Time 13:19

We all have them on line, those places and groups we like to exchange ideas with. Whether you call them tweets, updates, photostreams or posterouses, (I made that last one up as a new user of Posterous thanks to a suggestion from Marketing Edge guest Steve Rubel.) the social web is state of being, not a destination. It’s a state of information and comments that is fluid.

I met up with Steve Rubel, author of the Micropersuasion blog and columnist for Ad Age at the 140 Conference in New York. We talk in this Marketing Edge podcast about Twitter vs. eco systems as the next big thing. Rubel believes that social ecosystems will have staying power as the lifecycle of different platforms serve a function within those ecosystems. In fact, just as I was about to post this, I noticed that Steve is “Forking” his content from Micropersuasion, a next step in the evolution of social eco systems.

Twitter and this conference show how we have become accustomed, for some obsessed for others, with the concept of the State of Now information, as Jeff Pulver would say. The real-time and regular exchange of information across the social web is an entity that can be measured, and in many cases, has value for individuals and organizations. I look at Twitter for example as being similar to radio, and in the case of trying to dip into that information stream, perhaps it can be monetized.

For example, it might be interesting to note who among your Twitter followers are online when you are. You can do this in Facebook if you use the chat function or Skype has this capability as well. Take this to the next level in building patterns of usage over time among an individual’s followers. Viewed this way, Twitter becomes like buying radio, some subset of people are listening (twittering or viewing tweets) at that time.

The easier play is sponsoring # topics or Tweetchats as the world looks to figure out how to pay for the state of now information. If not pay for it, then justify the investment of time. Surely there are ways to measure Twitter now, formulas like, click throughs, RTs, number of followers, etc, are a decent snapshot. I suggest the more detailed the information available about the behavior of these ecosystems and its platforms, the richer the experience all will have interacting with individuals, organizations, and the information they exchange.

Book Giveaway Drawing – Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan

The book a lot of people are talking about will be available in late August, called Trust Agents by Chris Brogan, with Julien Smith. We will hold a drawing and pre-order the book for one Marketing Edge listener/reader. Email me at marketingedge AT providentpartners DOT net with the word TRUST in the subject line. We will name a winner at the beginning of August.

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