Just catching up on news feeds and came across a great post by Seth Godin about the “Nearly infinite” options online.

“…infinite is everywhere.

“There’s an infinite number of books at Barnes and Noble…

“There’s certainly, for all intents and purposes, an infinite number of web pages. And even Facebook, just a small subset of the web, has an infinite number of friends for you to make.”

This is a trend we’ve talked about before, and the answers aren’t easy. As the blogosphere began to take off prior to the 2004 election, becoming a promintent blogger was pretty straightforward - blog a lot, build an audience, and contribute to the conversation. Today, Technorati tracks over 112.8 million blogs, a literal infinity to anyone who might attempt to read them all.

So with the established trend of nearly infinite material online, there are two ways to try to find what you want. Seth Godin discusses the pros and cons of the first, which is search:

“Search makes the infinite finite (at least for a while). With search, we turn the infinite selection on Amazon into a nearly manageable finite selection. Except search (no matter where you look) is pretty lame, and it doesn’t really turn infinite collections into manageable choices.”

The other trend is aggregation. Large communities have formed around blogs that have taken the best of what they read and then put up links to their favorite slice of the blogosphere. For a reader daunted by the infinite options to read, such aggregator serves a very important role.

For a blogger, authority (and traffic) can come through the simple act of directing readers to other blogs. By taking on this function, the aggregator becomes a hub of traffic and influence. Once other bloggers begin to see traffic spikes from a noteworth link from the aggregator, they might begin to write for the aggregator.

This concept is not new. It’s the same concept as a magazine’s “Best of” issue or a summer reading list. It’s why we watch award shows. By going to that one place, we get to see what we want, as chosen by someone whom we respect.

But aggregation suffers from the same problem as the original content itself. If there is nearly an infinite number of blogs out there, mathmatically, there also could be a nearly infinite number of aggregators. In the face of this possibility, it seems then that the online properties best poised to capture this trend of aggregation are the very properties who have taken a leadership role in the current blogosphere. Only if they fail to adapt to this new trend of user-generated content will they be able to keep their leadership. The one exception I would make here are old media newspapers going online. If these papers would be willing to add links to their favorite blog posts alongside their own articles (beyond the current “who links here” footnote), their traffic would increase dramatically. People who get their news online read blogs, and if newspapers refuse to link to blogs via their own websites, they are missing a huge opportunity for eyeballs and ad revenue.

For the political campaign, capitalizing on this trend isn’t hard. Hillary Clinton’s campaign did it with their Hillary Hub. By aggregating all of the stories about their candidate — at least the positive ones — the Clinton campaign made their site a de facto source for information. Campaigns will often resist putting information online because they believe it provides “opposition research” to their opponents. I have news for you — your oppenents already have all the research they need. Instead, there are two audiences a Hillary Hub attracts: supporters and undecideds. And who doesn’t want to reach them?

So as talk of Web 3.0 builds, and the search mechanisms that will accompany it, aggregation needs to be a key part of the conversation as an evolving trend in online communications.

If you need advanced notice that the internet’s importance will continue to grow in campaigning, here it is. AdAge, the well-known magazine that reports analysis of marketing and media, completed a study that found the internet has passed TV as an information source for voters under 30.

While many political strategists dismiss youth vote trends, due in large part to their historically low turnout, those young voters will carry the internet with them over the years. Not only that, but as with other studies on Internet usage, the Web moves quickly across age brackets.

For instance, AdAge reports that 26% of all voters — regardless of age — have viewed a political candidate’s profile on a social networking site. This is an indication that the trend is already expanding beyond the 30 and under crowd. The need for a strong web presence may be a lesson that becomes more clear in coming election cycles.

There’s a lot of energy here in the room as BarCamp Nashville gets under way at the Exit/In on Elliston Place. There are a lot of good, grassroots speakers lined up today. It’s not about large corporate sponsors, but several great Nashville new media companies have pitched in to make the event possible.

There’s a lot of interactive tools for the “un-conference” today, including Twitter and a chat room.

Kudos to Marcus and Dave for having the vision to bring BarCamp to Nashville! Look forward to posting more insights and feedback later.

“Is there a doctor here?”

 It’s the first question we ask if we happen upon an ill person at a sporting event, restaurant, or otherwise. What if online networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn offered something similar? Is there an AJAX developer in my network of friends (or connections)? Is there an intellectual property attorney? There’s been much ado about social networks and Web 2.0, and for good reason. What if instead of just connecting with networks, we could leverage them? LinkedIn is moving in that direction, but not to the point where you could actually search skillsets.

It’s a feature they should offer though. It’s an opportunity to move Web 2.0 to the next level.

Professionals and prognosticators are always trying to predict the future. What’s next for stocks, fashion, the Web, etc. For online professionals, the question is more narrow. Who will be the next Google? What will be the next trend to take the Internet by storm?

I have no crystal ball, but in keeping with Flat Creek’s perspective that the old rules still apply, even in the face of exciting new technology, I believe the next wave of online success will not be new applications or features but more likely adoption of existing technologies. The ones who make money aren’t the ones on the cutting edge of a brand new idea. They are the second generation who gets the idea right.

Look at Facebook as an example. Friendster introduced the Web to the new concept of social networking, but just now Facebook (and it’s grown-up cousin LinkedIn) are really starting to hit their stride. The reason? There are two steps to every great product success:

1. Introduction
2. Adoption

Introduction happens when a new product or idea hits the marketplace. Think VCRs or PDAs. But it took years for those things to be adopted as an industry. Often the first movers (such as Friendster) were crushed and follow-up companies (such as Facebook) took all the glory. Yahoo was a big mover in introducing “search” to the Internet. Yahoo is now a distant second to Google, who came along with a better product and fast adoption.

Today, we see the widespread adoption of social media - blogs, for instance. The next wave of adoption will probably take place where exciting products are still being introduced - namely, mobile devices. As consumers, carriers, and device makers all step up to the plate, mobile data adoption will follow in a cycle of growth. What will likely not grow are podcasts. Just as with cell phones, quality is key to product adoption. Podcasts just don’t have the quality products or content to make it to the mainstream. Mobile TV, however, is a great new addition and will likely grow as new products are adopted.

Do you know what’s next in your industry? Contact us. We might have an idea or two.

We work on a lot of different projects throughout the week. In fact, internally we update our project list in SharePoint almost every day. But to give our clients and prospective clients a better picture of what we’re working on currently, we’ve created a tag cloud of our projects.

A tag cloud lets you take a list of keywords, or tags, and display them such that the more frequent appear bigger than the less frequent. We use it here on the blog to show what categories appear most often. So we just built one to show which projects appear more often. Like so:

• Branding
• Customer relationship management
• Competitive analysis
• Databases
• Disaster Recovery
• E-newsletters
• Event planning
• Graphic Design
• Grassroots campaigns
• Market Research
• Marketing
• Media relations
• Microsoft SharePoint
• Microsoft Exchange
• Mobile e-mail solutions
• Online advertising campaigns
• Planning retreats
• Political consulting
• Public affairs
• Public relations
• Search engine marketing
• Trade show displays
• Web design
• Website hosting
• Word of Mouth marketing

If you don’t see what you’re looking for in the cloud, go ahead and contact us. It may be time we added it!

Communications professionals tend to spend more time with print reporters than journalists from any other medium. It’s time we challenged that notion.

Granted, PR flacks have chuckled to themselves over the last several years as traditional newspaper empires have wasted away under the pressure from online media. But what they haven’t done is change their daily routine and priorities.

In order for a communications strategy to be effective in the Web 2.0 era, the media mix needs to be re-prioritized:

1. Online media: The Internet has changed everything, so the cliche goes, so it should change how we look at media relations as well. Too often we look at blogs, YouTube, and other sites but we don’t engage in the conversation. Our day should start and end by researching relevant websites, commenting on blogs, and injecting new information into the conversation. Create YouTube video, podcasts, and fresh content for your website. If you don’t tell your story online, others will tell it for you.
2. Events: if you don’t hold/attend creative, meaningful events with a message, there’s really not much to cover now is there? You have a message/policy/product that you want to share with the world. For heavens sake, give them a good reason to find out about it. Seminars, briefings, speakers, rallies, press conferences - the options really are only limited by your creativity.
3. Radio: This may seem counter intuitive, but it could be that your target audience spends more time in the car than anywhere else (other than in front of a computer). Leverage that valuable time when your target audiences are tuned in. Take the time to work with producers and hosts to get your product/service/issue on the air. You may not reach the numbers of people as other media, but you will reach the right people.
4. Print media: Ah, the bread and butter of public relations. Until now. See #1, then spend your time developing relationships with your key reporters. We’re talking daily papers here, not magazines or weeklies. Don’t send them a press release. Call them. Tell them your story. Tell them why it’s important to their readers. Invite them to your event (see #2). Take their call after you’ve been mentioned on the radio. Be persistent but courteous. Your value to your organization will increase exponentially.
5. TV: Let’s face it, out of a 30-minute evening newscast, there’s about five minutes for everything that isn’t sports, weather or house fires. The competition to get on the air is intense and the payoff can be elusive. But if you have prioritized and are ready to take on TV, then be sure you’re pitching them some good visuals. They don’t want stale walls, they want noise and people and colors. How do you do that? Go back to #2.

I know there are others, such as specialty media and long-lead magazines, and going after those may make sense in some cases, but not until you’ve got a handle on the big five. The media environment has shifted. Our media relations strategies should as well.

We’ve talked before about Web 2.0 and its impact on everything from web design to March Madness brackets. Today, I present your life’s goals - 2.0 style.

One of the fundamental tenants of Web 2.0 is allowing website visitors to create their own content on the site and share it with other users, who can then comment, review, ignore, or whatever. The concept is called social networking.

The website 43Things.com does just that, allowing users to upload not their photos or video but their goals. As the site creator says:

We all have stories about what we care about. Writing down your progress on a goal can help someone else learn about something you both want to do. When you see a goal you’ve achieved, click on the “I’ve done this” button and share a story about how you did it.

Putting your goals online is intensely personal, and that’s just what this site is hoping for. Because if someone trusts a site enough to put their own personal goals online and share how they reached their goals with others, they will probably be extremely loyal site users. And a loyal audience drives ad revenue, which makes a site like this profitable.

Not only will they be loyal, but they will encourage other users to participate. They will create communities within the site, driven by shared goals. They will encourage each other and have very personal conversations, developing relationships they may not have anywhere else.

This is quintessential Web 2.0 — relying on the users to create content instead of just reading it.

So what are your goals? Get started on 43Things.com now.