Whether it’s Google’s fault or not, the web is getting smarter. The technology itself is moving toward a place where it understands more about who you are as a user, and what it’s showing you inside of your browser. Years from now these developments will have a profound effect on web experience for users, and it will have a profound effect on the economics of online influence for marketers. What will it all look like?

Search becomes Artificial Intelligence. Right now, search engines merely seek to show you something relevant to the keywords you typed in based on much-guarded, mysterious, and ever-changing algorithms. But these algorithms are limited because they are based on keywords, and as even Shakespeare lamented, words have their limitations. As the semantic web becomes a reality, search engine technology will break free of words and actually gain an essential understanding of what web pages ARE - beyond the words on them. This will make search engines more like a search “brain”, which will be able to synthesize the web to meet your needs - once it understands what those needs are.

Your identity unlocks your web. But even if next-generation search engines understand the web better than ever before, the understanding of what you need is still limited to the keywords you input, right? Well, there are big changes there as well. OpenID is the movement to unlock your identity from the websites where it is most established (think LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace profiles) and make it portable, such that when you arrive at a new website it will be able to know who you are. This goes beyond solving the inconvenience of managing a multitude of login profiles - it means that websites could understand your interests, your web usage, your shopping habits (provided you let them). The implications are sweeping. The web can then unfold itself to you in a way that it doesn’t for anyone else, and the gatekeepers for making that happen will be the next-generation search engine. Google and others will eventually know you, and know the web, such that it might at times seem as if it is reading your mind.

The web as one big social network. If you unlock your identity from any specific website, it follows that you will also be able to unlock your social connections in the same way. An unlocked set of connections that you have to other people is often referred to as your “social graph.” You may be thinking how nice it will be that you won’t have to put all that work in to “friend” people as much, you’ll only have to do it once and then you can take it with you. Actually, the way that is done will change too. Friending will cease to be the main means of establishing your social graph. You see, the communication technology you are using (for older folks it is email, for younger folks it is IM and texting) is listening. It’s learning who you communicate with and how often, and about the length and nature of that communication. It knows more about your true social graph than you probably do, and in the future it will be able to make that graph portable and attach it to your now-portable identity. Signs of this happening are already evident. Google’s OpenSocial platform and Social Graph API are great indicators.

The web experience in 2015 will be one where you take your identity and your network with you, and semantic search engines and websites will respond (if you let them) by showing you where your friends are and what content most meets your needs.

How does this affect online influence and marketing? Some of that is already being explored by the folks who are dealing with marketing in the insulated social networking environments that exist today. The successes and failures there are being well documented and adding to professional understanding of best and worst practices, so I won’t try to cover that ground here.

The key thing to understand about this 2015 vision is that in the future social networks won’t be a side attraction to the main flow of information on the Internet - they will be the Internet. Those who explore and begin to understand the dynamics of that new environment by playing in it today will be well-positioned to lead, while others may be left behind.

Social marketing, as a realm that many brands are just starting to explore, is bound to feature many missteps as we learn what to do and what not to do. Nothing is more educational than failure, and just to make sure that failure isn’t you it’s a great idea to watch and learn from what other people are trying.

This was the theme of a recent panel discussion at South by Southwest Interactive here in Austin. Social marketing specialists from across the nation gathered to discuss, and have the audience vote, on the worst social media campaigns of the past year. Offenders ranged from Molson to Rudy Giuliani, and the awards had over 20 nominees.

The important thing was not who was the worst or what the particular offenses were (most of them have been removed from the web already), but why the efforts were failures. After listening to the nominees I believe that the mistakes break down into five areas - the five lessons of social marketing disaster:

1. Don’t be a brand control freak

Nothing panics you faster as a brand manager than someone else requisitioning your carefully crafted brand image and completely recasting on the web. The first impulse is to call the legal department, but unfortunately that will just make it worse. Once your brand image has become part of the social world it no longer belongs to you, and rather than fighting against the way someone might mash it up you have to look for positive opportunities to ride that wave of free, participatory marketing.

2. Be transparent

Many of the most damaging things brand did to themselves among the cases reviewed had to do with secretive behavior. Blogs, Facebook groups, or Youtube videos that pretend to be consumer-driven but have corporate marketing dollars behind them are exposed 99% of the time, and they can be extremely difficult to recover from once the resulting online revolt begins. If you pay for something, make sure it’s clear you did so, and make sure you expose as much about what you are doing behind the scenes as you can. The more open you can be, the better.

3. Don’t enter the objectivity zones

There are places on the social web where marketers marketing aren’t welcome, under any circumstances. Just as in the offline world, there are outlets that pride themselves on their objectivity, and these communities often police themselves very effectively. Most of these areas are open and participatory in nature, so they can be a temptation to individual marketers. Wikipedia is one such destination. Entries in Wikipedia that contain bias are quickly exposed and rolled back to previous versions, and if it’s discovered that a corporate marketer was involved it is likely that the effort will be publicized and panned on the open web. Know the landscape.

4. Stick with it

The word “campaign” can be a bad word in the world of social marketing. A campaign by its very definition has a time limit, and when a social marketing “program” launches it needs to have a minimum lifetime that matches the scope of the audience it is reaching. A successfully established social environment will weave itself into the fabric of its users’ lives, so if it is jerked away or cut off prematurely it can leave them disenchanted. That also severs a valuable connection for you. The best way to approach a new program is to make an ample commitment and leave yourself an option to continue it indefinitely. Hopefully you’ll have the opportunity to take that option.

5. Don’t ignore it

In the featured examples there were 20 or so brands that tried, and failed, at a social marketing effort. They were guilty of doing it wrong, but there are hundreds if not thousands of brands guilty of not doing it at all. At the very minimum you should be listening to what the social web is saying about you. At this point, you should probably also be planning a foray to get you into the mix - you can be assured that your competitors likely are. The sooner you start the more you begin understanding the vagaries of how the social web works within your category, your brand, and you can start building a conversation with your customers. That learning, and that conversation, is invaluable.

(Photo Credit: Bonnie Martin)

The South by Southwest Interactive festival is starting up in Austin today and continuing for the next few days, with a host of keynotes and panels that will appeal to web designers, developers, and businesspeople alike.

Powered will be rolling out some folks that fit in all of those various categories to attend the proceedings, but here are just a few good panel picks just for marketers relevant to the social space. Keep in mind that they are producing audio recordings of every keynote and panel, and these will be available after it’s all over.

The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Campaigns of 2007 - 3.8 @ 11:30
Likely to serve up some valuable lessons in terms of what not to do

The Art of Speed: Conversations with Monster Makers - 3.8 @ 3:30
A take on viral and social marketing from web pioneers

Social Marketing Strategies Metrics: Where Are They? - 3.8 @ 5:00
Marketing thought leaders get “real” when it comes to investing in social initiatives

Social Strategies for Revolutionaries - 3.9 @ 11:30
“You’ll need to combine a radical’s spirit with a strategic framework to get your company to act.”

Sunday Keynote Speaker - Mark Zuckerberg - 3.9 @ 2:00
This young CEO and his company Facebook are challenging for social dominance

Social Networking and Your Brand - 3.10 @ 11:30
Understanding this relationship has been the genesis of social commerce

I remember well the first request I got, back in 2003, to become friends with someone on Friendster. The idea was pretty simple - you logged in, you created a profile, and you created a hard link from your profile to the profile of the person who invited you. You invited your other friends to do the same (if you had any), and over time this network of online links started to resemble the linkages you had in your offline life.

This foundation is what all social networking websites have in common. By setting up your virtual identity and establishing virtual relationships, you are able to accomplish many of multitude of things you would accomplish by networking offline.

You might be trying to find a new job, make new friends, plan a vacation, buy a digital camera, stay connected with old friends, sell your consulting services, promote your retail store, explore new music - any activity that is enhanced by having relationships offline can be enhanced by social networking online.

Over time literally thousands of social networking sites have sprung up to serve those varied purposes. Some are generalized and serve many purposes, like Facebook, MySpace, or even LinkedIn. Others are very specific, such as Lending Club (Borrow money from someone), Neighborrow (Borrow stuff from your neighbors), Cafemom (Meet other moms). Depending on the purpose of the network, they will have different, specialized features to serve their purpose.

Social commerce has come along as what I view as simply a newly defined sub-category of social networking - the group of people who are networking with others for the purpose of shopping and eventually purchasing something. Because people are focused on this task, certain networking features don’t make sense, such as the ability to form groups, add friends, or play games (all prominently part of Facebook and MySpace).

So you may not encounter some of these features in heavy use within Social Commerce sites. But you will see other things you don’t run into on popular general-use social networks, like Ask an Expert or User Badges. Good social commerce technology isn’t simply white-label social networking, it’s a different and select subset of social features.

But is social commerce social networking? Yes. But it is social networking with a purpose. People engage with brands when they are in a shopping mood, not when they are just looking to hang out with their friends. So give them a social network that remains tightly bound to their focus on shopping, and they will pay you back for it. Literally.

This classic 2005 article on the Creating Passionate Users blog contains some great thoughts about how marketing has changed and how “education has become the killer app in a newer, more ethical approach to marketing.” It also contains a lot of good links, trackbacks, and comments to good educational marketing resources to explore. Worth a careful read.

Of course, despite the forward-thinking wisdom in this article and many of the others linked to it, traditional marketing (Out-spend instead of Out-teach) still has a very strong toehold. And even though it won’t make people “passionate” about your brand, outspending still works. My experience in marketing states that the “consumer education” message hasn’t been quite compelling enough to break that toehold.

Instead, the disruption necessary to really change marketers’ minds, and open them up to the importance of consumer learning and research, is coming with the advent of Social Networking and User-Generated Content. The content users weren’t getting from brands, they now seek from each other. Marketers who have been sitting on the sidelines watching this happen are suddenly getting this nagging feeling that if they don’t understand this new social world and figure out how to be a part of it . . . well, they might have to find something else to do for a living. When you say “social,” marketers are ready to listen.

At its root, Social Commerce is about education: brands teaching consumers and consumers teaching each other. Learning is key to the buying process, and even more broadly it is key to making consumers care (or become passionate) about your brand.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal is an interesting piece on how big brands are using social networking software to establish their own mini-networks to act as focus groups for the development of new products and services.

Some key outtakes:

• The article highlights the creation of the “I Love My Dog” network by Del Monte whose 400 members actually collaborated with the brand to conceive “Snausages Breakfast Bites” - a breakfast food for dogs that tastes like eggs and bacon.
• Del Monte’s product conception cycle took 6 months instead of 12 due to the continuous availability of this group of dog lovers.
• The article sites engaging content as the biggest challenge:

. . . the consumer companies that run these private networks face the constant risk of member boredom – and ultimately, member flight . . . the companies that set them up have to constantly add games and other features – as well as provide incentives such as coupons, giveaways and sneak peeks at new products – to keep members around.

• Other example of brands doing this are Coca Cola, Walt Disney, Proctor & Gamble, and Sylvan Learning Center (who has a group of mothers they use to test ad campaigns).
• According to Inside Research, spending on proprietary panels came to $40 MM in 2007, and will grow to $69 MM in 2008.

The article mentioned that Myspace and other big networks are looking at providing the ability for brands to tap into segments of their user base for this purpose.

What does this mean in the broader context of Social Commerce? I think it highlights the importance of data - and the resulting insight - that these types of buying communities can generate for a brand. Most social commerce communities get launched to educate and aid the consumer in the research and buying process, while capitalizing on that engagement to learn more about their audience as a side activity. This trend indicates that there is an opportunity to move even further, growing the focus from learning about the consumer to learning from the consumer.

Steve Rubel defines Social Commerce as “utilizing the power of many to help us find and buy products and services. It involves the creation of new collaboration technologies that shrink the research and purchasing cycle.”

Voice 1: The People’s Voice

Steve is talking about the fact that online collaborative tools now allow us the ability to bring online the typically offline job of consulting knowledgeable, trustworthy peers before we buy something big and complex like a flat screen tv, washer/dryer combo, or engagement ring. Not only can we now access those people in the comfort of our own home wireless network - with the web we can now also access a lot more people and be even better informed than we were in the past.

Voice 2: The Brand’s Voice

But is that all we need when we are considering a product purchase? Other people like us, while more trusted, might not be able to equal a brand’s ability to produce formal, expert content that will educate us on things to a high degree of depth and quality. Isn’t there still a place for that educated, dedicated sales person who is getting paid to respond to our needs?

Good Social Commerce is about bringing appropriate, rich, educational content from the Brand into the consideration and research process along with advisory, objective content from peers. It’s about balancing the two voices that you need when you are getting ready to buy, and making sure that they complement and build on each other.