I’ve been watching ejamming.com for a while now, ever since a talented ex-co-worker of mine turned me on to the site. I’m still fascinated by the idea and keep expecting the site to break out and become more widely known. (It’s possible that there are a ton of musicians using the site. I don’t have any numbers for them but I get a sense they’re still in an early growth phase.) Basically, you plug in to eJamming, look up fellow musicians on the network–say a drummer, bass player, whatever–and begin playing with up to four musicians from anywhere in the world. It’s as simple as that: you collaborate online in real time. (There are some technology requirements to get instruments linked up, but nothing particularly advanced or onerous.) The technology behind it is smooth enough that there’s no latency, no hiccups; you just begin a virtual jam session. Reports from the talented ex-co-worker are that it all works well. eJamming offers a 30-day trial so musicians can give it a test. After that the subscription is around $10 a month. That seems a reasonable amount for anyone looking for an online musical hook-up.

And once you and your virtual bandmates decide you want to chuck it all for rock stardom, Guguchu is there to help you deal with fame and fortune. It provides a set of tools for bands/musicians to sell merchandise and music, book gigs and communicate with their (hopefully) growing fanbase. The site is still in beta, so I’m not sure how robust their tools are, but the concept is pretty smart and I appreciate the idea. There are a ton of good local bands that deserve more attention but simply don’t have the time and resources to support their own efforts. Guguchu is a way for them to coordinate everything and hopefully make some money. As far as I’m concerned, any tool that disrupts the way music has been marketed, distributed and sold (to the detriment of nearly every artist involved) for the past 50 years deserves my respect and attention.

Even with the twofer it’s a short post. As with all posts, as I learn more about eJamming and Guguchu I’ll provide updates. And if you’re from eJamming or Guguchu, reach out to me if you have more to share. I love what you’re doing and I’m happy to help you out.

I’ve been tinkering with Backupify the past few weeks since they so kindly gave me an upgraded subscription. (I’d love to think I’m special to them, but it was a promotion they offered to any old shlub.) I had been looking for some way to archive my little chestnuts of wisdom from my Twitter account (Who can forget this gem from February 7, 2009: “I have a wig in my front yard. Why?”), but with 5000 Twitter updates (and counting) I wasn’t sure how easy that would be. Turns out it’s pretty darn simple. Backupify allows you to archive updates and activity on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and a host of other social networking sites. There’s even a handy feature that allows you to create a pdf of your archives. (I’m having some issues with the non-pdf archives, but I’m assuming it’s user error and not a problem with the software.) It currently has some archiving for WordPress, Google docs and some others in beta. (I haven’t had a chance to play with the WordPress backup since I just installed the module today, but I’ll keep updating this post as I get more information.) They have a free version that is good and has the basic archiving features, but I have to say that I will likely pay to continue my subscription when it expires next year. (I think it’s $30.)

The fact is 5000 tweets is approximately 683 kilobytes of data. That’s about the size of a short novel. Include your replies, DM’s, etc. and you’re talking about a sizable amount of writing that goes into keeping a Twitter account active. And if you’re like me, those tweets form a skeleton of ideas, discussions and thoughts that may lead to deeper things. You’d hate to lose them and you might want to eventually go back through them to find good stuff that needs to be fleshed out. Searching through tweets now using the Twitter client or Tweetdeck is next to impossible. Backupify protects your work and makes it simple to sort through.

Like I said, I’ll come back to this as I tinker with Backupify, but it’s been a handy little tool to have. You can follow them on Twitter (@backupify) or go to backupify.com.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think Twitter is a great tool and a valuable channel worth using and watching. But the fact that it’s a private platform being controlled by private interests, and not open-source being run by and for the good of all users, means I am becoming more and more leery of it as it grows. I’m not saying that the folks at Twitter are up to any nefarious plots, but sooner or later they will assert some control somewhere–a decision here or there to limit or eliminate a heretofore free feature–and it is going to make someone unhappy. Or more likely, it’s going to make lots of someones unhappy. It will probably be short-sighted third-party developers and those who depend upon Twitter for their livelihood who get burned, but the burning sensation will also extend to those who depend on those developers as well, i.e. their customers. I do my best to avoid burning sensations.

And one more thing: You may notice the tone of this blog becoming a little more confrontational. I’m not being provocative for the sake of angering anyone, but I think some of my posts have been bland for the sake of being likable. That’s not the way good ideas come about. So I suspect that my opinions may not always be in line with the current shared wisdom. Please feel free to let me know what you think. I hate arguing for the sake of arguing, but I also think that due to the easy ability to resend, retweet and repackage opinions and posts, ‘conventional wisdom’ becomes conventional a lot sooner than it used to. We’re building some big structures these days with quick-setting stupidity, so to speak. That’s too bad. So I intend to look at that wisdom a little closer, not to be intentionally provocative (that’s the realm of gadflies and pop stars), but to see if I can shake loose some of the aggregate before it becomes permanent. (That’s a cement metaphor and it’s brilliant.) If you disagree with me, let me know. Your comments, even the disagreeable ones, will be cherished. I promise.

I ran across this factoid today on Twitter (H/T @marc_meyer): Australian courts have said distributing legal documents via Facebook is acceptable. I had no idea. After doing some additional research, I found that New Zealand (New Zealander? Zealandish?) and Canadian courts have also ruled that posting a document to a Facebook account is fine. (Link here.) US courts have not held that to be the case, but the idea that Facebook–a for-profit, American, public company run by non-elected employees with their own set of interests, ideas and agenda–should be placed in the position of distributing legal documents in any country just doesn’t seem smart to me.

I’m sure some would think that’s a little overboard; after all, why should Facebook be any different than UPS or Fedex or a bicycle messenger or a process server in distributing legal documents? In principle, I don’t disagree with that. But then I ran across this story that has received very little notice in the press. That’s right, Facebook was socked with a $9.5 million judgment in a class action suit for divulging user’s private information through its misguided (and now defunct) Beacon project. And these are the folks that should be handling legal documents?

This is in no way an attempt to single out Facebook or its employees as irresponsible or bad. Someone made a boneheaded decision and Facebook is being asked to pay for it. But the payment is being made through a civil proceeding, not criminal, so it means that consumers were responsible for policing this part of the social networking world. (Sadly, the affected class of consumers are getting next to nothing while class action attorneys, as is usually the case, are getting about a third of the judgment. Nice.)

I’m no fan of criminalizing everything, and I don’t know that a criminal case against Facebook would have yielded any better results or encouraged Facebook to rethink its privacy standards. These two cases simply underscore my growing feeling that it is up to consumers to be vigilant in monitoring their online presence and the data that is being used to define them more and more. I’m going to revisit this topic in my next post because the sheer volume of data that is collected, analyzed and distributed is mind boggling. Don’t worry, it’s not an anti-big-brother screed. In fact, I think consumers are now better positioned to understand and control their ‘data fates’ than ever before.

There’s a new sheriff in town and that sheriff is us…

(And before you send me an email that the correct usage is ‘we,’ don’t bother. I know. I’m just paraphrasing the famous saying. Relax, ok?)

First some background: “Personal brands” is a subject about which many social media mavens love to wax philosophic. Just like a brand message for a product, it’s the bundle of qualities and characteristics that your online presence projects. In short, it’s the various answers to the question “What is Person X all about?” And just like a corporate brand, it has real value, especially to those who look to their online personal brand to help them with professional and career advancement.

A friend of mine who spends a lot of time considering personal brands (he’s a recruiter) recommended sticking to a few networks, like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. That struck me as almost counterintuitive. I’m already on those sites, but why not put my stuff out on a few more. No harm, right? From a PR perspective, it’s all about presence. Yet here is a recruiter saying it’s possible to over-extend. Why? Because social media is different from PR in that it’s not all about projecting a presence. It’s about relationships, and relationships are as much about listening as they are about talking. (Somewhere my wife just had an urge to say “duh!”) I can’t maintain a relationship everywhere and hope to provide updated content, feedback and responses. On those sites where my presence is lacking attention, I do myself a disservice by seeming disengaged.

There are all sorts of discussions to be had about social media and personal brands. How do you create them? How do you expand them? How do you protect them? I have come across a ton of people who are self-proclaimed experts on creating and sustaining a personal brand. Some are completely full of themselves, but others make good sense and I’m fascinated by the entire phenomenon. After all, it’s about people taking control of the online reputations that are coming to define them more and more.

And here’s my follow-up question: What does this mean for the social media sites themselves? How does the market determine where people congregate and where they simply abandon a network? Is their an online equivalent to the old real estate adage about location, location, location? How will this play out for these companies once people begin to sense that their social networks are basically located in a bad neighborhood? Is there room for all of them? We’re all buzzing about social media at the moment, but how soon before we start hearing about social networking sites closing down or migrating somewhere else? It’s a mean old world right now. Doesn’t something have to give?

Reed’s Law says the value of a social network scales exponentially with the number of its members. If members begin to leave, is there a tipping point where the value diminishes exponentially as well? Will people abandon a network because they just don’t perceive any value to themselves or their personal brand? How do networks that see that behavior in their members react? Do they rebrand? Do they become niche networks, something like “the network of left-leaning European pop artists,” or just whither away?

I just tweaked some tools on this blog last week and redid the plug-in that allows readers to post content on their network pages. It had a list of social networks that was huge, literally dozens of sites, many of which I had never heard of. Someone feels it’s necessary to make these sites available via a coded link, so obviously there are people using them. Is that how they all will survive. Will they end up being so linked together through API’s and shared authentications that users barely know when they’ve crossed into another network, and updates migrate out to various parts of their online brand automatically. All I know at this point is that keeping an eye on content at more than a few places is time-consuming and difficult. I’ll hope that some smart coder figures out how to keep it all updated and relevant. If that same coder can figure out how to make me sound smarter, funnier and more accomplished, that would be great too.

I have also found there are a lot of very smart people that are wishing to put their own blogs together. Many friends and relations have said, “I’d love to have a blog about something,” where “something” is politics, dogs, knitting or fish cookery. My advice to them? Do it. Now. There are some obvious reasons to express yourself in an online forum, such as it’s great for your psyche. Cleans out the brain, so to speak.

It’s also great for your professional development. It’s a hugely marketable skill. I have another post I’m working on about technology skills, the job market, etc., but for now realize that being proficient with designing and running a Web page shows a host of qualities that employers are looking for, even those not Web or tech-related. I’m not saying you should have a site to rival something professionally produced, but thanks to WordPress and other WYSIWYG editors, you can create something worthwhile very easily.

The market is tough. I don’t doubt that. But those willing to market themselves well, spend some time on their “personal brand” (an overused but not worthless term) and put their creativity on display will have an easier time finding their next role.

Here is one more reason: there is a lot of real garbage out there.

I’m not one to judge, but…Well, actually, I am. Somewhere I heard a number like 4 gazillion blogs are rattling around the Interwebs these days. That’s a lot. And the 2 gazillion (?) I’ve looked at were pretty terrible. (No comments about this one!) So find your passion, fill your niche, sharpen your pencil, gird your loins and dive in. The myriad tools now available for the beginner blogger make it so very simple. Get started and maybe you can help drown out some of the noise.

Now get to it.

Radian6 Brand Bowl: Go here. I’m not as clear what this one will look like in real time, but their site looks great.

Alterian SM2 Buzz Bowl. Go here. Their chart looks great. I’m looking forward to seeing how it performs in real time.

Believe it or not, marketing, as a practice, is real. It’s about more than “engagement” and “touching a customer” and “establishing a connection.” It should be able to prove its value to an enterprise. Value is best expressed in financial terms. Any value that is expressed in non-quantifiable, subjective terms like “engagement” is, in the end, too squishy to be worthwhile over the long term. It may make some consultants and speakers a lot of money to speak in those terms, and demonstrate to companies how they can “think” in those terms, but that isn’t really “business.” That’s motivation. As much as I hear that marketing isn’t about ROI anymore, I know I’ll have a hard time selling that to the powers that be. (That’s actually something I read recently on one of the “expert” blogs. I won’t link to it, because I truly think it’s one of the most idiotic statements I’ve ever read. I don’t want to drive the guy’s traffic up by a single click. Let’s just say that he describes himself as “internationally recognized” for his social media expertise. He doesn’t need my help selling himself.)

You may be asking yourself is there a point to this post or is this a simply a tirade? The point is that I believe the sun is peaking through the hype clouds. Sanity is beginning to prevail. The folks who jumped on the social media bandwagon as a way to become an overnight expert are beginning to run into the reality called data. It turns out that even social media can be measured. Who would have thought that possible? (I mean, besides everyone who actually has done any marketing and isn’t a tech guru turned social media gadfly.) At the forefront of this change are companies like Techrigy (now a part of Alterian), Radian6 and Nielsen. The tools they have developed to search through social media channels for references to brands, products, companies and such are very cool. They then score mentions for sentiment, placement, etc. and provide feedback on what the social media sphere has to say. It’s the same thing PR practitioners have always done, but automated to cover the much larger universe that encompasses social media. Their timing could not be better. The sooner companies begin using these tools the better.

I truly do not begrudge anyone any success. If a social media expert earns top dollar speaking at conferences about “Social Media 2.0” that’s great for him or her. (Slight digression here: I have a lot of respect of Tim O’Reilly, but I really do want to barf whenever I hear “two dot oh” placed after any phrase other than a software release. Mr. O’Reilly is not responsible for the proliferation of naming any online trend with 2.0, but I do wish he had never come up with the whole Web 2.0 stuff.) I wish the whole lot of them well. My advice to them is this: make your money while you can. (I’d suggest you invest in companies making social media monitoring tools!) Agencies and marketing departments have very different expectations from the channels they employ than fluffy concepts like what you profess. They expect results that can be communicated to clients or finance departments. Those results are almost always reported in data. And agencies and marketing departments are already beginning to discover the tools that convert social media results into that data. I, for one, hope it happens quickly.

That being said, I’ve been going back through a lot of old posts about social media, and I am struck by all the praise for some marketing efforts that don’t seem to deserve it. For instance, recently a quick service restaurant ran a giveaway on their Facebook fan page. It was a pretty sizeable prize and attracted some good attention once the giveaway went viral. The company was patted on the back for increasing their fan following to several hundred thousand. Unfortunately, when the same company ran a campaign several months later aimed at those fans, asking for them to actually do something other than sign up, the campaign was a flop. Everyone knows where I’m going with this: It’s easy to attract followers when you’re giving something away, but harder when you require something in return.

As far as social media is concerned, and the self-appointed gods who rule it, it’s all about “building trust” and “creating relationships.” (Or maybe it’s creating trust and building relationships. Whatever.) You accomplish those goals, they say, by “listening to your network.” They tell you that social media is all about a two-way conversation with your connections. But what if your connections are simply saying, “Give me something. Free.” And what if that something they want you to give them is what you normally charge good money for. When do you draw the line? If all you’re doing is giving something away, at some point aren’t you either a slut or a sucker? And if you don’t give anything away, when do you cross the line to being a tease or a money-grubbing whore? (Sorry for the metaphors.)

I’m not sure I have a great answer, and that’s because I still think we’re at the front end of using social media as a productive marketing channel. I think it’s also because we’re still at the point where we’re looking at social media as some sort of distinct, special and sexy marketing channel, instead of being an integrated part of our communications strategies. Social media has the feel of something that can go viral and gain immediate attention. We assume, wrongly, that digital channels produce results quickly if done right. But attention isn’t the same as results. In that way, social media is more like traditional database and direct marketing. It takes time and effort to build up a good core database of customers and prospects, and that database has to be consistently and constantly cared for. It has to be analyzed, mined, tracked and cleaned. There is no quick way to do it. Anyone who believes there is will find out how fickle those followers and fans are when they find that the freebies have dried up.

After all, if social media is all about building solid relationships, and for all my criticism of the self-proclaimed experts who say so, I believe it is (though that’s hardly the earth-shaking revelation many of those experts believe it to be) Solid relationships, as any good touchy-feely couples therapist will tell you, are based on trust. And trust, those same folks will tell you, is the product of consistency and time. When people know you will consistently do the same thing over and over, they make the assumption that you will continue to do the same thing the next time. That works for people and companies.

I’ll be coming back to the campaign I mentioned above, because in many ways I think it actually had a negative effect at the end of the day. For now, suffice it to say that viral campaigns that quickly increase social media networks may make for a good story. They may make the marketing people who dreamed them up feel great. But if I can stick with my previous metaphor, in the end, are those hook-ups healthy relationships?