After attending a couple of related conferences this past month, Search Engine Strategies, and Computers in Libraries, one of my big take aways about what’s going on in the really big, big picture is that one really good thing that all of these new technologies and user generated content is doing is unleashing our imagination. And that, of course, is a good thing.

I mean, sure we can have (and do experience) information overload, and today we even have “innovation overload” to some degree with our feeling that we have to find and try out all the countless Web 2.0 tools, widgets and applications being developed.

But imagination is something that we really can’t ever have too much of….

Gee, I’ve been so interested in talking about all the other books I like so much, I forgot to blog the fact that last month my own book, The Art of Strategic Listening: Finding Market Intelligence through Blogs and Other Social Media was published by Paramount Books.

It’s basically a book on why today good market research means paying attention and monitoring what’s going on in social media forms: eg. blogosphere, Web forums, social networking sites like Facebook etc., where to find relevant conversations, and using the best tools and strategies to find, filter, evaluate credibility of what you turn up, and make sense of it all. The idea is by attending to those near real-time, authentic discussions, you can better find out what your current customers like/don’t like about your firm and products; where to find potential new customers; get early warnings about trends that will impact your industry and so on.

One interesting thing about this book is that the publisher has also put together a hotlinked PDF version of the book too (not free though), that includes live links and onscreen video tutorials.

For more information on the PDF version, link here

Let me know if you like it, or if you have any questions (either before or after purchasing)

business research

market research

social media 

Can’t beat this one for getting up to speed on social networks from a trusted expert. It’s a public, just released PowerPoint presentation by Forrester’s Charlene Li, one of the finest thinkers on social media around. And I found out about it from her Facebook status update–an example of the “social graph search” in action: that is finding relevant and substantive information by following your trusted colleagues on a social network….

OK, so we’ve moved from plain old information overload to people overload!–that is, how do you keep track of all the news, status updates, photos, messages etc. from everyone in your various social networks?

One promising, fun, and intriguing, though still imperfect solution, comes from Chirp. If you download Chirp’s Chripscreen, you can seemessages and content from your friends and connections from a wide range of social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and others, all gently “floating” onto your PC in a very elegant and pleasing manner.

Its set up as a screen saver, but Eve Phillips, the CEO of the firm told me that the firm is planning on adding functionality so it can run as a sidebar. It also does not yet have enough personal controls built in yet–eg. deciding whose updates to see from which network, but apparently this is all in the works too.

In the meantime, I would recommend anyone that is wondering how to keep track of their various social contacts to give Chirp a try…(I’ll be covering it in some depth in the April issue of The Information Advisor) to go along with my piece on the potential of Twitter as a business research tool.