The document discusses social media aggregation (SMA), highlighting its definition, current state, tools, and future trends. It details the various platforms available, their functionalities, and the need for a holistic solution in the rapidly evolving SMA market. The document emphasizes the increasing demand for comprehensive SMA solutions and the potential for consolidation among existing players while also noting the importance of customer relationship management integrations.

1. Social Media Aggregation 101
Keith Gerr
AMA Oregon: Professional Development
10.09

2. What we’ll cover:
• Defining social media aggregation (SMA)
• Navigating the landscape
• Tools/Techniques
• Where is SMA headed?

3. Social Media Aggregation - consolidation of
inbound/outbound web-based feeds into a
dashboard view for the purpose of creating
efficiencies in:
• Monitoring
• Dialoguing much more than
• Sharing simultaneously
updating your “status”
• Collaborating
• Measuring
• To-be-determined purposes

4. Current State
• SMA market is rapidly growing and
evolving with a mix of highly
interoperable platforms
- Mix of free and paid services allows
for low-cost trial/error

5. Current State
• SMA market fractured by feature-set
and platform support
- Need to consider time/skill-sets to
tie things together

6. Current State
• No single robust tool exists yet that
provides a holistic feature set
- Opportunity for enterprise dat-
application providers (SCRM, BI)
search engines and major social-nets
to bring a full-featured solution to
market

7. SMA segments we’ll dive into
Segment Macro Micro Specialized Transformative
Strong business focus
Supports large Supports limited
amount of social number of social Focused on a specific
Includes listening
streams streams function like monitoring
Definition or format delivery like
platforms, SCRM, BI
SM management tools
Messaging/dialogue Messaging/dialogue video and url shortening
and other enterprise
focused focused
application providers
Example

8. Given the fast-evolving SMA space, it’s
important to determine selection criteria:
• Purpose - business, personal, both?
• Functionality - dialogue, monitor, syndicate,
measurement etc. ?
• Scale - api, mobile, workflow, etc.?
• Interface - easy to use, customizable etc.?

9. Macro: FriendFeed
• Supports many social-feeds
• Individual/Group subscription and contribution
• Accessible from email, phone and IM
• API support

10. Macro: Netvibes
• Supports many social-feeds
• Extremely widget friendly
• “Follower” and “Friend” support
• No analytics yet (they suggest using Google Analytics)

11. Macro: Flock
• Social -browser (based on Mozilla Firefox architecture)
• Drag and drop functionality
• Supports many social feeds
• Blog editor and photo-upload tool built-in

12. Micro: TweetDeck
• Supports Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
• Dialogue-friendly/customizable interface
• Built-in video recording and watching (via 12seconds and Qik)
• Analytics can be accessed if use Bit.ly url shortening

13. Micro: LinkedIn
• Robust personal/group/company networking
• Widget integrations w/ Slideshare, Wordpress, Company Buzz etc.
• Poll syndication widget
• Premium subscription provides stats on visitors

14. Specialized: Socialmention
• Free keyword-based monitoring
• Can search by blogs, microblogs, comments, events, image, video etc.
• Real-time “buzz” widget
• Data export feature

15. Specialized: TubeMogul
• Multi-site video uploader
• Free and premium versions available
• Cross-platform analysis
• Multi-user and multi-campaign functionality

16. Specialized: bit.ly
• Url shortening service
• Allows for real-time link tracking
• Growing API integration includes Twitter, Google Reader and TypePad
• Browser bookmarklet and sidebar available

17. Specialized: Digg
• Crowd-sourced content curation and rating
• Facebook Connect integration
• Community comment threads
• Promote interests/follow others

18. Transformative: Radian6
• Listening and dialogue platform
• Provides workflow features
• Pulls from wide range of social data (blogs, forums, social-nets etc.)
• Growing API integration with enterprise systems like CRM and analtyic
platforms

19. Transformative: Buddy Media Platform
• SM production/management system
• Facebook and Twitter client integrated
• Listening capabilities
• Real-time SM campaign analytics

20. Where is SMA headed?
• Increasing market demand for a “one-
stop”, hosted SMA solution will drive
rapid innovation and consolidation
- Likely to see horizontal and vertical
product segmentation: personal
productivity, SMB, enterprise,
industry, trade

21. Where is SMA headed?
• Custom builds by agencies, social
business consultancies other web
integrators
- Similar to custom CMS/email
solutions, “productization” of social
media management tools/dashboards
will be looked at as a revenue growth
area

22. Where is SMA headed?
• Consolidation among macro, micro and
specialized players
- Acquisition/mergers will increase as
aggregators are forced to integrate
growing social media properties/
platforms/features to retain/expand
audience

23. Where is SMA headed?
• Transformative players will continue to
load-on BI and contact-center
capabilities
- As SM listening/monitoring services
become commoditized, transformative
players will need advanced customer
intelligence and engagement features
to “grow” with paid client-base

24. Where is SMA headed?
• Social Customer Relationship Management
(SCRM)
- Existing and new CRM entrants are
introducing cloud-based platforms that
provide flexible integration with social media
and other enterprise systems (SFA, CMS
etc.) that leverages/enables peer:peer/
peer:pro dialogue

25. Where is SMA headed?
• Google/Facebook
- Both have the audience scale and
technical resources to become a
defacto aggregation hub (i.e.Google
Wave/Analytics/Social Search and
Facebook Connect)
- Over time will develop and/or
acquire in-demand social media
features

26. Continuing down the SMA path
• Prioritize current/future needs
• Evaluate tools from a business and
technical administration perspective
• Don’t overlook aggregation/syndication
features within existing social-nets
• Product reviews, social bookmarks,
survey responses - they’re all part of
the mix

27. Thank You
keith@krgmarketing.com 503.957.0264 twitter.com/keithgerr