According to a new study , enterprises continue to deploy social networking tools at an increasing pace. At the same time, though, this Cisco-sponsored study also found that a surprisingly small number of businesses have implemented formal processes and policies related to their use of social media. IT departments have also been left out of the loop when it comes to the adoption of social media tools. Only 10% of the respondents currently involve their IT departments as primary decision makers when it comes to choosing technologies for externally facing social networking initiatives. Sponsor This study was sponsored by Cisco and carried out by the IESE Business School in Spain, the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the U.S. and the Henley Business School in the United Kingdom. The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 100 companies in Europe, Asia and Africa. These businesses were selected because they were early adopters of social media tools. Most of the interviewed companies are using social networks (75%) and micro-blogging tools (50%) as their primary tools to reach their audiences. The study found that social networking tools like blogs, Yammer, Facebook and Twitter are now being used by almost every department in these businesses. The Honeymoon is Over As Neil Hair, assistant professor of marketing at Rochester Institute of Technology and one of the lead researchers of this study told us yesterday, it is also important to note that "the honeymoon period" for social media in the enterprise is coming to an end. Early projects were often led by one or two early adopters who were enthusiastic about the possibilities of using social media tools in their companies. Now, more and more companies are seeing social media as an integral part in how they communicate with customers and vendors. Missing Pieces: Governance and IT Only 1 in 7 companies have formalized a process for adopting and deploying these tools, however. Only 1 in 5 of the interviewed companies have created internal policies that govern the use of these tools by their employees. As the researchers noted, quite a few companies struggle with finding the right balance between "the social and personal nature of these tools while maintaining some amount of corporate oversight." Very few companies (1 in 10) report that their IT departments are directly involved in their social networking initiatives. As these tools become more important, however, the the demand on IT to integrate these tools into the existing infrastructure will surely rise as well. Discuss

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Businesses Need to Formalize Their Social Media Policies

We've been in a globe-trotting mood for the past two weeks here at the ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, adding new conferences and seminars in London and Australia. As always, you can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 11 January 2010: Nashville, Tennessee Social Fresh Nashville This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Nashville will have 30-plus speakers, including Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Gavin Baker of Ruby Tuesday and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart). ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15". 14 January 2010: Palo Alto, California The Founder Showcase The Founder Showcase , by TheFunded.com, is an open startup pitch and networking event that highlights the newest cutting-edge businesses and helps innovators gain traction among the Silicon Valley elite. On Thursday, January 14th, 10 of the most promising early-stage companies, as selected by over 13,000 registered Founders and CEOs on TheFunded.com, will present to an audience of over 300 investors, founders, and members of the press. A panel of experts will critique the pitches, and an open ballot of those in attendance will determine the Founder Showcase Winner. ReadWriteWeb readers receive a 10% discount when registering, just use discount code "RWW". 20 January 2010: London New Digital Revenue Streams Seminar Madgex and Abacus e-Media are hosting a free seminar that will offer advice and case studies from media organisations that have successfully created a direct impact on profit margins. The event is supported by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Haymarket-owned Brand Republic, and will feature speakers, including David Archer, CEO of Scottish Television. The breakfast seminar takes place at the Council Chambers, Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London from 8.30-11 a.m. (registration and breakfast from 8.15 a.m.). To register, book here or email marleen.kinder@madgex.com . 26 January 2010: San Francisco, California Catalyst Conference Vator.tv , a leading platform for entrepreneurs and innovators to broadcast themselves, and provider of news and information through VatorNews, and Girls in Tech, a social network enterprise focused on education and empowerment of influential women in technology, are seeking five women-led startups across any stage to present at the Catalyst Conference on January 26, 2010 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. To be one of the five, join the Catalyst competition today and win the chance to present. 27 – 28 January 2010: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI? This senior executive event will bring together decision makers from the Top Fortune companies to discuss innovative strategies on how to maximise business performance through social media engagement. The event will include keynote speeches, best-practice presentations as well as interactive discussion sessions. The summit will provide excellent opportunities for you to hear international experts discuss best practices on how to drive business performance using Web 2.0 and social media. Key issues to be discussed include: How to integrate social media programs successfully into business strategies? Building business momentum, visibility and market growth through social media Measuring success and influence using metrics and analytics: what are the tools and techniques Integrating viral marketing and social media into traditional marketing mix Developing and activating audiences using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs 1 – 5, February 2010: New York City, Berlin, London, San Francisco, Toronto, São Paulo Social Media Week The second annual Social Media Week conference will explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large. The conference is designed as a series of localized events, which city partners are responsible for organizing. Programs will span a variety of formats, ranging from talks and panel discussions, to interactive workshops, seminars and networking events. Registration will open in January 2010 and the majority of events will be free thanks to the global sponsors and event partners. You can find more information at http://socialmediaweekny.com . 4 February 2010: San Francisco, California Vator Splash Vator.tv , a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to broadcast themselves, is holding its inaugural Vator Splash event on February 4, 2010 at the Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. Catch onstage presenters: Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Smule CEO Jeff Smith, August Capital VC Howard Hartenbaum and Google Ventures VC Bill Maris. Ten promising startups will also get to present onstage. Enter the Vator Splash competition if you want to present. ReadWriteWeb readers get a 25% discount on their tickets using the code VatorReadWriteWeb . 8 February 2010: Tampa, Florida Social Fresh Tampa This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Tampa will have 30+ speakers, including Chris Barger of GM, Maggie Fox of Social Media Group and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart). ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15". 10 February 2010: New York City Online Community Unconference East The Online Community Unconference East is a gathering of online community professionals - managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners. The event runs from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Digital Sandbox. 11 February 2010: New York City NYC Venture Capital and Angel Showcase FundingPost is hosting a VC showcase where 20-plus VC funds and angel groups will be exhibiting their firms during a great cocktail party setting. Each fund will have their own table setup for the sole purpose of meeting great new companies. Additionally, there will be an optional pitching workshop from 2:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. The cost to participate in the workshop will be $400. This workshop includes the $125 ticket to the event, and a 1/4 page listing in the Venture Guide Magazine. This event is sponsored by Credit Suisse, and takes place at One Madison Avenue, from 6-9:15 p.m. 18 February 2010: Silicon Valley, California Future of Funding Active limited partners, top rated venture capitalists, and successful entrepreneurs are invited to Silicon Valley on February 18, 2010 to discuss the Future of Funding. The venture capital bubble has burst, and change is coming. Now is the time to have a constructive dialog about the future with all of the stakeholders at the table. Don't miss the opportunity to partake in this exclusive event hosted by TheFunded . Please visit www.futureoffunding.com to see speaker and event details. ReadWriteWeb readers use the code "RWW" and get 10% off. 15 – 16 March 2010: London, England 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams: Social Networking World Forum Enterprise social media Social TV World Forum Mobile Social Networking Forum The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more. Full workshop program within exhibition area Evening networking reception Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates Free pass for exhibition only 7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia ConnectNow ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au . 11 May 2010: San Francisco, California FinovateSpring FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day. Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available. 5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 9 January 2010

In 2007, Wired Magazine published an article entitled the See-Through CEO where Redfin founder Glenn Kelman gained the public's sympathy and a slew of new members by blogging his corporate woes. Lately we've been looking inward at how companies can improve their employee recruitment strategy through social media. Great candidates research you before accepting an offer, and here is what your social media profile reveals to them. Sponsor LEARNING : A few months ago Bessemer Associate Sarah Tavel wrote an article entitled

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How Blogging and Tweeting Leaders Build Better Teams

Have you ever wanted to share a set of memories with some of your Twitter friends, keeping the content private while still allowing for collaboration between certain folks? It's not anything we thought we wanted, either, but after playing with TwitAlbums , we find the concept charming. Here's how it works: Using Twitter's OAuth function, users log in and create collections or "albums" containing multimedia content and text comments. They can invite whatever users they like to join them in adding files, and only the users they invite can see the content or comments. Best of all it looks like this little app already has a monetization strategy in place. Sponsor The concept is inherently charming. Users create an album with a single click. They can then proceed to upload movies, pictures and audio files. We'd like to see options for adding more file types, such as web pages, text files and more. Users can then choose others to collaborate with them on the album. A tweet is sent inviting the collaborators to the album, and they are prompted to sign in via OAuth when they click the tweet in the link. This immediate request for account access without an explanation of the app might be a bit disconcerting for some, however. If an uninvited Twitter user clicks the link, they are given an "invite only" notice and denied access to the content. Collaborators can add content, leave comments and invite other users, depending on the permissions set by the original album creator. Finally, it's interesting to note that the app's creators have built in a mechanism for modest financial returns. Each uploaded file costs the user a single onsite credit, called a TwitSeed. Accounts come with 50 TwitSeeds, and more can be purchased in bundles of 100 for $1, 500 for $4, or 1000 for $8. One thing we don't like is that the app pushes a ton of link- and hashtag-studded notifications into the user's Twitter stream. As with other apps that gain access via OAuth, from the infamous Spymaster to the successful TinyChat , this is a very fine line that most users would appreciate the app not cross. Generally speaking, users won't have a problem with a single tweet or two, but a constant stream of app-related messages when the user is active on the site can only end badly. Worst of all, we don't see a way to opt out of these notifications, so we've had to delete these tweets manually, which does nothing to mitigate the swarm of updates for our friends using Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck. Particularly since the content is set up to be private, it doesn't make sense to broadcast tweets about each user's on-site activity. We think this app would work well for younger users, social media addicts and long-distance friends, especially if the above-mentioned issues are addressed. What do you folks think so far; does TwitAlbums have what it takes to become a widely used Twitter application? Would you use it, and what would you use it for? Let us know in the comments. Discuss

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TwitAlbums: Private, Collaborative Content Sharing Via Twitter

In the first generation of the social Web, the marketing groups and public relations teams would develop reports to provide metrics for a particular campaign. They were pretty much the sole users of "social media," technologies. That's a problem as far as WiseWindow is concerned. Social media is a poor label for describing how comments, blog posts, updates and other opinions can be leveraged to gauge views across social networks and thousands of Web sites. "Labeling of it as social media has limited its potential up to now," said Marshall Toplansky, president of WiseWindow. "That is why we are calling it mass opinion business intelligence and not social media analytics." Sponsor Now, the social Web is a real-time engine. Cloud computing is a reality and a new era is upon us that allows the enterprise to mine the vast sea of comments, reviews, updates and blog posts from millions of people. We're entering an era where the social Web will serve as the main territory for performing predictive analytics. WiseWindow is using artificial intelligence technology, web crawlers and the processing power of the cloud to get real-time results for enterprise customers. For example, this means that companies may leverage the social Web to make sales forecasts and gauge the opinions of mass society to immediately understand the current opinions about its brand or those of competitors. WiseWindow calls the product Mass Opinion Business Intelligence, describing it as a service that goes beyond keyword search and click-throughs to predict market movement. According to WiseWindow, sentiment analysis has failed as a strategic research tool. When matching words, the context is lost. People use words differently to describe their sentiments. The mass amount of data available makes the process overwhelming. Instead, the WiseWindow web crawler will search for comments and other opinions across thousands of sites that are not blocked by privacy restrictions. The artificial intelligence trains itself to look for a particular topic. It brings back all related opinions. The information is then distilled for the client or made available through a web portal where the data can be analyzed. Recently, WiseWindow worked with a client from the film industry. WiseWindow used its technology to research 400 films, generating 4.5 million comments from 70,000 sites. They distilled the data to lean what is hot and what is not. As another example, , WiseWindow did research for the film, Marley and Me , starring Jennifer Anniston and Luke Wilson. The pre-release promotions featured Luke Wilson. But the comments from the Web demonstrated that Anniston had greater appeal than Wilson. As a result, the trailers were changed to feature Anniston more than Wilson. WiseWindow was founded in 2007 by Rajiv Dulepet. He has an impressive background. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford's School of Management and Engineering, spearheading the development of presidential prediction projects for both the 2004 and 2008 elections. WiseWindow started developing its technology in 2007 and began working with clients last year. The company has four patents for its web crawling, auto-classifications of opinions, relevance recognition and in statistical language applications. Discuss

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Gauging Mass Opinion: Don't Label it Social Media

MailBrowser wants to make Gmail and Google Apps more useful by offering a consolidated view of all your contacts and attachments in a browser sidebar. In this sidebar, you can quickly search for contacts, see the latest emails you received from a specific contact, add calendar events and attach notes and tags to a contact. In many respects, MailBrowser looks a lot like Xobni for Gmail. Sponsor Features MailBrowser is currently only compatible with Internet Explorer and Firefox on the Mac (OSX 10.5 and higher) and Windows, though the team is working on Safari and Chrome versions as well. The plugin offers a rich set of features , including support for multiple Gmail and Google Apps accounts and rich previews of attachments. Another nice feature is the "trend" section that appears at the bottom of the sidebar. Here, two graphs show a timeline view of how many emails you sent and received from any given contact. MailBrowser stores all your data locally on your hard disk, so no information is ever shared with the service. Because all the data is stored locally, MailBrowser also keeps a copy of all your attachments on your machine. The application also syncs all the data back to Google Contacts in the cloud, so any changes you make on one computer will automatically appear on another machine. Xobni for Gmail In many respects, MailBrowser is very similar to Xobni - a popular Outlook addon. Xobni, however, puts a stronger emphasis on giving you additional information about a contact by looking at the contact's social networking profiles. MailBrowser plans to add this functionality in a future version . Currently, the service can only display details about a contact's domain and website. More Features Coming Soon MailBrowser has big plans for the future. The company plans to offer support for more services (Yahoo Mail, Live Mail, etc.), integration with enterprise apps like Salesforce and integration with social media services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Verdict For now, MailBrowser works just as advertised. It doesn't yet offer the rich feature set of Xobni, but the company is clearly working on that. If you have a very large mailbox, it can take a while for MailBrowser to download and index your information. Luckily, the download process starts with your most recent email, so that you can be up and running long before your last email has been downloaded. Discuss

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MailBrowser: Get More Out of Your Google Contacts

One hour ago, three emergency vehicles responded to a report of an unconscious person at the world headquarters of Nike Inc. in Portland, Oregon. How do I know? An automated form-pumping robot from startup company Nozzl Media told me. Nozzl Media today unveiled a demonstration of its first product, a widget intended for newspaper websites seeking to display real-time local information derived from Twitter messages, blog posts and automatically extracted public records like restaurant health inspections, building reports and public safety emergency responses. It's like a little robot reporter and the company plans on offering it as a mobile app in the future as well. Nozzl raises questions, though, about what constitutes news and whether or not human reporters are expendable in the news process. Sponsor Nozzl was founded by a team of ex-newspaper reporters and engineers. They got out when it was clear the newspaper industry was in trouble, but now they aim to give something back by bringing together the real-time, programmatic possibilities of the web with the reporting of the newspapers. Reporters have for decades written programming scripts that repeat database queries over and over again to extract public data for bulk analysis. The Nozzl team has taken that to the next level and combined it with new social media. The company put up a demo page for Portland, Oregon news that anyone can look at today. The public records streams are the big value-add and are fully customizable per newspaper. Visitors can then type live filter terms into the box at the bottom of the widget to zero in on topics of interest to them. That's the nozzle in Nozzl Media. User Experience is Hard For Robots Unfortunately, there are two big issues here. First, the flow of Tweets is overwhelming and undifferentiated. On the demonstration site you see almost nothing else unless you can think of something to filter for. If automated Twitter feeds hold value for local news, they will probably require some smart pre-proccessing before being presented to the reading public. There have always been people who like to listen to police radio scanners. Myself, I like to read restaurant health inspection reports, building permit applications and liquor license applications. If Nozzl had some categories I could choose between, that would be very helpful. The second, and more interesting, problem is that the public records that are extracted are exciting in theory but relatively unreadable in practice. The truth is, Nozzl didn't exactly tell me that there was an unconscious person reported at Nike HQ today - it told me with code from a form that there was an UNCONS/UNRESPONSIVE report at 1 SW Bowerman Drive, in Portland. A little Mad-Libs style transformation of forms into human-readable sentences and some pre-fetching of names associated with addresses could go a long way. Run the name associated with that address through a News search engine and tell me if its an entity that's been reported on in the past - if so then it's probably high-priority news to push live again. The company needs to put these machine-readable pages it displays into coherent English sentences, or find some other solution. Don't Forget the Humans Ambulances to Nike's Headquarters to help someone unconscious today? That sounds like it could be news. Even if the technology presented the information this clearly - it may take a human eye to pick this out of a list of automatically captured ambulance reports. Having a human available to pick up a phone, call Nike HQ and ask who was found unconscious there this afternoon would add another element of value to this data - but that's not what Nozzl is looking to do. The company is serving up raw data to news consumers. In the end, human reporters and raw robot feeds sound like a great combination. That appears to be what Nozzl is aiming to create by offering its widgets to established news organizations. The company says that a mobile application could be in its future, too. That's something I'm very excited about. Be it a widget or a mobile app, Nozzl's robot reporters need more polish before they are ready to win back the hearts of fast-leaving newspaper readers. As a picture of the future, though - Nozzl is very inspiring. Interested in what companies like Nozzl Media mean for the future of the web? Check out our profile of Nozzl and ten other case study companies in our recent research report The Real-Time Web and Its Future . Discuss

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Welcome to the Age of Robot Reporters