As you might recall, I am writing over at the American Express Open Forum Blog as part of a sponsorship. Here's my latest post, on becoming a web conversationalist….
My director of events, Stacey Foreman, tells me we have exactly 25 tickets left for the CM Summit in NYC. Now, we are only letting 350 folks in, and we've been selling about 20 tickets a day over the past week. So…while I am inclined to push the fire…
My partners at Web 2 told me today that the new website is live, the initial theme is up and posted (I am very excited about this year's theme) and if you haven't gone before, you can request an invitation to come here. Last year we had nearly 10,000…
The first line of speakers is also up, and there is a lot more cooking. Initial speakers include Jack Ma, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Ken Auletta,
Richard Rosenblatt, Lance Armstrong, Ralph De la Vega, Paul Otellini, Mary Meeker, Padmasree Warrior, Kevin Johnson, Joel Hyatt, Mathis Wackernagel, Marc Benioff and Vinod Khosla.
From the theme:
Read MoreCheck it out….great lineup, really looking forward to it….
As many of you know, next month is our second Conversational Marketing Summit, this time in NYC. The line up of speakers is really fantastic. I'll be interviewing: – Beth Comstock, CMO of GE – Rich Silverstein, co-fonder of Goodby Silverstein – Sarah Fay, CEO North America, Aegis Media…
– Beth Comstock, CMO of GE
– Rich Silverstein, co-fonder of Goodby Silverstein
– Sarah Fay, CEO North America, Aegis Media Americas
– Wenda Millard Harris, Chair, IAB and President, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
Gina Bianchini
Beth Comstock
Rich Silverstein
Sarah Fay
FM has partnered with Chevy to create a site that pulls together the best of sites on the web covering all things green. I've found it a nice way to stay in touch with a subject I'm increasingly interested in. I use the feed to monitor stuff, and then…
This is part of an ongoing trend I’m seeing, both at FM and certainly across the web, where marketers are providing a service to their potential customers in the form of supporting authentic media, as opposed to creating their own content and hoping it takes off. I like the trend.
I'm late on Powerset (I just don't have time to do the briefings anymore), but Mike has coverage here and Danny's is here. What I find interesting about Powerset is the refinement, which Danny covers well. The interface (in particular the response to query) is much more grammatical and…
What I find interesting about Powerset is the refinement, which Danny covers well. The interface (in particular the response to query) is much more grammatical and conversational. That’s where the entire web is going, and it’s cool to see an example of it.
FM's Conversational Marketing Summit is just six weeks away, and I am getting more and more excited about the lineup of speakers, and the issues and topics we are going to cover. Check out the lineup of speakers: # Jeff Berman, President, Sales and Marketing, MySpace # Henry Blodget…
# Jeff Berman, President, Sales and Marketing, MySpace
# Henry Blodget Co-Founder, CEO, Editor in Chief, Silicon Alley Insider
# Jonah Bloom, Editor, Advertising Age
# Beth Comstock, Chief Marketing Officer, General Electric
# Matt Freeman, CEO, Tribal DDB Worldwide
# Louis Giagrande, Online Marketing Manager, Samsung Electronics
# Darren Herman, Group Director of Digital Media, Media Kitchen
# Michael Hoefflinger, GM – Partner Marketing, Intel
# Mark Kantor, Co-founder, Graffiti
# Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu
# Clark Kokich, CEO, Avenue A | Razorfish
# Andy Lark, VP–Global Marketing & Communications, Dell
# Andrew Markowitz, Director, Digital Marketing & Media, Kraft Foods Inc.
# Daina Middleton, SVP, Director Sunao Customer Insight, Marketing Analytics, Emerging Trends, Moxie Interactive
# Wenda Harris Millard, President, Media, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia & IAB
# Eileen Naughton, Director of Media Platforms, Google
# Martin A. Nisenholtz, SVP – Digital Operations, The New York Times Company
# Michael Osborne, Vice President of Sales, Bazaarvoice
# Jon Raj, Chief Digital Officer, OMD
# Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, IAB
# Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus
# Rich Silverstein, Co-Chairman, Goodby Silverstein & Partners
# Rudy Wilson, Director of Marketing, Doritos, Frito-Lay
A great lineup, and we’ve still got plenty more to add. I’ll be the host and emcee of this event, and I’m really looking forward to digging into the theme.
Read MoreSome musings, fundamental stuff for most of you I imagine, but still, background on the noodling I continue to do around my shadow next book, over at the Amex site where I'm contributing some thoughts from time to time as part of an FM brokered marketing program. From it:…
At its core, the Web is a network of computers. As businesspeople, we’ve been in dialog with computers for some time now. But back in the 1960s and 1970s, computers were hulking machines meant for the back offices of Very Large Companies, not small businesses. These machines had a very particular interface – a command line into which you were required to type an arcane “computer language” to get anything done. The number of people who spoke this language were understandably low, and therefore, the number of people in the world who were having “conversations with machines” was also quite low.
In the 1980s, we all got “personal computers,” and thanks to the graphical user interface – “GUI” – millions of us starting talking with computers. But the conversation was hardly fluent. I call this the “hunt and poke” era of computing – we used a mouse to navigate a representational desktop; when we found something we wanted, we poked at it until it came alive for us. This gesticulative interface – not unlike what the wordless signals we employ while in a foreign land in need of the bathroom – is a step forward, but it sure doesn’t scale.
Read MoreI've always been a fan of Udi Manber, late of Yahoo and Amazon, now at Google. Popular Mechanics has an interview up with him. From it: I’ve noticed, anecdotally, when watching people search, that they will rephrase their query over and over again until they get a proper answer….
I’ve noticed, anecdotally, when watching people search, that they will rephrase their query over and over again until they get a proper answer. To what extent can that be fixed on the search engine side?
Many ways. First, we take that into account. The results we show you are based not only on what we know of the Web, but also what other people have searched for. Second, we are developing more tools to allow you to refine your queries—at the bottom of many pages, you’ll see query refinements. These are suggestions from us about what your next query should be. And we put it at the bottom because that’s where you run into problems—you tried to read the page, you didn’t find what you want, you may need other suggestions. Plus, we’re working on many other ways to help you with this process. [Search] is clearly a process.
