The most interesting aspect of this talk compared to the other talks I've attended was the implicit recognition by all the speakers that there's the lack of an authoritative voice in social media. This translated into our later group discussion, where people were keen to debunk the idea of anyone having all the answers on how to 'do social'. There's no all-encompassing answer; it's about using the right social platforms in the right way in the right context. It also takes a keen understanding of the brand in question and of all the platforms to suggest the appropriate methods of social communication.

That being said, I'd suggest you can split social brand activity into two streams: 'campaign activity' and an 'ongoing rumble of conversation'. With an example of campaign activity being the Compare the Meerkat campaign for Compare the Market, and an example of an ongoing rumble of conversation being Scott Monty's omnipresence at Ford. User engagement will spike for campaign activity and if appropriate for the brand in question, there should be an ongoing rumble of conversation ("not everyone wants to chat about crisps all the time" I think is how Nicola put it).

In the future, I'd predict only seeing agencies getting involved in campaign activity, with the ongoing rumble of conversation being handled purely client-side. All it requires is an understanding of how to use the various platforms appropriately; no specialist skills are required to participate to the full. In the beginning, agencies will be needed to help out educating their clients on how to use the platforms with case studies and such, but that should be the extent of it. For a lot of brands I would imagine this would require a specific resource, a la Scott Monty.

It's worth adding that an 'ongoing rumble of conversation' may apply to campaigns that attain the level of ubiquity that Compare the Meerkat does, and therefore requiring the constant involvement of an agency.

Big thanks to @cherkoff, @herdmeister, @neilperkins, @Amelia_Torode and whoever else was involved in making the evening happen.

First up was Nick Stringer from the IAB, talking about regulation. It wasn't something I'd thought about in the context of Twitter before so I was interested to hear from a someone with some regulatory authority. He highlighted some interesting points, namely about spam being illegal. A lot of the recommendations were as clear as mud; as long as you use a bit of common sense, I personally don't think there's too much to be concerned with regarding Twitter specifically, certainly not enough to warrant a presentation. However, the talk was enlightening and Nick directed us to some good resources which I certainly find interesting! I'm scared to tackle regulation issues on this blog, maybe another time if I'm feeling brave (and slightly more knowledgeable).

Robin Grant from We are Social was filling in for the sickly Alfie Dennan and generally spoke a lot of sense. With understandably little preparation time, it was nice to have someone talking about etiquette on Twitter to such a large number of (hopefully) receptive marketing managers. His presentation reinforced something I've thought a lot about, and identified in a tweet from @tomagotchi; once you understand the platform, it really is common sense how to use Twitter for brands effectively, there's no 'one-size-fits-all' solution.

Next up was Ciarán Norris from Mindshare who was talking about the Twitter ecosystem. The slides from his excellent presentation can be found here. It was interesting to see Ciaran run through some of the third party apps available, and some case studies on how brands have utilised Twitter as part of marketing campaigns. The presentation highlighted that the data driving Twitter is exceptionally powerful and useful for brands; hopefully we'll see more brands getting involved. I'll try and elaborate on this a little more in later posts.

One last thing I'd like to pick up on, was the speculation among the speakers about how brands can attract more followers, to which, correctly, there was no simple answer. Running a Twitter account for any brand, it's important is to have plenty of interaction with your userbase that isn't necessarily relevant and I can understand this may seem strange to some. However, human interaction with individuals, while on paper might not seem like an efficient use of resources, in reality it builds some serious advocacy.

I'll write up Kerry Bridge from Dell and Joe White from Moonfruit's presentations another time, along with some stuff on the panel discussion. This post is already longer than I want it to be.

For me, there's only really two ways Twitter can be used by brands; public relations, which is clearly defined in its goals. And also, as part of a specific campaign, where Twitter is used to get the 'eyeballs' (as Gary Vee would put it) to direct towards the campaign content. All seems pretty sweet.

I wonder whether applications of Twitter will reach the level of ubuquity for brands that websites have had the past 10 years. I'm secretly predicting a second dot com bubble burst exactly one decade on from the first, I'm calling it "Dot com 2: Storm in a Tweet-cup"...just putting it out there :)

I think digital advertising is a little bit like Darth Vader in Episode 6 at the moment. Any second now marketing departments are going to realise that being really awesome and helpful will solve a load of problems and make everyone like them.

...hopefully they won't die shortly afterwards.

e-tastic
If you break the Web into three (very broad) components of design, development and copy, all have standards that have to be adhered to, except for the latter. Design can take it's cues from centuries of art & design, and development from decades of software engineering, the language of the Web however is comprised of jargon that doesn't really mean anything. I'd argue that pre-Web language can be used to describe the intricacies of the Web - but it needs an authority (like W3C) to define the terms.

Take 'Cloud computing' for example, or 'Web 2.0', there's so much time spent defining their meanings that they ultimately become counter-productive (I'd argue). I'm not sure if/how it's possible, but, in the same way we have standards in design and development, I'd like to see standards in the language of describing aspects of the Web (any suggested reading material on this?).

Apologies for the horrific use of inverted commas ^.

Unfortunately it gets worse when I Google myself. It's only just occured to me how violated I feel that companies have been bidding on my name as a search term, I am quite distressed.

Apologies for the poor photoshopping.

Image courtesy of Gemma!

There were 89 tweets about coffee while I was writing this post.

PS.  Tea ftw.

So on a huge tangent from the Googleworld debate - It's clear that understanding how the Web has impacted our lives, especially over the last 10 years requires knowledge across a broad range of disciplines. For me, there is nothing currently in the education system which supplies the correct type of candidate (for want of a better phrase) for working on Web theory as such. A combination of technical and sociological awareness, which, as the current education system has it, are almost polar-opposites.

We're now seeing introduction of high level research, attempting to engineer the Web's future and ensure it's social benefit is maximised. And more recently, the introduction this year of the World Wide Web foundation with specific courses. Encouraging though it is, I feel there needs to be a more grassroots approach to education for Web theory (or Web Science as it's being called).

I wonder how long it will be before we see such studies introduced at a more basic curricular level? I certainly think it's necessary a younger generation are made more aware of the potentialities of the Web's huge information meta-structure, not just the potential for Bebo and porn.