The Philippine Online Chronicles

Each year, the Web 2.0 Summit gathers 1,000 of the world’s executives from technology, media, finance, telecommunications, entertainment and the Internet. This year they congregate in San Francisco for “The Data Frame,” which is all about the impact of data in today’s networked economy. So the theme is, “What can you do with data?”

Linkedin Take Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman. Hoffman talked about how Linkedin is leveraging the amount of data and putting it to real use. He says too that there is a gap between skills and jobs, and using Linkedin, which is a data platform, it can tell you what skill should you be learning, and what regions in the world that a particular skill set is most hot.

Pepsi

Another business that is leveraging the social web--- and data--- is Pepsi. It would seem strange for a beverage company to be doing this, but after sitting in on their presentation, it makes absolute sense for a company of Pepsi’s caliber to be doing it. Pepsi argues that today’s brands ought to create meaningful experiences. And to do this, they must learn how to curate so you can craft stories from the data people get from social. In their mind this means making a H.I.T.--- Humanity, Imagination, Truth.

Pepsi recognized that their brand logo is already all over the place. Using technology, if people took pictures of their brand, and uploaded them, their customers would see new interactions--- new content just for them. And from there, brands can do meaningful experiences from social interactions. They can use that data as well, to identify what’s happening on the ground.

Like they can understand where are people taking photos? Is it an area of great concentration of people in the computer industry? Is it in automotive? Is it finance? And from this data they can identify how they can create an engaging story.

Facebook and identity

Social is part of the data we are now creating. And part of that data is the creation of our identity online, which is closely becoming our identity offline as well.

One presentation that also stood out was Chris Poole. He talked about online identity, and he argues that Facebook suggests that we have one identity--- who we are online is who we are offline. Google+ followed the Facebook model. He says it sin’t the audience we should be segmenting, but the context with which we interact with that audience. Poole says both Facebook and Google are simplifying who we are. Poole argues that’s the wrong way to go because humans interact differently depending on our audience.

“Identity is prismatic,” Poole says. “There are many lenses that people view you”.

Poole concludes that Facebook and Google do it wrong. Twitter does it better. He concludes, “What would the world be like, if we did it right?”

Photo credit: Photograph © pinar@pinarozger.com