With the explosion of AJAX, widgets, and a host of social media sites and tools, it has become increasingly important for content providers to atomize and distribute media away from its originating site. In a world of hypersyndication, how do you build audience, what does it mean to be a publisher, what are the emerging business models, and how does content flow to the right people and places without cannibalizing the content provider’s brand?

Jaiku. Knol. Seesmic. They might be new models of minivans, or medalists at the 2008 Olympics. In fact, they’re just three of the many fresh social media projects emerging an increasingly complex online landscape.

The world of social media and user-generated content changes on a month-to-month basis. It’s critical for marketers and content creators to keep abreast of what’s new, what’s dead and what matters. This session discusses major social media trends of the past year, and looks ahead to what we can expect from 2008 and beyond.

Some of trends to be covered include:

• Who are the microbloggers, and should you be paying attention to services like Twitter and Jaiku?
• What is the state of virtual worlds like Second Life and Habbo Hotel?
• Is it wise to advertise on Facebook?
• Why organizations shouldn’t start their own social networks
• Who are the emerging competitors to Wikipedia, and do they even matter?

Attendees will leave this session chock full of fresh ideas to apply to upcoming campaigns.

A lot of attention has been devoted to the subject of Web 2.0. Companies are exploring how to incorporate Web 2.0 concepts into both their internally and externally-facing systems. Some take an IT-centric approach, focusing on the underlying technology and its implementation. Others examine the potential business benefits through improved communication and collaboration. However, both perspectives frequently struggle to demonstrate ROI in the face of uncertain user adoption and control/security issues.

This session will examine Web 2.0 from a very specific angle: user experience in a business context, where “can do” meets “will do”.

The Web 2.0 paradigm is here to stay, giving users far more control to become content contributors and choose the types of interactions they want. Successful companies will have to design a useful, relevant, compelling user experience for both customers and employees.

In this keynote presentation Nadel will cover:

1. The evolution from Web-enabled self-service user control with Web 2.0


• Implications for design: navigation, search, content creation & publishing, page design, and brand experience
2. How businesses can profit from Web 2.0


• From customers (externally-facing sites)
• Openness & collaboration
• From employees (internal sites)—the hybrid intranet: structured social classification
• Knowledge management
3. The future: Pulling it all together

Everyone is excited about implementing Web 2.0 technologies and practices in their organization, but are you really ready to do that? One of the foundations of Web 2.0 is sound technology operations which allows rapid content and application development. Join Lisa Welchman as shows you how to measure your readiness for Web 2.0.

Specific topics include:

• Mapping Web 2.0 to business strategy
• Emplacing effective information governance
• Developing strong information product management practices
• And, measuring the effectivenss of your Web 2.0 products

Marketing dollars are moving rapidly from traditional media to the Internet. IDC estimates that $25 billion was spent on search and display advertising, in 2007, up 27% over 2006. However, the very nature of consumers’ online behavior dictates that marketers think in new ways if they are to maximize the return from their investments in online advertising. 

This presentation will examine how consumers are using the Internet and identify the ways in which advertisers can best market to them. This will also reveal the key metrics that marketers need to use as they plan and analyze their online marketing efforts so as to maximize their ROI.

The database used for this discussion will be comScore’s panel of 2 million people who have given comScore explicit permission to track the complete details of their online activities.