Comscore now rates Twitter as the third most popular social network after Facebook and MySpace. It should be in its own (microblogging) category but whatever.

I came across this great Twitter tool today – monitter. Monitter allows you to view activity on Twitter in real time, which can be quite amazing to watch. Social media skeptics should take a look at this. Its kind of exciting to watch people express their personal view on a topic be it Greys Anatomy, HP or the weather.

There are a lot of tools out there and this post provides a rundown on eight of them.  Welcome to the world of analytwits.

The conference kicked off with two keynotes in the morning and then split into three tracks.

The presentations that I saw were very case study driven, which is nearly always the case with these types of conferences. Agencies and clients were happy to talk about the revolution that ‘is occurring’ or ‘has occurred’ and to report back on successful campaigns and projects but few were willing to tackle some of the more challenging topics and issues facing the industry. I saw four members of one panel swerve the question of: What is influence and how can it be measured?

This is a topic that I plan to come back to.

Fox Interactive Media announced ‘four new initiatives‘ to ensure that it ‘enables marketers in their fight to be more efficient and relevant’.

One of the four initiatives – MySpace Lifestages’ will allow marketers to target Australians in a range of lifestages, including:

• When a MySpace user has graduated from Uni
• Is engaged to be married
• Is Pregnant
• Has given birth
• Has lost a job
• Has entered a new job
• Has had a birthday

MySpace will provide marketers with access to this data in real-time (its based on the users’ self expressed interests on their public MySpace profiles’.

Some facts about MySpace Australia:

• More than 2.4million uniqe Australian visitors in Jan 2009 – according to Nielson Online
• Australians spents 2.3million hours on MySpace during Jan 2009
• 65% of MySpace Australia users are 18 years or over

The theme of brands engaging with consumers via existing social networks was a dominant one during day one of Ad:tech and its clear that huge value lies in the access that these social networks have to user data. Further, the value held in this data is the key to successful monetisation of social networks. The ability of social networks to harness information and present it in ways that are useful to marketing people will determine the future of social networking.

Users have – in the most part unwittingly – accepted this process by agreeing to the End User License Agreement, which is an essential step when signing up or becoming a member of a social network but one wonders how consumers will react in the long run when it becomes apparent to them that brands have access to this information and are using it to target them with offers and promotions. The onus is on the marketing industry to do this in a way that is truly engaging, entertaining or useful.

There were examples of some creative and engaging campaigns today.

I think there is an inherent danger for today’s popular social networks – the pressure to successfully monetize will increase over time (accelerating from now) resulting in them making more and more information available to marketers and potentially alienating their members. This may create the opportunity for new social networks to come in with promises not to share personal information with marketers.

Of course, there are other methods of monetizing social networks. This post by Laurel Papworth provides a comprehensive run down while Robert Andrews at The Guardian predicts a tough 2009.

Some more thoughts on day 1 from Ben Shepherd at Talking Digital here.

More from me from Ad:tech tomorrow.

Cess + Pool

Google CEO Eric Schmidt referred to the Internet as a “cesspool” at the annual American Magazine Conference. He argued yesterday that the Internet is becoming a breeding ground of misinformation.

Apple felt the effects of the cesspool earlier this month. A comment made by a ‘citizen journalist’ on a CNN hosted message board lead to ten point fall in its stock price. The comment falsely claimed that Steve Jobs had had a heart attack.

In some ways this seems like an odd comment to come from the CEO of a company that has been very successful as an organisor of the ‘cesspool’ and I’m sure that Eric would agree that user generated media is not all shit.

We should recognise that Schmidt was addressing an audience of journalists, magazine publishers and content creators. This is the old guard in media terms, a community which has an issue with the lack of journalistic standards in the blogosphere and feel threatened by fact that the keyboard is now mightier than the pen (or print press).

Google is treading a fine line between its role as a search engine and content creator. The company is in a hugely powerful position when it comes to determining what is value online, which makes Schmidt’s comment a cause for concern.

He says that brands are the answer to the problem of quality on the Web, says Schmidt. Brand affinity is hard wired and brands represent authority.

The inherent point in Schmidt’s argument is that brands – by definition commercially viable and therefore good for Google - are somehow more credible than human, individual voices. It’s the rejection of this premise that has fuelled user generated content and commentary and the blogosphere.

Furthermore, by Schmidt’s rule CNN is an authoritative brand. CNN has attempted to co-opt citizen journalists and user generated content with its forums and message boards (including iReport where the Apple rumour first appeared) but still the cesspool seeped through. 

CNN has attempted to tap into the cesspool in order to drive traffic to its site, which has ultimately created conflict between its brand and its perceived authority. A halfway point between the two would see it apply journalistic standards to the user generated content that it promotes but that discussion brings us back to the debate about moderation, which leads on to a discussion about resources and freedom of expression and then the risk of editorial bias.

As an aside, CNN bills iReport as:

iReport.com: See it first. Your Stories. No Boundaries.
You won’t believe what people are uploading.

I think this is further evidence that we are really at the very beginning of a digital transformation in the media sector. There is so much to be ironed out. The battle between traditional media and new media is just beginning.

Look out for a post from me over the weekend about what impact an economic crisis might have on this transformation.

More on the Schmidt story here from WebProNews.