When Brent called me last year and said he was putting together an event I said “sign us up” without even knowing what he was planning. I trust Brent and have confidence in his ability to pull together an interesting roster of speakers, participants, and most importantly, an audience to engage with.

Trust… let’s talk about that for a minute. The social technology industry has come up with an entire array of words that ultimately just convey the notion of trust between and institution and constituent, or person to person. These words include the ever popular “authentic” but also words like “transparent”, “open”, and “honest”. Whatever you name you give it, it is TRUST that we are talking about and the ultimate objective for companies using social technologies to engage the world around them should be using trust as a currency for influence.

The night before the event the speakers had a little dinner and over the course of the meal I learned a lot about the audience, the market, and my fellow speakers. After dinner and the next morning I put my deck together and assembled my thoughts into speaking points. I began my presentation by sharing this chain of events and then started with:

“Why did I tell you that at 11:00 last night and 6am this morning I put my deck together for you? Well it’s because I want you to trust me and know that what I am saying to you isn’t boilerplate, scripted, or slickly presented, because if nothing else I say makes an impression upon you let it be this, brands are lies, half truths and good intentions.”

Why are brands lies, half truths and good intentions? Keep in mind that I don’t subscribe to the notion that companies are inherently untrustworthy or that the people in a company, any company, are dishonest… I am part of a company, you probably are as well. The reason why brand statements are untrustworthy is that they reflect what a company, specifically those in the leadership of a company, want to believe about their organization, not what the customers of that institution reflect back to them as their values.

50 years of broadcast advertising has conditioned people to not believe what companies tell them is the truth, which is why Edelman’s trust barometer regularly ranks “people like me” as more trustworthy than any institution. As a society we have a generalized trust issue with institutions of all kinds and yes it should concern you as much as it does me because institutions of government, private enterprise, and everything in between form the backbone of society, and the demise of institutions has historically been a leading indicator for the demise of a society.

I have been thinking a lot about the notion of brands lately, but what I have been focusing on is how the communications revolution we have been participating in, also known as social media technology, is thrusting forward a notion that companies and customers need a better way of talking to each other.

Let’s not call them consumers… please, they are people and people have an inherent desire to be treated as individuals. The construct of consumer is something that companies created to group customers together because they lacked the ability to address each customer individually. Today we can reach customers as individual people so why do we need things like focus groups, demographics, and behavioral segmentation?

Well they do serve a valuable purpose, which is to roll up things which are best addressed in the aggregate, like product definitions and advertising strategy but when it comes to customer service and a collection of marketing functions we need to drill down to the individual level and treat customers as individual people.

Another aspect of this that I find particularly fascinating is that customer are behaving in a very different way that in generations past, not only do they have needs that have to be met with products and services but they also want companies to intersect them on the basis of values. In generations past we cared a lot about what the brand symbolized, the fashion appeal of it, but today we care about the values of the people that make up the company. Wow.

Couple this with another observation I have, which is that brand loyalty is easy to achieve but hard to hold… a direct inverse of what was the case even just a few years ago when brand loyalty was hard to achieve but very durable once acquired. We quickly embrace companies and products with a profound advocacy but one slip and a company quickly gets black listed. From heros to zeros in no time flat…. just ask the Komen Foundation.

So what does all this have to do with the idea that brands are lies? Well it all came together for me with something that Dion Hinchcliffe passed around on Twitter yesterday titled “Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch“. You should read this in it’s entirety but let me quote this one passage for you.

(…in successful companies) Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy.

Just as we need to recalibrate our thinking about customers as people rather than consumers, we need to appreciate that in successful businesses today, and tomorrow’s leaders, the organization exists as a unified body of individuals acting with single minded purpose and empowered with the ability to carry forward on the basis of what is right and wrong for the organization. Wow.

Brands are Lies is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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Totem is a multi-faceted service that can be a useful resource for PR agents, reporters and startups alike.  It centralizes pertinent information about a company so that anyone has access to the information they need.  Information like the company’s mission, their latest coverage, logo and press contact.  Totem lets you package the press release with the images, contacts with the company history–everything you need to learn about a given company.  And the beauty of Totem is that it’s self-serve for every aspect of press these days, whether it’s social media-driven or more traditional.

There’s two initial options for Totem users: a free service with all the basics you need, or a premium account with full customization for a one-time fee of $99.  The founders believe that this type of service shouldn’t be reserved only for the well-funded.  They also believe that the current way news-related marketing works is overdue for a revolution.  As one that digs through press pitches on a daily basis, I’m glad to see someone delivering a high measure of convenience not only for myself, but every person involved, from press agent to the company itself.

Totem hopes that your press page will become a living, breathing entity, readily updated and always accessible.  It’s designed almost as a landing page, combining the press release with a company blog to present a rather evergreen resource.  What’s more, certain aspects of Totem’s pages are embeddable, so they can be placed on a company’s website in an integrated manner, separating the “press” resource as needed.

But what Totem is really doing here is building a database of companies and their information, and Totem’s true value will lie in how this database is leveraged moving forward.  Will Totem target publications in need of embeddable company information to build out their own resources?  That’s something Totem’s considering, Dilworth tells me.  But the next step is really analytics, where users will be able to see how their embeddable data is being received and how content is being shared.

The analytics angle isn’t a surprising one, given Dilworth’s own background and clients.  Even from his days at Porter-Novelli, I often found myself chatting with startups with a heady focus on semantic search, natural language and data analysis.  From Twine to Parse.ly, Dilworth specializes in data-centric businesses, and has always been able to convey this, sometimes better than the startup founders he represents.

It’s important to note that Totem is a separate project from Jones-Dilworth, though there’s an obvious interest in launching a program like Totem–scratching one’s own itch, if you will.  Totem’s a much-needed change in a digital movement that’s already contravened printed media and its traditional subscription model, all the while reforming content distribution, and marketing for a tech savvy people.

What Happens When a PR Guy Scratches His Own Itch? Totem Launches Beta Today is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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Watch ads or check your phone?

The research furthers that a third of Super Bowl users will watch the game “with device in hand.” This will enable mobile users to check their phones 10 times more during the game. Over 80 percent of viewers said they will use their mobile device as much as they did during the same event last year.

Fans are also likely to check their mobile devices for status updates on Facebook or Twitter during commercial breaks. “People have to do something while the teams are in the huddle or during timeouts, so their phones are a good activity,” Zencka said. And to think, a 30-second Super Bowl ad slot comes with a $3.5 million price tag.

“Viewers are sitting in front of the television with a mobile device in their hand and they’ll likely check that ‘second’ screen often,” Velti Executive Krishna Subramanian said in a press release. “There’s no going back now from the fact that the Super Bowl is truly a two-screen experience. Mobile is the second screen that completes the full circle of user engagement – turning advertising into content.”

In retrospect, here are mobile users’ engagements during last year’s Super Bowl (courtesy of iProspect via):

- 61% of Facebook users who identified as Super Bowl fans posted status updates during the game in 2011.

- 28% of users who identified as fans directly chatted or messaged with friends. – On Twitter, the record for most sports-related posts per second was broken six times, culminating at game’s end with 4,064 tweets per second.

- Overall, last year’s Super Bowl generated more than 4.5 million tweets in six hours. – In the United States, Twitter traffic during the game increased by 50% over the previous day.

- 2011 Super Bowl ads have been viewed more than 360 million times online.

- 39% of Super Bowl related searches from mobile devices in the week surrounding last year’s game came on Super Bowl Sunday itself.

- Traffic to Yahoo‘s mobile homepage jumped by as much as 34% over normal during breaks in the action.

- Sports-focused mobile traffic on Yahoo jumped by as much as 387% over normal during commercial breaks.

Brand’s mobile focus gains BI

With this much focus on mobile during the event, brands may as well target the hefty mobile usage and social presence of fans through engaging marketing campaigns and viral videos on YouTube. Twitter and Facebook are getting more and more traction as conversation hubs over the last few years’ major live events. These, on top of the exploding tablet and smartphone usage, will need some heavy thinking from marketers as the figures are becoming harder and harder to ignore. They need to have some strategy to take advantage of this Super Bowl’s mobile craze.

“With millions of people using their mobile phones today for brand interaction in addition to traditional communication, the Super Bowl offers companies a significant opportunity to socialize their marketing campaigns,” said Mark Reino, CEO of Merit Mile Communications. “What’s more, companies that leverage cloud marketing for precision targeting, automation that keeps costs low and enhanced ROI metrics will be the clear winners during the Super Bowl.”

The real value of mobile connections is the direct access to consumers and the potential for business intelligence that follows as a result.  Mobile is the segue between the intangibility of a television broadcast and the physical access of a handset.  Mobile devices are individualized and can establish a long-lasting connection between a brand and a consumer.  We’re seeing this concept evolve within mobile ad standards, with Millennial Media’s latest product update for targeting consumers that have already demonstrated interest in a brand.

Mobile also adds an edge of urgency with the perk of web access.  This immediacy is what brands are picking up on, making the “on-demand” trend a two-way street for content marketers and end users.

“The power of mobile is that it’s immediate–a merchant has the ability to make an announcement with regards to the Super Bowl, or even a time-sensitive discount during half time, and hook them with their loyalty program, incentivising customers to come back,” says Adam Weizer, CEO of Servistree.

“What’s starting to gain traction is the realization that mobile is immediate.  The people that really get this is the younger generation.  I believe email marketing will fade out and mobile will take precedence as people become more familiar with how to use text on their mobile devices.”

Should you actually decide to interact with Super Bowl 2012 on your mobile device, here are some top apps to follow the big game online.

Contributors: Kristina Farrah

Social Mobile’s True Value for Super Bowl 2012? Business Intelligence is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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[Thanks, Daisy.]

New Media Minute: How to Measure Social Buzz for a TV Show – Bluefin Labs is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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From BlueGlass Interactive Co-Founder Chris Winfield: “I first started working with the team at Voltier in 2007 and I have always been amazed at their ability to constantly innovate and stay at the forefront of the inbound marketing industry. The need for companies to implement and execute effective content marketing strategies is constantly increasing, so we are thrilled to have one of the leaders in this space become a part of BlueGlass.”

Voltier’s acquisition will mean increased marketing capabilities for BlueGlass, pouring in more industry experts for the team, including Winfield himself. It is expected that by February 1st, the two companies will merge as one. BlueGlass specializes in digital offering which encompasses infographics, data visualization and kinetic typography.

There has been a lot of traction around content marketing lately. A recent study from Custom Content Council reveals that more than 75% of US corporate marketers say they are aggressively (16%) or moderately (62%) shifting spending from traditional marketing to branded-content marketing. Substantial amounts of budgets are shifting towards content marketing and overall content marketing spending is on the rise.

Moreover, mobile marketing garnered a whopping $39 billion in revenue in 2011 alone, says PQ Media. It grew by 27.8 percent from 2010 and it’s expected to steadily escalate throughout 2012. Because of this, mobile is raking in points from businesses and content-marketing investors as more and more people access the internet via their mobile device.

In other content marketing news, social content management provider, Thismoment, Inc., appointed John Bara as new chief marketing officer (CMO), making him the first for the company. He will lead the development and execution of the company’s marketing strategy team.

BlueGlass Acquires Voltier Digital to Shore up Marketing Services is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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“If this is seen as an opportunity for jobs and for people to use their work to change the world that’s what we want to be a part of,”

This IPO event could certainly mean a proliferation of activity, with a public stake in the game, the economy of the application market could potentially accelerate, marketing ventures stand to accelerate, the ripple effects could mean jobs, innovation, and interesting news for some time to come. What could this mean to Yahoo, a company that is heavily reliant on click-based display advertising.

The undeniable explosion of social-based information sharing from sources like Facebook, Twitter, and so on dwarfs Yahoo’s news aggregation model in terms of relevance and attractiveness to advertisers. A takeover of Yahoo has long been discussed from the once rumored Microsoft takevoer, to the latest news of Google and Alibaba making moves. Oh and Microsoft’s name has been coming up in that rumor mill as well.

Meanwhile Yahoo, while still an attractive property in many respects, particularly based on the still-giant amount of traffic they receive, it is clear Yahoo is and has been in decline for some time. Just today, news came out about Yahoo killing some of their social apps. Here is a list of the apps they officially discontinued today:

• Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Mim (iPad)
• Yahoo! Answers (Android)
• Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Deals (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry)
• Yahoo! Movies (Android)
• Yahoo! News (Android)
• Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone)

That could mean anything right?  They could just be focusing on some newer, better stuff.  Perhaps.  But where’s the rival news?  I’m looking for a YahooTV, or a Yahoo phone.  It is nowhere to be found.  Yahoo seems content to operate as an ad click business, or at least they can’t get any traction otherwise.

Yet despite numerous signs of difficulty and a loss of value, Yahoo drives on, determined to be independent. In a recent article on CNet, it was reported that Yahoo may be trying to sell off Asian assets to raise some cash and continue to fight off investors.

Despite the hiring of a new CEO earlier this year, it appears this ship has taken on quite a bit of water. The vertical that Yahoo competes in is dwindling in comparison to the viral and social nature of Facebook’s culture provides. Kristen Nicole’s breakdown of Facebook and Social Monetization  lays the case for Facebook’s pervasiveness and compelling proposition. The company is driving innovation in monetization, technology, and marketing by providing their brand of platform, a brand that is known the world over and is now on the precipice of a potentially monumental event. Integration into XBOX, mobile phones, tablets, all those things – yeah they’re gonna happen, it has to happen.. ‘Like buttons’ are accessible in the middle of a TV show. The ability to gain followers from within a TV commercial. Edgy and addicting games that integrate into all facets of entertainment.. A favorite around here is the social content management provider, ThisMoment. Set at the intersection of all these things where marketing strategy is optimized among all these platforms, ThisMoment is primed for this wave of social integration we are about to experience and is set to grow.

All we hear from Yahoo are signs that it is in survival mode. Some talk here and there of innovation. I’m not trying to bash on them, but it is really difficult to perceive that they are able to attract the best and brightest minds to the game at this point. They appear to be in a managed decline. I project, no I actually hope that at some point Yahoo decides to put a smiley face on this before the value of the company as a major player is completely gone.  So while the SuperBowl rolls this weekend, I will still keep my eyes and ears tuned for that dynamic technology offering (we know Apple will have an ad), that certain – WOW!  What is that product with the funny name thing?  But it probably won’t come because that era has passed us by.

Facebook IPO – A Sign of Yahoo’s Decline is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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[Thanks, Daisy.]

New Media Minute: Online Video Buy Boosts TV Reach by 14%, Frequency by 18%, Study Finds is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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The good folks over at Eurogamer contacted Valve for comments on their new product.

“The Steam app comes from many direct requests from our customers,” commented Valve CEO Gabe Newell. “Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale – these are all features customers have requested.

“Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone.”

If you want to be part of the beta, you can simply download the app now and log into your account. Valve will be adding gamers as the service ramps up and demand increases.

The app will not only allow Steam customers to purchase games from their phone, but will give them access to their profiles, screenshots, movies, and Steam chat. Much like other gaming social networks that are tied to desktop or living room gaming—like Microsoft’s Xbox Companion service for mobile devices—are beginning to break out of the console/PC and allow players to stay in touch even when they’re on the go.

This is all another portion of the extension of the living room cloud enabling an intersection between what customers do in front of a monitor and away from home.

This overlap is becoming more prominent as services seek to connect people at work, at home, and on-the-go with social media and high interconnectivity. Communication is the mainstay of the modern life and many gaming services take advantage of the social aspect of the video game experience. Already Steam provides a chat service that is available while playing full-screen games on he PC (which ordinarily take a person away from socializing on the Internet because they rapt all attention on the computer.)

Between services like Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network, and Steam we’re beginning to see the effects of the interface between the living room and personal clouds adding to the social fabric of Internet-connectivity and all facts of our information society.

Valve Delivers with Smartphone Steam App Beta is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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In April 2011, the Association of Coupon Professionals held an Industry Conference in Atlanta to address the present and future state of couponing. The industry had seen unprecedented growth in the past decade due to a combination of factors, one of which was the United States’ economic recession. “The rise of couponing in late 2008 coincided with the recession of the late 2000s;” this factor combined with an increased consumer interest in mobile technology and devices led to an unprecedented decline in print media.
Due to the combination of these factors, marketers began to more heavily fund digital platforms.  The coupon industry specifically saw record growth within the digital realm, and by 2010 “49 million people [had] used an online coupon.”

The benefits “digital interactions” have and continue to offer coupon companies are vast. For starters, online couponing allows for great promotion of brands and wider distribution; not to mention it also allows companies to better reach & track consumer preferences and patterns. Precise analytics allow companies to “measure online distribution of coupons by tracking the printing of web pages and page views;” a significant advantage with digital.

What these and other analytics showed was that the digital coupon consumer base was  “young, married, and had disposable income.” Groupon specifically has targeted this demographic, lending digital couponing a social reputation. “Daily deal” couponing continues to be a popular tool among consumers and marketers, and many major companies have implementing their own version of the trend.

Statistics from 2008 show that digital couponing has rapidly grown but has yet to outpace paper coupons. At that time, digital accounted for “less than 1/10 of all coupons distributed.” But subsequent statistics have also shown that “online coupon access [has] increased 92 percent and redemption of Internet deals [has] leapt up 360 percent;” with more growth predicted in 2012. All-in-all one study found that “1 in 5 people who receive an Internet coupon redeemed it;” so clearly digital couponing is more than just “another distribution channel,” as some analysts have previously stated.

Problems Daily Deal Couponing Presented for Business Owners

While intriguing for consumers, daily deal couponing platforms like Groupon have not always been beneficial for business owners who often see a spike in business with little retention of those customers.

“A study conducted by Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business found that 66 percent of the 150 businesses surveyed reported that Groupon promotions [were] profitable. However, more than 40 percent of the organizations said that they wouldn’t run a Groupon offer again.”

But what Groupon (and Living Social’s) platforms have revealed is the social nature of contemporary couponing. For example, Cornell University reported that many Groupon users see themselves as “marketing mavens”… “on the front edge of market trends and price information.” Additionally, users claim they “would not have tried a restaurant [or store] without a coupon offer.” What theses statements reveal is the social branding that has been bestowed upon contemporary couponing thanks in great deal to the popularity of “daily deals.”

Social Leads to Social Sharing

The social, daily deal strategies that Groupon (and Living Social) made popular have certainly spawned many copycat initiatives within the social, digital couponing realm. One such example is SocialTwist, a platform that “allows users to share in order to receive a better bargain.” The basic concept being that consumers can turn a $1 coupon into a $4 coupon simply by sharing it with 4 other people. According to one study this method has proven popular as “SocialTwist’s social coupons receive a 50-80 percent redemption rate.”# It has been predicted that this method will continue to increase in popularity in 2012. Evidence of this was seen in late November 2011, when Foursquare announced they will be incorporating a new “social sharing” button on their site.

Getting Mobile-Ready

Given these newer strategies companies are mobilizing their virtual and physical platforms to better reach and retain these social, mobile customers. Most companies are aware now more than ever that their mobile presence has to be dynamic and user friendly. With roughly 91% of the population using mobile devices and 26.3% accessing the Internet, it is important to have a “mobile ready” site for easy mobile reading and utilization.

In addition to this, “Google has reported [that] 95% of smartphone users have searched for local information,” while using their mobile devices- proving that location based, deal searching is another important aspect of mobile coupon use.

“The study also found 38 percent of users would use a mobile device to find a store location, 34 percent to compare prices, 28 percent to research deals and coupons, and 27 percent to find a product review.”

These statistics provide even greater incentive for businesses to have mobile ready sites so that they can engage local users looking for discounted goods and services.

Resolving Mobile Couponing’s Redemption Pitfalls

Mobile couponing, an obvious extension and result of digital distribution, has been popular despite its “mechanical” issues. With the rise of digital coupons, so came a rise in consumers using their mobile devices to reference coupons visually on their smartphones. Unprepared for this development, the redemption process, i.e. the scanning of digital coupons on mobile devices, has proven difficult until recently.

“Mobile coupon redemption has always struggled with ensuring a seamless experience at the point of sale,” contemporary research states. So, business giants like Walgreen’s Drug Store have “retrained salespeople to handle the process [and] equipped stores with hardware that can recognize 2D codes on LCD displays.” This nationwide initiative was just launched and will undergo testing during the 2011 Holiday Season.

“A re-release of the Walgreens app for iOS, BlackBerry and Android included a new coupons section that will issue up to three new deals each week exclusively for customers using the mobile apps. Rich Lesperance, head of digital marketing and merging media, Walgreens, says the program is the largest deployment of in-store mobile coupon scanning of which he is aware.”

Looking Ahead to the “Social-Local-Mobile” Strategy

According to an article published on December 1st, 2011 in Search Engine Land, the “social-local-mobile” trend is the next cutting edge move for digital businesses and a necessary consideration for coupon brands. Social-local-mobile (SLM) gets specific when it comes to targeting your ideal market and allows your ideal consumer to find you. A win for both parties, as well as the logical next step for consumer activity based on current digital engagement.

An impressive “two-thirds of holiday shoppers would make a purchase from mobile phones if prompted by coupons, discounts, text alerts, gift cards or loyalty points. That’s an increase from the 32 percent that responded positively last year,” claims
a new survey by Sybase 365 and the Mobile Marketing Association. In short, businesses looking to stay on top of the digital couponing trends need to focus on the being strong on three fronts: social, local and mobile. As the combination of the three provide the ultimate benefit.

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Jeff Hudson, co-founder and CMO of Grocery Coupon Network.

The Future of Couponing: How So-Lo-Mo has Changed the Game is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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Publishers can choose between three different subscriptions, the lowest starting at $499/month. They then embed a JavaScript tag on the footer of their sites and the service starts skimming through data.

Dash works by indexing past and current posts and cross-referencing them with all the data it can come with, such the topics discussed, the name of the author, and social media reactions. Publishers can then leverage the tool to identify talked-about developments and publish their articles accordingly, or easily hunt down noteworthy previous coverage to reference.

Search is a key function for Dash, helping you drill down into the data behind your publication as well as the web at large.  Data is updated in near real-time, and even has a tab for current updates for your pub.  You can see how stories are building across publications, how authors are interacting on various social networking outlets, and where your traffic’s coming from.  The idea here is to offer a true vision of an article’s life cycle, enabling editors to better understand their publication’s content in the past and present, as well as to plan for the near future (something every good BI tool will do).

 “Writers and editors with hard-earned experience and great instincts are absolutely critical to the success of any publisher, but for far too long publishers have been left in the dark, lacking the proper tools that cater to their specific needs.” said Sachin Kamdar, CEO and co-founder of Parse.ly. “We specifically built Dash to help online publishers answer the tough strategic decisions they make daily. The launch of Dash marks a huge milestone for Parse.ly and hopefully the publisher tool ecosystem at large.”

Parse.ly’s been testing behind the curtain for a couple of years now, tackling some of the biggest issues web publications face today, and doing so in an era where data convergence is still working itself out across a number of industries.  Kamdar and his team began this project when the concept of real-time was just beginning to find its footing as a practical tool, and applying it to the publishing industry is a poignant cause for this startup.

“[The real time trend has] shaped Dash dramatically,” Kamdar says.  ”Though we were beginning when real time was just getting hot, it wasn’t too overbearing for our goals.  For us, it’s really been about three things that publishers identified they wanted to do–monitoring, planning…and promotions.

“Editors and content creators themselves are turning into content marketers.  They have to be good in the social sphere at identifying content pushed to the right network.  We identify individual Twitter users resonating with a specific post, authors sharing behavior, APIs to tell you how many page views and share’s you’ve gotten on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn…you’re really getting to the effectiveness here.”

As BI trends find more niches to fill, data is the binding substance that makes it all work.  Startups and emerging companies are finding increasingly innovative uses – and sources – for big data. Last week Code 42 claimed a good portion of Accel’s $100 million big data fund for its popular cloud backup tool, which will soon be integrated with analytics functionality for the enterprise.

Contributors: Maria Deutscher

Smart Data Makes Smarter Editors: Parse.ly Launches Dash to the World is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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