Traveling Geeks

uberVU Social Media Commenting Tracking & Reply System #TG2009

Two of the things I’m tracking right now are social media meta tools and social media data mining for marketers.

uberVU, a European start up from Romania has created a clever social media meta tool that solves a real problem for content creators in the social sphere.  With uberVU, you can track conversations that happen anywhere on the web and see the responses in a single interface.

For example, this blog post is posted to my DishyMix blog, but will also automatically be Twittered and will get syndicated to my Facebook page. Anyone can reply to the blog post, reply to me @SusanBratton or comment on Facebook. uberVU lets me see all the comments in a single location and then allows me to comment from that UI.

Vladimir Oane and Dragos Ilinca of uberVU are in private beta now and public beta soon on their comment tracking and reply system.

Vladimir Oane, co-founder, uberVu

Here are some screen shots I got while meeting them at the Seedcamp US/UK Speed Dating event last week in London at part of my Traveling Geeks trip.

UberVu Single Conversation

You can track your own work or track stories from other sources. Select a blog post or Tweet for example and uberVU compiles the reactions to the story from where ever that story appears – blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed, Disqus, YouTube and many more.

You can see all the responses to a story as a threaded conversation. And you can respond from the uberVU interface to any or all of the comments across myriad sites.

In my interview with @DaveTaylor at SXSW, he says the often overlooked but most important activity he recommends is posting blog comments around your key areas of expertise to stay active in the blogosphere. With uberVU, you can see what’s being said AND COMMENT ON IT from a single interface.

Susan Bratton & Dave Taylor on Social Media Commenting Strategies

uberVu is a web app that uses the ContextVoice API to track what’s being said across social graphs, using sentiment analysis, search and filtering, giving you near real time results.

UberVu Conversation Tracker

The acceptance of failure as a spur to innovation

Recently, I was part of the Traveling Geeks tour of UK tech, including the
Reboot Britain conference. (The Geeks are a collection of talented
journalists, and myself.)

I was struck by the repeated comment that failure is stigmatized in UK
business culture. In Silicon Valley, failure is just a normal phase of
one's career. You might succeed in your first endeavor, probably not, so
you're ready to persist in subsequent efforts.

That is, there's some expectation of failure and the expectation that
you'll get over it.

This is not unique to Silicon Valley, but it's far more expected here than
anywhere I've heard. The attitude is the norm here, but in a lot of
places failure continues to be stigmatized, and it's hard to recover.

It seems that widespread innovation and success requires the acceptance of
failure, and then a readiness to move on.

That's generally true in Silicon Valley, maybe needs to be true in the UK
and maybe everywhere else.

UK Diary: Tuesday – It Never Rains But It Pours . . . More BT Innovation

Tuesday afternoon with the Traveling Geeks and we are over at BT HQ seeing half-a-dozen presentations from its business units.

We were a little wet from dodging torrential rain bursts. But the afternoon sessions are interesting.

Meghan Asha was impressed by BT’s programmable broadband service:

BT’s Open Broadband is a BRILLANT solution to broadband issues for businesses. What is it exactly? As far as I can understand, it allows companies to easily program broadband strength with a couple paragraphs of XML for specific websites. This is fantastic for stream gaming where you’re gaming via the cloud. In short, this is perfect for any application that needs guaranteed bandwidth. I love this idea, if only someone would implement it in the US. My first site request would be YouTube (bah!).

Click here for more info on the development of Open Broadband.

BT’s Programmable Broadband!

Innovation apprentice

We also heard about BT’s apprentice program, which involves several hundred high school students every year. BT sets up day camps where young people brainstorm new ideas. Then it offers to show them how ideas are developed into commercial products. It’s an excellent program. Interestingly, school drop outs are encouraged to attend — it’s more about ideas and passion than it is about how well someone did at school.

A level playing field

BT is tightly regulated and it must provide equal access to its telecom infrastructure to any company. This is fine for BT because it is keen to have many companies create innovative applications on top of this platform, in addition to the new services it is rolling out itself.

I asked JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Innovation and strategy at BT, how does BT avoid the impression that it could become a competitor to the companies it is hoping will use its advanced communications platform.

“We make sure that we only innovate around platform services and leave the applications alone,” he said. “We want to avoid the criticism that others such as Microsoft have had about this issue.”

I mentioned that four years ago I was at an event where Rob Hull, a business development manager at BT Group was talking with local entrepreneurs and hoping to lure them to the UK and have them use BT’s telecom platform. Mr Hull said that BT would split the revenues with the startups 80 percent, with 20 percent for BT.

However, should their service become hugely popular, BT reserved the right to port the application to its machines and reverse a 20 percent / 80 percent revenue split in its favor! I was shocked.

(Silicon Valley startups told: Come to London … BT wants your business! – SiliconValleyWatcher)

Mr Rangaswami said that this provision no longer exists. Since he joined BT in 2006, he’s made sure to ensure there is very competitive platform for developers without fear of BT coming in and scooping up the rewards from popular services.

Next: We’re back into the rain and off to the Guardian newspaper…

Tips for Using YouTube for Affiliate Marketing from Econsultantcy’s “The Innovation Report” #TG2009

As a Traveling Geek in London, I participated in a Round Table Discussion event with some of Econsultancy’s clients.

See the TG2009 Econsultancy Flickr Set Here

As a follow up to the event, I was given a copy of their very well done Innovation Report.

Econsultancy Innovation Report for Digital Marketing

If you want a high level overview of some of the hottest technology companies in the digital media and marketing space, this report does a great job with highlighting best practices in the following disciplines:

• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing
• Online advertising
• Multichannel marketing
• Online customer service
• Online PR
• Social media and communities
• Search marketing
• Usability and user experience
• Web analytics and optimization

One of the most interesting sections to me was on using video to drive affiliate traffic, written by Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit. (Most of the companies featured are European, but this example of a “best practice” was from Shawn, a US affiliate champion.)

For more free and in-depth coverage on video, I interview Bruce Clay about Video SEO on DishyMix airing today:

Bruce Clay on Video SEO, Page Rank Sculpting and Search Siloing Strategies

From Econsultancy’s Innovation Report

Video as a channel to drive direct traffic to affiliate links
Category: Affiliate Marketing
Company: http://blog.affiliatetip.com/
Many affiliates use video as a channel to drive traffic, but one innovative tactic to drive through higher volumes is to include the URL of the affiliate site and embed it within the video itself.  According to Shawn Collins, few affiliates are making use of video to either drive traffic to their
own sites or to affiliate links directly. Shawn Collins tested various online video engagement strategies, trialling videos through a number of popular sites, including YouTube, MySpace, Revver and Yahoo Video.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkX7xHvTIe0

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/

Per Shawn Collins, co-founder, Affiliate Summit

?I have tested various methods over the past year… and found that the following format works best:
http://www.affiliatesite.com/product-name – I then create a redirect via an .htaccess file, so that /product-name
points to the affiliate link. The URL is featured for the duration of the video uploaded to the video sites.

?Conventional wisdom may be that people do not type in URLs in videos – I‘d like to share a secret that the
conventional wisdom is incorrect!

UK Diary: Tuesday – Seed Camp’s Highflyers

(Photo Susan Bratton.) Tuesday morning the Traveling Geeks were at Seed Camp. I couldn’t make it but here are some of our reports:

Susan Bratton: My Impression of UK and Euro Entrepreneurs from Today’s Seedcamp NESTA “Speed Dating” Adventure

We started off the day today with a fun event created by Reshma Sohoni and Alasdair Ball ofSeedCamp. SeedCamp is an early stage fund that also provides exacting business support and grooming for UK and European start ups who are socially-oriented. Typical investments are up to 50 thousand Euros for about 10% of the business.

By the caliber of the entrepreneurs and the quality of the business ideas I witnessed today, Reshma and her team are making smart investments and providing wise and plished council for the entrepreneurs they back.

Every single one of the thirteen companies was, in my estimation, a great idea combined with a terrific leader or team. The most successful to date include Spotify, the European version of Rhapsody’s “all-you-can-eat for one monthly fee” celestial jukebox…

My Impression of UK and Euro Entrepreneurs from Today’s Seedcamp NESTA “Speed Dating” Adventure

Craig Newmark reports:

Hey, the folks at Seedcamp, with NESTA, have done remarkable work with a number of British Net-related companies. My fellow geeks spoke with the following day; I was consistently impressed, these guys have real stuff. I’ve already started using some of their work:

Basekit Rapid website design and development tools.

Groupspaces Group webspaces.

Huddle Huddle.net combines live conferencing,
project management software and document sharing.

Kwaga creating a new revolutionary service that will
help you manage your mail.

Moo miniature business cards

Qype Local reviews on everything

School of Everything puts teachers in touch
with potential student

Skimlinks hyperlinks keywords in websites

Spotify legally downloading songs.

Stupeflix automatically arranges and animates
banks of pictures.

Ubervu meta-web 2.0, merges and tracks
conversations and feeds across the web.

Zemanta dynamic text editor that assists in
content creation and addition

Songkick music concert online database.

UK Diary: Tuesday – Travels With Sky And Dealing With Dongles

I missed the first event of the day for the Traveling Geeks because I was hunting local shops for an Ethernet to USB converter as I, (and we collectively) struggled with Internet connectivity issues.

Sky Schuyler was our resident IT support guy and fellow Traveling Geek. He has the patience of a saint. Every morning we’d dump our laptops, BT dongles, and cell phones in his lap and beg him to perform his particular form of magic and get them working and connecting again. He has unlimited patience and good humor — it’s no wonder that he was chosen by the Dalai Lama Foundation to be its Chief Technology Officer.

(Photo by Susan Bratton from the post: “Communication is how we connect to others at a deeper level,” Jim “Sky” Schuyler)

Please see: BT Openzone Wireless Broadband – Sky’s Blog

UK Diary: Monday – The Geeks Eat Dinner At The Top Of The World

Monday evening the Traveling Geeks were invited to dinner in the 384 ft BT Tower, which used to be known as the Post Office Tower when I lived in London. It has a revolving restaurant near the top and has been closed to the public since 1980.

It was a rare honor for us to be hosted by BT CEO Ian Livingston and his top team of managers. This giant European Telecom is quite a surprise, very innovative and very aggressive. You might expect the opposite. Yet it is the US telecoms that appear slow and Luddite in comparison.

The innovative energy is caused by strict European Community regulations that ensure a level playing field for competitors. This is unlike the US system, which seems designed to prevent new competitors from entering markets and results in telecoms companies that turn-off mobile phone functions and control what applications and services can be offered.

I met quite a few of BT’s top management team and all of them exude a spirit of industry and innovation that was very refreshing. The leadership for this culture comes from the top with CEO Ian Livingston.

A stand out is JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Innovation and strategy at BT, who has managed to craft a team that shares his passion for innovation. And he writes a very good blog: confused of calcutta — a blog about information

Originally an economist and financial journalist, I’ve been an accidental technologist for over a quarter of a century. I’ve spent most of my adult life working in that strange space where finance meets technology, for a number of very large firms.

Also, I want to pick out for extra special mention and attention: Sian Baldwin, Director of Broadband & Content Services at BT Wholesale. Ms Baldwin is extremely impressive and was recently recognized as one of the top managers under forty in telecoms. (Photo by Renee Blodgett.)

It was an excellent evening in a spectacular setting with one of the top corporate innovative teams in Europe. I’m always impressed with the access I continually get to such top people. (I’m just a guy with a laptop.)

Here are some more views of this evening from my fellow TGers:

Craig Newmark was very impressed that Ian Livingston interacts with customers:

Apparently the guy publishes his email address, and gets a few customer service emails every day. He answers or delegates each one.

I don’t believe the CEOs of AT&T or Verizon do that, nor do they have any direct reports doing something like this. (Related: this is why a President needs to keep his Blackberry.)

cnewmark: Ian Livingston, CEO, British Telecom

Renee Blodgett has a gallery of photos from the event:

down the avenue: BT Tower by Night

Backstage Pass- WDYDWYD

Susan Bratton is doing a meme — WDYDWYD — Why Do You Do What You Do during the Traveling Geeks’ week in London and Cambridge. She asks interesting people to put their name and URL on a piece of paper, and then give a short statement of “why I do what I do” and she photographs the person with their paper. Susan has been doing this all week and you will find her WDYDWYD memes interspersed throughout the blog.

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Address Books Supported by the New Contact Uploader in Skype 4.1

I recently met Neil Dodd of Skype in London and go the low down on Skype’s new 4.1 release. Neil says Skype now supports the following contact mangement and email systems and address books so you can easily grow your Skype address book.

Here’s the list of supported services:

Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, 163.com, Daum, FastMail, Indiatimes, Interia, Libero, mail.com, mail.ru, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, mynet, Rambler, rediff, SINA, Wirtualna Polska and Yandex.

UK Diary: Monday – Reboot Britain – The Traveling Geeks Help Out

Monday morning several Traveling Geeks take part in the Reboot Britain conference organized by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).

Howard Rheingold:

The day starts with an exercise in cat-herding, with the whole crazy crew piling into three London taxis. Try putting any five of those rather strong individual personalities into an enclosed space and “intense” is the only word for it.

… It was the first time I had spoken publicly about a subject I’ve grown passionate about – 21st Century Literacies. You know you’ve hit the mark when people are still sitting at the end of the last session of the day. I finished speaking, acknowledged warm applause, sat down — and people kept sitting. So I got back on stage and fielded questions for another 20 minutes. Thank you, London, for making my day!

http://www.smartmobs.com/2009/07/07/reboot-britain-first-stop-on-traveling-geeks-tour/

There were lots of interesting panels.

Renee Blodgett:

On the panel, “is the web female?” moderated by BT’s JP Rangaswami, four women talked about their opinions around a) what does the web ‘being female’ mean and b) should there be the “divide debate” at all?

…The debate in the hallway was mixed but most didn’t feel that technology was geared towards men. They haven’t been to Silicon Valley I was thinking. 99% of my client CEOs and head honchos have been men as have the majority of their engineering team. There’s always a token woman or two among us but I never feel as if they’re the main decision drivers. Bear in mind that this is the majority of my experience but not all.

down the avenue: Is the Web Female?

Renee Blodgett posted a short video of Jeff Saperstein’s talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pr9ePqvm84&feature=player_embedded

Craig Newmark was on a panel talking about his favorite topics.

Meghan Asha:

FixMyStreet.com: A website that allows users to report, view, or discuss local problems (like graffiti, street lighting, or broken paving slabs). Craig plans to employ a similar site in the United States. Thus, using social media to employ change in the public sector.

GovLoop.com: A social network that connects the government community. You can join if you’re a government employee, organization, contractor, or student. This social network cuts through the bureaucracy, empowering government officials for change.Check out Craig’s blog, he plans to lead grassroots effort using social media growing the engagement of others from millions to billions in the next 20 years.http://meghan.nonsociety.com/lifecast/136352109–

Here are Craig’s thoughts…

My focus was on how a lot of people in the US, gov’t and private industry, know how to get stuff done. That’s equally true of the UK.

That is, there’re already a lot of solutions out there, but getting people to work together is required. Online social media can be used to do that.http://www.cnewmark.com/2009/07/at-rebootbritain-tech-and-risk-taking-can-help-restore-a-govt-and-an-economy.html