No one yet knows exactly what Web 3.0 is, but there are brilliant minds at work shaping and designing our internet future today. Social networking on steroids will most definitely be part of whatever evolves. Right now that conjures images of tweets beaming directly into my brain (a truly scary thought) or Facebook status updates popping up while I watch TV, like a social media picture in picture. We’re not far from that—a group in Europe is building systems that aren’t yet for your physical brain, but operate like a remote brain that receives info about your actions and pushes them out to your network.

Called social awareness, it takes what might be a tweet today—“About to whip up some @epicurious shrimp scampi—be back later, full and happy. Hope we love it!” and pushes it away from a device and into the physical environment of anyone you want to see it. See the red light? That can mean I’m busy making my shrimp scampi, so don’t bother me.

Before you read on, take a few minutes to watch this YouTube video from the Astra Project, , a collective of European researchers and organizations, who are building awareness systems. It’s fascinating to look at how our networked future is being laid out and tested, and gives a hint of what these instant connections can do. Copy in the video says, “This awareness information about the well-being, activities, and availability gives Vic (one of the participants) a direct feeling that he is in touch, sharing and involved with his daughter. We call this social awareness.”

I can see this having great application for people who want that direct connection, and aren’t able to achieve it physically. For example, families wanting to keep an eye on a parent with Alzheimer’s could use social awareness to instantly witness and monitor actions remotely, which could be a definite stress reliever (and guilt reducer) for people who have to work and can’t be with a sick relative 24/7 or pay for on site care.

Automation is an incredible resource and tool, but I question the need to include it in every facet of our lives. It’s a spontaneity and trust killer. And if privacy is almost out the window, social awareness kicks it out completely. Research shows that most people have limited understandings of basic privacy features of social networks, and that they tend to keep whatever default settings are in place when they sign up. I’m confident that the people who are most interested in social awareness aren’t in that category. They know how to change privacy settings, and that’s why I’m not sure how this will catch on with the general public. If people think Twitter is too much info, this will blow their minds.

I’m writing this story from San Francisco, in the neighborhood where Twitter, Six Apart, and Wired have offices, and I know at one point people questioned the viability and purpose of all of them, too. I know there is a purpose for social awareness that will continue to evolve as the networks are created and used, just like we’ve seen with social networks today. I’m not at all afraid of that future, but I want to see more attention paid to how we can develop our innate sense of self and connection with others, while using these tools to our greatest benefit. I would hate to think that my life is so tightly wound that I couldn’t call someone until they sent me the green light. If someone is busy, they don’t have to answer. I’ve been using this method for years, and trust me its foolproof. No detailed understanding of privacy requirements needed.

Like most of you I primarily use Quantcast and Compete to measure the traffic of other websites.  When someone happens to hook me up I use Comscore as well.  BlackVoices.com looks to have had a huge dip in traffic on sites like Quantcast and compete.  this is largely because they are not classified into a network, Comscore’s equivalent to a media type (M).  being classified this way has it’s benefits especially if you are hard at work serving niches as part of your strategy.  September Comscore numbers show that Black Voices is actually at about 4.9M unique visitors (October numbers aren’t out yet) classified as a media type.  I chatted briefly with Tariq Muhammad today about Black Voices’ new strategy.

How many domains does Black Voices currently use?
A total of 13.

If traffic isn’t coming from the main domain as much how are you all getting so much traffic to the other domains?  SEO?  SEM?
It’s absolutely a mix of partners, SEO, and other forms of marketing and partnerships.  Traffic does come from the main domain as well and we send them to blogs from there.  I do want to note that we are eager and open to partnering with all manner of sites.  It took a while to shake off our walled garden heritage of AOL but that thinking has change throughout the company over the past 2 years or so and has evolved.  It makes a lot more sense for us to be open and partner.  If you can’t come to Black Voice’s to find all types of black voices we are not fulfilling our mission.

Do you have a network or will you be building a network of sites?
Yes and No.  We could be classified as a network however form a positioning stand point we aren’t.  If I were to launch other sites that had a different slant it would roll-up into Black Voices still.  All of our sites now are part of the Black Voices constituency and would not exist had Black Voices not existed.  They are more like spin-offs.  They are an organic network of blogs and sites that have spawned from Black Voices.  In comparison to like a Gawker, they all have distinct audiences.  When we use the term ‘Blogs’ it is more a description of what we use for the CMS than descriptive of being a network of blogs.

What will eventually happen to BlackVoices.com, will it just be a landing page of sorts that collects all content, what role does it play in your new strategy?
We want to serve the niche content spaces and build them up as individual brands as well.  These sites will help feed BlackVoices.com which will showcases the best content across our network of blogs.

AOL has been reported to have hired about 7,000 journalist and is moving in the direction of being a content company, what does this mean for BlackVoices?
It means we will be ramping up even more in terms of content and are working to include as many diverse group of voices as we can.  We want to leave no viewpoint unturned.  We rely on original content while other AOL sites might rely on a different content mix, using content from AP and other services.  We are looking for contributors for additional blogs as well as contributors to the current blogs we have.  The contributors we are looking for don’t necessarily have to have a blog either, it may includes someone with a large social media presence.  We are open to the possibilities however they may present themselves.

What can we look out for from Black Voices in the coming weeks and months?
We will be ramping up in video.  We currently have a video podcast (it is distributed on multiple platforms not just iTunes) that we will be revamping.  We also have BV Daily Drama which is popular and shows the best clips from today’s TV shows.  Our message boards will be relaunching with Facebook, twitter, and MySpace intergration.  We were using a 3rd party service but brought that in-house and tested it in both alpha and beta phases.  That will relaunch next week on Wednesday but you can get a preview if you go to Conversations.BlackVoices.com

Some of the most liveliest discussions here in the past have occurred around topics related to advertising networks.  Most of us have been an associated with an ad network at some point in time, some of us still are, while others have moved on to an ad rep or direct sales.  When joining an ad network or engaging an ad rep firm some sort of contract must be signed, however these contracts are far from boilerplate and most of us simply aren’t lawyers or don’t have the resources to retain one.  Here are 10+ things to consider when joining an ad rep firm:

1. Post-Term
If a rep firm or ad network has a post-term in the contract, where they still get paid on advertising (if they introduce your site to the advertiser)  you broker yourself or via another firm after the contract has ended , you should kill it if you can. Once the contract is up, the publisher needs to be totally free to do what he/she wants to do, without any claim to future revenues.  Gorilla Nation includes a post-term in their contracts.

2. Performance Clause
I would recommend some type of ratio of performance, where the ad rep firm is responsible to perform at a particular level. Especially, if a publisher has an exclusive deal, you need to make sure you are getting sufficient consideration every month if you are giving up exclusivity. You can put a performance clause in the contract such as for every 1M pageviews, the publisher needs to get 2K net revenue from the exclusive rep firm. If the site does 10M pageviews, the rep firm must perform and sell at least 20K per month on premium direct sales and if they don’t for 2-3 consecutive months, you should be able to get out of the contract. If a rep firm has a “star property” or anchor property, they will most likely focus on that property when pitching to advertisers, leaving the smaller publishers behind.

In addition to a performance clause, you need a clause that says the rep firm is responsible to provide with a quality service level. You want to think of as many “outs” as possible, with “outs” being options to get out of your contract.

3.  Leave Some Room to Sell Some of Your Inventory on Your Own
Leave some room for you to handle some of your direct sales. It’s important for publishers to build traffic and scale first but if you grow very fast, you need the flexibility to start selling a portion of your own ads, with your own direct sales team. You could select a category such as music to focus on and give the rest to the rep firm. As you get bigger and stronger, you can then negotiate more away from the rep firm.

4. Play Rep Firms Against Each Other
Negotiate from a position of power, once you find more than one rep firm that is interested, you should use this interest as leverage. “X is offering me a better deal, can you beat these terms”

5. Set Your Own Rate Card, Don’t rely on the rep firm
This needs to be in the contract. The rep firm may be trying to sell you too low or too high. You need full flexibility to determine the pricing of your brand/site. You can work with the rep firm but you should have complete control over your rate card.

6. Ask How Many Account Reps do they have per site within your vertical
If the reps are overly stretched and your site doesn’t have a large following 500 UV’s+, don’t expect a lot of attention and support.

7. Net Payment Terms
Anything beyond net 60 is suspect.  However, if the CPM’s are high and the partner has a good reputation, I think you can go with 90 but nothing beyond net 90.

8. Misc Fees Deducted from Your Revenue, on top of the revenue split
Beware of shady terms such as the ad network or rep firm having the ability to deduct fees from your revenue, in addition to the revenue share. Some firms will try to be slick and say they can deduct fees related to trafficking, ad serving, and sales, in addition to their revenue share. This is unacceptable and an obvious red flag.

9. How many employees does the rep firm have?
Beware of big promises. If a firm has 1-3 employees or the key executive you’re working with is working from home, these are obvious red flags. What this could mean is that this firm doesn’t have the bandwidth to effectively sell your brand to Fortune 500 companies.

10. Beware of firms that sell Black only, not Quality
If a rep firm is “selling” their business on the fact that is Black owned and not on the quality of their partners, sales, growth, financials, etc., this is a red flag.  You shouldn’t care who owns the rep firm and you should weigh firms on their merits and what they can do for your business.  Young “pro Black” publishers/bloggers often “buy into the kool aid” and get exploited by these type of ad shops. I personally had to threaten AdGroups after I smelled some “shady” dealings/practices. “I don’t care if you’re Black owned, where is my money?”

Bonus

11. Provision for M&A
If your website is acquired on a M&A deal, you need to be able to get out of the contract as an acquirer would most likely want to go in a different direction on ad sales. If you are “locked tight” into a contract, this may influence your deal price or prevent a deal from even going down. You need a “M&A out”.

12.  Beware of the Auto-renew
Some firms require a 30-45 days notice or they will auto rnew your contract and you could be stuck with them for another year.  Obviously this is not ideal especially if you are unhappy with the ad rep or they haven’t preformed to your expectations and you’d like to try alternatives.  If you are already in an auto-renew situation mark your calendar to send your contact termination notice.  Don’t get caught slippin’.  Gorilla Nation includes auto-renew in their standard contracts.

13. Consult an Online Advertising/New Media Lawyer No Matter What
Or someone who specializes in online advertising/new media. Even if you don’t have any money, you can find a lawyer who will work with you where you can pay them later or break up the balance into payments.  I don’t care how smart you think you are, if your site blows up, a bad deal or some “uneven” clause only a slick lawyer would understand who wrote the contract in the interest of the rep firm could end up costing you millions!

As of late we’ve seen so many traditional Black/Urban Media companies either redesign as blogs, create blog properties as part of their holdings, or transform their content channels into blogs.  In nearly every case that I’ve seen this happen not one company has been able to knock it out of the park.  In many cases they merely bunt it. Cases in point…

Vibe relaunching as a blog

Essence.com’s latest redesign

BlackVoices building up their stable of blogs that mirror content channels (BVonStyle,BVonSports, BVonMoney, etc.)

Interactive One adding blogs to their holdings and then tacking those properties on the BlackPlanet.com domain

You get the picture.

Surely blogs have some kind of undeniable allure.  In some cases they are guilty pleasures.  In Media they are the new kids on the block that some love to hate while others embrace.  In mainstream media there is M&A activity in the blogosphere.  Media companies don’t necessarily feel the need to recreate the wheel, challenge what already exists, or create their own.  Long term that would take too much time and resources.  They simply either take a strategic investment or acquire.

My biggest question and concern is why doesn’t this same activity happen in Black Media.  Instead of resulting to the typical “crabs in a barrel” answer I’m genuinely curious to find out what is missing in our economy that we have yet to see this type of activity in recent times.  Especially when Essence is feeling the backlash of their community on their new redesign, Black Voices’ traffic despite trying to incorporate blogs is in a huge slump, and of all Interactive One’s properties Black Planet still out shines many of their properties by light years.  If these companies wanted to diversify their portfolio by adding blogs or appeal to a young audience by “acting” like a blog wouldn’t it make more sense just to acquire a blog that is aligned with your brand and what you are trying to build?  You wouldn’t have to start from scratch, the traffic would already be there, and 9 times out of 10 the overhead would be ridiculously low….lower than the staff that is needed to “act” like a blog.  I know it is a recession but M&A activity isn’t necessarily down.  Sure it is no free for all but it is alive in a smarter and more strategic way.

What kind of economy are we creating if independent media doesn’t happen on some sort of liquidity event?  This needs to at least be an option and at most serve as an example of possibilities.  Not to mention strategically it makes more sense to acquire rather than wait for independent media to seek investment from an IAC, MSNBC, and the like or bootstrap their way to the top.  Then they really become your competitors…head on.

The White House is going open source. Over the weekend, the White House announced that whitehouse.gov now runs on Drupal. Until now, the Obama administration has continued to use tools purchased during the previous administration. These tools severely limited what the administration could do with the website, limiting opportunities for interaction with users.

In switching to Drupal, the White House hopes to not only harness improved security, but also the power that is Drupal’s crazy-flexible modular system. The White House team will be able to take advantage of the enormous Drupal community to add features and improve the way users interact with the website.

Huffington Post reports:

White House officials described the change as similar to rebuilding the foundation of a building without changing the street-level appearance of the facade. It was expected to make the White House site more secure and the same could be true for other administration sites in the future.

Tim O’Reilly points out that there is a vast difference between using and contributing to open source, and hopes that the government will turn their security modifications over to the community.

It’s also important to realize that using open source is very different from contributing to open source. Despite the exaggerated claims in the AP story, that “the programming language is written in public view, available for public use and able for people to edit”, the White House has not yet released any of the modifications they made to Drupal or its operating environment back to the open source community. The source code for Drupal (and the rest of the LAMP stack) is indeed available, but the modifications that were made to meet government security, scalability, and hosting requirements have not yet been shared. In my conversations with the new media team at the White House, it is clear that they are exploring this option.

While this measure may not be an immediate cost-saver (5 different companies are involved in re-building and maintaining the White House web site), long-term costs should fall as government agencies are able to borrow from the greater Drupal community while incrementally improving on the websites code. But the question remains, will the Obama White House share some of the contributions it’s making to open source?

I had the opportunity to sit down with Windows 7 Program Manager Cordell Jones. Cordell has worked with Microsoft for the past 14 years, with the past 2 years focused on Windows 7. Some of Cordell’s past project include Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Exchange. Cordell now works on the networking side of Windows 7.

Cordell is a graduate of Tuskegee University. Enjoy!

Though the BET On Blast video player was nice when it launched a little over 2 years ago video on the web has certainly moved in another direction.  Specifically if you happen to be a television network.  BET.com recently ditched the BET on Blast player, which many thought was hard to navigate, and leveled the playing field with not only it’s sister sites (VH1 and MTV) but networks who have a presence online in general.  While video is the most notable change (and most exciting in my opinion considering where video on the web is going) there are several other changes on the site that aren’t worth over looking.

Video

The familiar player now allows sharing (mainly embedding and URL sharing).  The video library is logical and finally includes the breath of the network’s programming including video’s from artist which plays nice with the artist’s pages we mention below.

Individual videos can also be rated by a user and comments can be added.

Original Webisodes

I actually stumbled across this area when looking into the video programming that was offered.  While not much is there now (mainly video clips) my bet is that BET will get into the game of web original programming and perhaps even allow some form of User Generated Content for their audience.

Artist Pages

Less like Hulu and more like a Topic page for artists.  You can find everything related to an artist on this page including where they are on the social web, see Lil Wayne for an example.  The only thing missing here is to gather news from around the web and not just BET.com.

The community section still needs some work and follows the old site’s format but we’re told other areas to the site will roll out later this year with the complete revamp to be completed in early 2010.  With the adoption of the features above the decision not to syndicate it’s programming across the web on places like Hulu is starting to make more sense on why they’d opt not to.  Looks like they are building a Hulu-like presence on their own.  Should be interesting to also see how Centric is or isn’t incorporated into the site’s content programming.  We reached out prior to publishing but have yet to get a statement from BET.com on the site’s direction and strategy.

(Disclosure:  Black Web 2.0 is the technology content partner for BET.com)

EVERYWHERE, a Social Media Marketing and Content Development firm based in Atlanta, GA set a record October 16-17th for the most widespread social network message in 24 hours. According to Radian6, the official online monitoring company, the phrase #BeatCancer set the record with 209,771 mentions on Twitter, Facebook and blog posts. This translates into an estimated number of impressions generated during this 24-hour period at over 100 Million. Attendees at BlogWorld & New Media Expo, which featured some of the biggest names in social media, were asked to send tweets and issue Facebook status updates with #BeatCancer in their posts. This massive viral effort spawned a worldwide online message that spread and quickly became the #1 most trending topic on Twitter. Not content to just perpetuate a hashtag followed by a message, EVERYWHERE sought out sponsors to raise money for non-profit cancer organizations. Sponsors eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors Brewing Company and Genesis Today were financial contributors to the #BeatCancer campaign and in the brief 24 hour period, over $70,000 was raised.

Of the effort, Guinness World Record® spokesperson, Stuart Claxton said, “We’re always on the lookout for new and exciting ideas, and when approached about a mass social media experiment that rallied people to support the fight against cancer, we were happy to oblige in adjudicating this record attempt.” He further clarified that this attempt “will set a benchmark for social media monitoring moving forward.”

Managing Partner of EVERYWHERE, Tamara Knechtel, who came up with the idea for #BeatCancer says, “We understand very well the power brands have to deliver messages in the social media space. We wanted to score the first Guinness World Record® by using social media for social good. I’m a cancer survivor and just about everyone I know has a close family member who has suffered from the disease. That said, we only had a matter of days to pull this off in time for BlogWorld & New Media Expo. We are grateful to our sponsors, eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors who stepped up to the plate offering a penny per #BeatCancer mention. In the end, they both gave far more than a penny per mention!” EVERYWHERE is now the first social media agency to develop a Guinness World Record for online impressions.

The money raised will be donated to four different non-profit cancer organizations including SU2C (Stand UP to Cancer), Alex’s Lemonade, Bright Pink, and Spirit Jump. All of the non-profits are 501(c)(3) organizations and accredited by The American Cancer Society. A listing of all organizations can be found at www.beatcancereverywhere.com. While the campaign is over, individuals may still donate at the aforementioned website.

The measurement firm Radian 6 provided all of the real-time tracking for the campaign. As of this release the current impressions total over one million mentions of #BeatCancer including tweets sent by athletes and celebrities including P. Diddy, Jermaine Dupri, Larry Fitzgerald, MC Hammer, Perez Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Maxwell, Alicia Keys, Shawne Merriman, and Denise Richards.

Ford is already pretty well known for it’s social media strategy, led by Scott Monty, and was ranked the #1 Social Automotive Brand by Virtue.com.  They not only use social media to engage with current customers (and potential customers) for Ford products, they also use it for Customer Service and to combat “haters” when those situations arise.  In fact I had the opportunity to speak with Gwen Peake (@gwenj), Ford’s new hire for the Global Digital Communications Manager, and she made a point to mention the company “welcomes all comments” good and bad.

Peake’s background is “multimedia” in the truest sense. Throughout her career she has been on a “tour of industries” that are all about communicating to large audiences— she’s been a television producer, a film director, a stage manager for theater, a book editor, a writer for magazines, music and movies, and even owned an online magazine. Most recently she’s joined the Ford team to expand their small but hugely effective social media team to two.

Gwen Peake, Global Digital Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company

While Peake hasn’t been with Ford long she and her team have had a number of wins, including getting Ford CEO Alan Mulally to tweet and engage with bloggers and customers; at one point even taking time on a Saturday to make a phone call to one.  Things like this are just one small part of what Peake and her colleagues are doing to “humanize the brand using social media.”  What may seem like simple use of Twitter and Facebook to a novice is in actuality part of a much larger strategy.  Self proclaimed “social media experts” and “strategist” take note.

At the heart of the effort is theFordStory.com “social media repository.”  This is where you’ll find all things related to what Ford is doing in the social web including first hand stories from customers as well as commentary from the blogosphere.  And yes you’ll find them on Twitter and Facebook but it doesn’t end there.  They are also on Flickr, YouTube, Upcoming, SlideShare, Flickr, Scribd, and Delicious.  They also do blogger outreach and Peake shared that they try to be as human and personable as possible, they contact bloggers more like a friend would and not like a marketer.  Note:  Bloggers if you get form letters from marketers asking for “your help” run…and run fast.

As I mentioned earlier their social media efforts don’t just end with the superficial.  There are many initiatives Ford is apart of as well.  Initiatives like The Wedding Road Trip where a newly engaged couple drove cross country telling friends and family of their news.  InvisiblePeople.tv is another initiative, and a great one at that.  It is a vlog that chronicles the lives of homeless people across America by way of a road trip.   One of the most impressive is the FiestaMovement.com where 100 agents lifestream their time with a Ford Fiesta for 6 months.  Yes Ford sponsors the vehicles in these initiatives but the participants are not paid at all.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with what Ford is doing in the African-American community with vehicles like the Flex.  Those campaigns tend to be less social and are well…just campaigns.  Peake mentioned during our conversation that this is something Ford is aware of and she and her team are tasked with working across the company to make campaigns more socially engaging.  They will be working with various multicultural divisions and we should start to see social media included soon on campaigns targeting the African-American demographic.  Peake not only adds great knowledge to the Social media team at Ford she offers perspective.