Distributed content on the web is nothing new. RSS feeds, widgets and other embeddable content (videos, images, slideshows, etc…) have been popping up in blogs, personalized homepages, and social networking profile pages for several years. As marketers however, this illustrates a major point that needs to be considered. People are off your site, much more than they are on it. We can’t expect people to come to us for information, we need to be where they are.

Technologies such as RSS are basic tools to address this, but recently Chip showed me an app that allows anyone to create dynamic flash widgets sprouts that can be embedded throughout the web. The technology is called Sprout Builder, and after trying it out I was amazed at how easy the interface was to use. As my friend Mike Gowan once said, “Any simpleton could do this!” It took me about 20 minutes to build a simple EPInteractiv sprout that was fed via RSS, a Google Calendar, and a set of photos.

When you get a moment, check it out. Thank TechCrunch for the beta signup.

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This is a follow up to a previous post, but the DataPortability Workgroup has gained some momentum in the past week or so garnering support across the web. This video was just released and does a good job explaining the importance of the DataPortability movement.But why does this matter to marketing folks? Well, for one it means that there a fewer barriers to creating a one on one dialog with our audiences. We have created countless websites where users had to set up accounts and spend time coping over personal info that they have already filled out 100 times before. This sort of standard will help us eliminate the need for our customers to re-enter a lot of information, making it more likely that they will utilize whatever personalization features our sites may offer. In addition, it allows us to create social networking components to a site without having to create a whole social networking architecture. A standardized data platform will allow us to spend less time building the foundation, and more time building functionality that leverages data in a more useful and engaging customer experience.

And speaking as a consumer myself… if I don’t have to fill out another user id / password creation form again it will be too soon.

Over the past few years we have seen a huge rise in the amount of information people are sharing on the web. Social Networks, photo sharing websites, blogs, etc… have all provided mechanisms for us to share information with ease. Unfortunately, the management of all our information and relationships still exists in silos. You have to update your blog, your LinkedIn profile, your Facebook profile, your Flickr account, Etc. You have relationships with friends, family, and co-workers that overlap in a Venn diagram that resembles the third symbol from Zoso. Frankly, managing this mess takes too much darn time.

Tools to help manage your social graph are popping up, but what the world needs is a set of standards that puts structure around the sharing of data. RSS is not enough. We need standards for describing relationships, authentication, identity, messaging, and more. We have talked at our shop about this time and time again but I recently came across the website Dataportability.org that is dedicated to Standardized Data Portability. The site lists a number of standards movements with links to some helpful resources and initiatives.

These sorts of initiatives will help us as consumers and as marketers. I’d encourage everyone to check them out.

UPDATE - For anyone that has followed Scoble’s temporary exile from Facebook, he announced today that Facebook has joined the Dataportability.org Workgroup. The optimist in me in rejoicing. The pessimist says “Big deal… tell me when I can export my data.”

No game of buzzword bingo would be complete without the term “Web 2.0.” However, as much of a cliche as it may be, it is one of the most important terms that a corporate marketer should understand. So while the web is chock-full of definitions for this term, the following article illustrates an interpretation designed specifically for the corporate marketer.

So, lets get to it. Web 2.0 means one thing, “accessibility.” Accessibility in this regards comes in 3 varieties:

1. Making yourself accessible to others.

2. Making your audience accessible to you.

3. Making your audience accessible to each other.

Simple enough right? It is basically what the web was designed to do in the first place. The recent movement and buzz around the term has just been a refocus on the web’s original intent. So lets dive into each a little deeper and see how each of these concepts manifest themselves as marketing tactics and strategies.

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In our business we thrive on bringing people to our site. Whether it’s a microsite to educate visitors about a product, or a more traditional site designed to show knowledge in a market segment - our projects would fail without self promotion, traditional advertising, and word of mouth.

With all of these there is a certain level of trust that your visitors place in your site. An example, most of our sites have a ‘Send to a Friend’ link. This small form makes it easy for a visitor to send a note to someone else with a link to make it that much easier for word of mouth advertising. When a visitor uses this function they place a certain amount of trust in us that we won’t be storing these addresses for later campaigns. And, just in case there is any question out there - we don’t.

This trust is difficult to establish and even harder to keep in an online world where each of us receives a few hundred spams a day. There was a time that people felt free to share they’re email address with anyone that asked. Today, all it takes is that fourth email from your great aunt telling you that Bill Gates will come and wash you car until you begin to realize that your email address should be a protected piece of information.

This brings us to todays lesson in how not to spread word of your site. And if you’re the kind of person that clicks on links and doesn’t finish blog posts, don’t sign up for this site. The folks over at Quechup are a bit late to the social networking sites, so they have a unique method of generating new members. On sign up they ask you if you want to scan your address book for other Quechup users. If you say yes, then they email everyone in your contact database with an invite to join.

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As a recent Economics graduate, and now as a Marketing professional, I was excited to learn that Web 2.0 information accessibility concepts are creeping into the delivery of scholarly literature online via Google Scholar.

Back in college, if I needed some supporting research for my paper on, say, the effects of World Bank efforts in Venezuela, I’d find myself hitting JSTOR, JEL, APJS…just a few of the myriad of socio-economic literature databases that may or may not have contained that valuable nugget of information I needed. And I should mention that I had access to those engines only because my university paid a hefty annual subscription fee.

Google Scholar is not replacing existing literature databases, but 1) simplifying the research process by aggregating these resources into one search engine and 2) making content available to previously-excluded audiences. Now I can go to the Google Scholar search engine and, in just one search query, see results from a multitude of trusted sources…even sources that previously required a paid subscription. Now I can opt to pay a nominal fee of around $10 for each article I wish to obtain from one of these sources.

I suspect that, in time, this will become a standard tool used by researchers to gather information and by publishers to propagate content to new audiences. As use increases, I hope to see Google incorporate an RSS feature that would allow even more efficient access to current scholarly literature.

Check it out for yourself at scholar.google.com.

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I found this video on YouTube a while back, and wanted to get it posted. So many times, we hear the term Web 2.0, and so many times we associate it to a particular flavor of design, technology, or user gen content. Web 2.0 is much more than that as this video does a pretty good job at showing.