because they are Googling the word “stress”. What we do want is for safety and health practitioners who are looking for such phrases as “stress in factories in northern England” to find the site. The more complex the keyword phrase used to get to a B2B site is, the more qualified the user.

And, finally…

The issue for us, therefore, is that our more qualified readers have been making choices informed by Seth’s linked data, context and even “location aware” for years. How then will the semantic web benefit them? In fact, does the semantic web have something to learn from B2B?

Photo credit:dullhunk

Interview with Tony Uphoff – on using Facebook and Twitter to network at events

Tony Uphoff runs UBM’s TechWeb (a sister company to my own) which runs Information Week and the Web 2.0 Expo co-produced with O’Reilly Media.

Tony is very active in social media with a blog Uphoff on Media and a Twitter. Here he talks about how he uses Facebook and Twitter to network before and during business-to-business events.

This is my sixth and last interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and my second interview with Tony.

Interview with Paul Way – the impact of Facebook and Twitter on mainstream businesses

Paul Way and I used to work together in London before he moved back to the US to work for sister company UBM TechInsights.

I met up with him for breakfast in San Francisco’s Dottie’s True Blue cafe where he reminded me just how good he was at seeing the bigger picture. Here he evaluates what impact the lack of business plans by Facebook or Twitter has on mainstream businesses. Listen to his interview.

 

This is my fifth interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

The etiquette of permission networking

You’ve heard of permission marketing, right?  As defined by Seth Godin, it is the transformation wrought by social media encouraging people to opt-in to rather than opt-out of marketing.

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

What about permission networking? How does that work and what is the etiquette? 

I’m off to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco at the end of this month (disclosure: the conference is produced by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb, a sister company of mine in the US).

Last time I was in San Francisco, I had been writing this blog for barely two months. And I had scarcely got going on Twitter. I still had the habits of a traditional broadcast editor in me, thinking nothing of emailing directly a leading and high profile social media expert.

But it takes a lot more than an email to convert a social media relationship into a telephone conversation. This social media guru very politely suggested we could speak on Skype a month later. 

Now I’m surprised he even bothered to reply.

Seven months later, nine months into this blog, five months into my Twitter profile, four months into my Google Reader and ten months into social media, I know better.

Just as social media has transformed push into pull marketing so it has transformed assertive into permission networking.

As I head to San Francisco this time round, I’m not going to be sending emails. I’m not even going to be picking up the phone. 

What I am going to do is

• Tweet out my preparations for the trip.
• Follow the Expo’s hashtag #w2e on Twitter Search to check on who is going.
• I will begin following people I am interested in and see if they follow me.
• Suggest a Tweetup each day.
• Update my status on LinkedIn and TripIt to alert my existing networks of my plans.
• Read Chris Brogan’s 27 things to do before a conference.

But other that those few things I will wait. I wait until people come to me.

And if they don’t, I will know that I need to spend even longer investing in my community before I try to convert social media acquaintances into face-to-face meetings. I will need to contribute even more to people’s conversations on Twitter. And I will have to comment even harder and way more intelligently on their blogs.

I’ve got a dinner booked already and a meeting, both through permission networking.

I’ll let you know how the rest goes.

Photo credit: theogeo

A list of UK bloggers and Twitterers who are beginning to rival their US peers for my attention

Six months ago, my daily fix of blogs and Twitters originated in the US or Canada Whether it was Jeremiah Owyang, Jay Rosen or Mark Potts, their posts and Tweets provided me with a swift and fascinating education in both new and social media. 

But I have noticed how my RSS subscriptions have begun to change. My list, once dominated by US and Canadian bloggers and Twitterers, is increasingly peppered with UK and Irish ones. 

There have always been good UK and Irish bloggers on new or social media. But some of those attracting my attention have appeared only during 2008 or, even more recently, 2009. Some are former journalists and media executives turning their hand to blogging for the first time, the new wave I predicted late last year.

Here is a list of US/Canadian bloggers and Twitterers I admire and their UK/Irish equivalents. 

Comparisons of online media

• Mark S Luckie’s 10000 words is at its best when it publishes one of its comparative lists such as 8 Interactive online projects that educate and captivate. 

Why not try out Martin Belam’s Currybet with its equally ambitious and detailed comparisons. Just last week the UK’s Bellam kicked off a four part series contrasting the navigation on UK national papers.

The future of newspapers

• Jay Rosen, New York University’s maverick professor of journalism, cannot be bettered for Tweets which question the role of journalism in this digital age. Follow and learn. 

Back in the UK (although from the US himself) is uberactive Ben LaMothe who fills the Twittersphere with breaking news about the US and UK news industry.   

Analysis of B2B magazines

• Paul Conleyhas led the tiny B2B community of bloggers for years with his detailed analysis of the US sector’s failings and finality.

In the UK Rory Brown, previously of Incisive, launched his blog late last year and  Neil Thackray, formerly Quantum and Nexus, kicked his off only a fortnight ago. Both write with the confidence of years at the top empowering them to raise issues that were once swept under the carpet.  

Short, sharp lessons in writing posts

• The US writer Seth Godinisn’t inspirational just for his opinions. His writing also motivates you to improve your own style and his counterintuitive opinions challenge your own views.

Gloucestershire-born Richard Millington (although now temporarily locate in the Baltic States) only started Feverbeelast year. But his posts show a rare focus and his writing style evokes the minimalism of Godin (the UK blogger did an internship with the US guru). Is this the UK’s future Godin? 

What about local papers?

• The Media Managerby Kirk LaPointe, also editor of the Vancouver Sun, is essential reading for any journalist in north America who wants to keep up to speed with rapid changes in the industry. His output is phenomenal with around 25 posts a week.

We now have our own LaPointe in Jon Slattery, the former deputy editor of Press Gazette. Jon’s blog covers so much of the J-news in the UK that one blogger has already questioned whether he needs to read both Jon and the Press Gazette.

How technology impacts on life

• I’ve always loved Sarah Lacy’s blogfor her opinions and her “go shove-it” attitude towards start-ups and technology. She now joins TechCrunch while editor Michael Arrington takes a break from the stalkers.

Jemima Kiss is an equally tough technology thinker but pours her views and opinions into MediaGuardian and her Twitter. 

The entrepreneurs/ start-ups 

• The US has Kevin Rose, owner of Digg, a celebrity on Twitter, a very visual blog and a liver of life.

 We have Paul Walsh, founder of Segala – and yet to be launched Wubud. Walsh also boasts a popular blog, a vast number of Twitter followers and a great line in meet-ups. 

Are there any other bloggers or Twitterers that you would add to the list?

If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!

Photo credit: Anthony Mayfield

 

You’ve been asked to write a digital strategy. Now what?

You work in a traditional business. You already make a little bit of digital revenue from a website. Now you’ve been asked to map out a digital strategy to increase your digital activity, and ultimately, revenue.

What do you say?

You’ve worked with websites for almost a decade so obviously you know everything there is to know. You don’t really like the web at all, if you were honest (but you definitely would not admit it). You think the web is a dull, unresponsive little thing. You hope it is a fad that will go away.

What do you do?

What you should do is to set about finding out how much you do not know. You probably won’t because you are not aware of what you do not know. You’ve managed to keep clear of new fangled things like Twitter (“what a silly name!”) and blogs (“no one ever comments on them anyway”). You think Facebook is for mooning teenagers and “online communities” means blasting out emails to an ever lengthening list of people.

What could you do?

You could give the web a try. You could sign up to some of these things with funny names that everyone is talking about. You might just find that, what you thought of as a dull, was actually quite interesting. More than that, you might just begin to glimpse the new world on the web. You might see how responsive it is, how you can network with people in very different ways and how you can conduct its rythmns and passions like a symphony.  

What would you do then?

You would experience happiness from the clarity. You would be relieved that you had not taken any irreversible decisions during your earlier ignorance. You would now be aware of how much you did not know. Now you are ready to research your community and find out what they really want and what they already use. You would begin to be in the position that you could write that digital strategy you had been asked to do several weeks earlier. You would do it rather well.

If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!

 Photo credit: Waponi 

Why are so many B2B media blogs anonymous?

To be honest, occasionally it has been a pretty lonely existence being a blogger.

Of course there is instant gratification when you can get to know and collaborate rub with Peter Kim, a leading social media marketer, or Jay Rosen, the head of journalism at NYU. But to find someone actually blogging about my core competence – the business of B2B media – is rare.

Perhaps it is beginning to change.  In just a week, Paul Conley, the US-based B2B consultant launched a hard-hitting analysis on the future of the sector. Rory Brown, a former boss at Incisive Media followed. News sites, blogs and Tweets carried the question can B2B magazine brands survive?off into the blogosphere. Alone? It is beginning to feel like a B2B media online community!

So I have spent today updating a previous posting on a list of bloggers who focus on B2B media. And as I did, I got rather depressed. A significant minority of B2B blogs are anonymous. Stranger still is that many of them are also well written and posting good stories. So why the anonymity?

I spent many years as an editor trying to avoid – and often failing – to run stories based on unattributed quotes (“Sources say….”). Hell, we weren’t the New York Timesbut it always seemed worth trying. And yet, here I am coming up against anonymous blogs.

Postings as thought-provoking as those by Paul Conley, Adam Tinworth and Rory Brown are also authoritative because they are clearly bylined. How are we to develop a really effective online B2B media community if some of the key participants keep their identities hidden?

As the news from many B2B companies becomes tougher and tougher, anonymous blogs taking swipes at these companies seems increasingly lame. Anyone can write anything without putting their name to it. But it takes someone to write something of importance.

Why does such anonymity plague blogs about B2B media and not national or local newspapers? All sectors are equally under pressure. In the meantime, all links to anonymous blogs on my list have been removed.

Links suggest collaboration. Calloboration suggests support. I am not sure I support them.

Can B2B magazine brands survive?

lThe impact of digital on national and local papers dominates. The fate of B2B media has been all but ignored. So you can imagine my delight, after a week offline, to discover a real debate.

Well “delight” might be the wrong word here. Paul Conley, a US B2B magazine consultant, has clinically assessed the likely survival of the B2B media sector in the US. It ain’t pretty. Neither a debt-laden, traditional print sector rushing to go online nor more recent, web-only companies can get it right. Advertising revenues decline. Both sides lord it over each other. Rory Brown, a former MD of Incisive Marketing Division, has joined the debate. He argues that B2B companies need to recognise and embrace niches within business sectors. Then use web hosted apps to service readers. I do both an injustice. Read them.  

I recognise the problems. But here’s my countercyclical take on it.

1. The mood among traditional B2B journalists has swung dramatically. The conversation is no longer “why digital” but rather “shall we use a corporate Twitter address and use DM to communicate. Oh, and let’s feed it through the company Wiki”.
2. B2B editors are already brilliant networkers so well placed to be what Clay Shirky, among others, would call ambassadors between small world networks. Encourage them and you draw the rest in.
3. The smaller, monthlies are already such niche titles that their new digital footprints translate smoothly into online communities.
4. Editors’ specialist knowledge is extremely effective when they go out to comment on stories in the national press or other blogs.
5. Even the names of the titles, particularly some of the smaller ones, help since they often mirror key search phrases – Service Management, Security Management, Publican, Building.
6. Web-hosted, social media apps have brought an excitement to editorial teams and provided many of the former prohibitively expensive solutions  for their sites.
7. A successful B2B titles has not been a stand-alone brand since the mid-1990s. Conferences, awards, exhibitions, roundtables, all extensions to a magazine’s brand sit far more comfortably within digital than endless supplements.
8. Our exhibitions are now spawning high quality conferences. They might not look like journalism but by God they feel like it when you are live blogging them.
9. Content will remain a priority but digital allows former print titles to withdraw from some areas – why compete on data when others do it better?
10. Digital revenues might be 5-10 per cent on average. But that figure will rise quickly.
11. Clients know they must move their marketing online. They, like the media, are just struggling with the cultural changes necessary.
12. B2B sales teams have a relationship with clients that allows them to mentor them as they learn about digital together.
13. Sales teams are absolutely up for it.
14. Not all B2B companies are debt-laden. United Business Media (my company) has money in the bank following sales of the Express newspapers and shares in C4 and C5 TV channels over the last decade.
15. And finally, the return of humour. Adam Tinworth, RBI’s blog maestro on the current downturn: “I’ve just registered fromb2btob&b in preparation for the implosion of the industry and my inevitable move from B2B to running a B&B in Devon…”

What do you think. Can you add to this list?

An amusing take on marketers and social media

We loved this video so much that we kicked off our monthly meeting with it to the senior marketing managers this morning. The marketers have had a great autumn getting up to speed with social media but I am sure sometimes they would not have minded if it had gone away!
Just listen to the references to Twitter and blogging!

Five predictions for the economy and what to do about it

Roger Martin-Fagg made five predictions for the economy at the AEO Conference 2008. This is the Client Director Henley Management College economist who has made many gloomy predictions in the past and said at the same event last year

there has been a huge party and we lost our senses. Now for the hangover.

But it was not all gloomy. Martin-Fagg also came up with suggestions as to what to do about it. First the predictions.

1. UK economy to remain in recession until end of 2011 and the US until the end of 2010.
2. UK economy to shrink by 6% over next three years or £50 billion.
3. Asian economies to suffer far more they had imagined.
4. UK banks to go to government for £60 billion of further funding by next summer, effectively nationalising them.
5. UK savings ratio already going back up but needs to get to +4%. Each 1% represents £7 billion out of the economy. 

What to do about it?

1. “Take market share by being distinctive”. Expensive, top end and cheap, bottom end will do far better in any business sector. It is those in the middle who will suffer.
2. “Invest in anything to do with old people”. Care homes, drugs for the elderly.
3. “Invest in new kit”. Any company with money should continue to invest, particularly in innovative, new technology.
4. “Don’t drop your prices, rather introduce small price increases”. Keep your margins up and put any price rises down to exchange rates or whatever.
5. “Only start buying assets again when people still don’t think that we have reached the bottom of the recession”. He suggested not for another 18 months at least.