This year’s event kicked off this past Monday with an explosive start including keynotes, panels, parties and networking events, with speakers including David-Michel Davies, Chairman, Internet Week NY & Executive Director, IADAS, Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NY, Pete Cashmore, Founder & CEO of Mashable, David Karp, Founder & CEO of Tumblr, and even Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, whose baseball career was the inspiration behind the recent Brad Pitt movie, Moneyball.

At Synthesio, we relish the opportunity to dig deeper into the public conversations surrounding an event of this magnitude, so we decided to take a sip from our Twitter Firehose and track all Twitter conversations surrounding this year’s Internet Week, to provide the public with engaging insights into the overall online reach of the event, trending topics, and lastly, what has become somewhat of a tradition here at Synthesio, the lists of top influencers driving the conversations.

So now it’s halftime, and once again, we invite you to stand up, stretch, grab a drink, and enjoy the Synthesio IWNY Halftime Report Infographic. Congrats to the top influencers, and don’t forget to check back next week for the Post-Game Analysis!

Click the image below to view it in full size.

Most importantly, however, our relationship with Trey quickly evolved into one of close friendship and mutual support. His easy-going demeanor, non-stop charm, and infectious laugh always brought a smile to our faces, and his willingness to always lend a helping hand inspired us to not only improve our business, but aspire to be better people as well. I have no doubt that countless others who have had as much as a 5 minute conversation with Trey have felt the same way…

Trey’s presence and impact on Synthesio and the entire marketing community will remain for many years to come. Our thoughts go out to Trey’s family and friends – and all others whose lives he has touched.

Trey always talked about developing “amazing stories”…we invite all who read this blog to share their positive experiences and memories below, and let’s share the amazing story of Trey Pennington.

and the list continues to grow as social media becomes an essential part of business. Who would have thought 5 years ago that by 2011 it would be be critical for companies to have at least one Facebook button somewhere on their website ?

As social media marketing has evolved, so, too, has social media monitoring. Large corporations are investing in enterprise solutions that allow them to manage their online reputations and monitor what is being said about their brand(s). For 2011, there are certain trends we detected at Synthesio in the social media monitoring sphere that we wanted to get your thoughts on :

1. The R.O.I. in social media will be a deciding factor for businesses

Marketers working in the social media sphere for several years will say that this is already a reality or that it’s impossible to calculate the R.O.I of social media. In fact, you may have already stopped talking about “social media” and the “social web” and have started talking about the “web”, period, and taking for granted that the web is social. Yet even this month Social Media Examiner said the #1 question companies ask is “How do I measure social media return on investment?” The SmartBrief / Summus Limited surveyed more than 6,000 of its readers from a variety of industries ; only 14.7%  answered that their organization is measuring the return on social media investment.

The 2010 Gartner Hype Cycle for social media also suggests that social analytics are reaching their peak in terms of expectations. Business owners have already become disillusioned with social media consulting, and are looking for a financial return.

When we presented several of our social media cases at Monitoring Social Media in Paris in December, the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive ; the attendees had clearly come looking for real-life examples. Just take a look at the number of comments under the  (continually growing thread) “Looking for case studies on the successful use of social media to grow a business” if you have any doubts.

Even if they’re not measuring social media, business want to. Jeremiah Owyang asked 140 social media strategists what their number 1 internal and external goals for 2011 are. The #1 response is that business are looking to calculate ROI

However, in order to help businesses understand which monitoring and measuring tools and services are the right ones for them they need more concrete examples of how social media can advance their business. Marshall Sponder is going to help in this regard, as he is currently working on a book about social media monitoring toolsand uses that features case studies à la Forrester Groundswell.

As for social media listening platforms,

2. Listening platforms are going to become increasingly similar

Forrester Research recently released their 2011 Listening Landscape Report, breaking the listening market into 3 different types of platforms :

Social dashboards—Web-based tools that focus primarily on managing and analyzing social media data:

• Crimson Hexagon;
• Brandwatch;
• NetBase;
• Radian6; and
• Trackur.

Multichannel analytics providers—Analytics infrastructures that mine social media data along with other structured and unstructured data sources:

• Attensity;
• Autonomy;
• Analytics infrastructures;
• Clarabridge
• Overtone; and
• SAS Institute.

Listening service partners—Vendors with proprietary social analytics tools and professional consulting teams that write custom research reports based on social media data:

• Converseon;
• Cymfony;
• EmPower Research;
• NM Incite;
• Synthesio; and
• Visible Technologies.

Zach Hofer-Shall is also looking at how social media monitoring companies price their services, so as to clear up confusion for buyers. For example, while some companies base their pricing on the number of verbatim (the case of Synthesio), others base their pricing on the number of keywords or the number of seats.

However, as the social web has become a necessity for businesses to thrive, the tools used to measure and monitor are going to converge into similar solutions and services to provide a more homogenous market. Several tool providers have already begun adding service components to complete the tool, although there are still various ways they are going about this (community management, setup, video training, etc.).

Yet, it’s not just the tools and services that companies are going to be looking for in 2011.

Because businesses want proof, they also want stories. Storytelling is going to provide the context that analytical data needs to be relevant for buyers. Graphs, statistics, and charts are exciting for an analyst, but clients need a picture of what they represent in the real world. In their reports, for example, Synthesio analysts always pick out top influencers, trends, conversations, and anecdotes around your brand online to paint a picture of your online presence and reputation. They paint a story to bring online data to life.

And finally, in 2011…

3. Customers will have one voice across all channels

Forrester analyst Bruce Temkin wrote in 2010 that, “Most large North American companies have some type of voice of the customer (VoC) program in place. But most of these programs fall short of fueling customer-centric behaviors.” He points out six components of successful voice of the customer programs :

• listening
• interpreting
• reacting
• monitoring
• culture and alignments
• governance and organization

Not only should a monitoring solution be able to allow you to monitor and analyze conversations around your brand, but there must be ways to respond in a way that stretches across the enterprise. Synthesio developed an engagement platform in 2010 that is currently used by teams like the web consultants we work with at Orange [PDF link], but exciting developments are on the way. More info soon

What do you think?

What are your social media monitoring predictions for 2011?

Nate Elliott, the Forrester Analyst that presented the awards, shared with us what exactly goes into the selection process and what Forrester is looking for in terms of social media use to promote its use for business uses :

Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 19 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 27 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day.

Cause marketing meets social media?

Target is one brand among several that has made the connections from social media to online reputation to worthy causes.

They just launched a campaign that will result in the donation of US$3 million to one lucky charity: they have invited Internet users to vote for their favorite charity (out of a list of 10) on Facebook to determine which one will get the money.

Of course, certain critics have attacked the campaign as being a simple “tactic to create buzz”. Nonetheless, there’s a nice little chunk of change to be donated, and the interjection of social media into charity work promises to do some good for more than just the brand

What’s the connection between the Tour de France, Nike and Twitter?

The answer? LiveStrong!

Nike has created a machine (the Chalkbot) exclusively to paint fans’ tweets along the Tour de France route all while Lance Armstrong chats with them on his own Twitter account.

The words of encouragements sent out to the Tour cyclists, then, mean that the brand interactions between Nike and Internet users are happening in real time and in a very public way. Original and neat!

Luxury Brands and Social Media

Who talks about brands on the Internet? Those that have free time to do it, of course! Meaning… rich people The author of this Mashable post points out that with the affluent increasingly surfing the web, “brands with scarce products and high prices must find a way to find consumers online”.

But luxury brands have a unique issue to confront: exclusivity. Certain brands have decided to create a public Facebook page open to anyone and everyone. Gucci, for example, has done this to provide a space for all Gucci lovers to express their love for the brand.

Others, on the other hand, have chosen closed networks that ban access from those that have not yet earned their way in; i.e. if you haven’t bought your Mercedes Benz yet, don’t even try to join the online network.

Quizno’s Crowdsourcing

As we pointed out in previous posts, a brand’s Internet users’ opinions can be sources of innovation as well as ideas for improvement.

Just take a look at this Quizno’s video that kicks off a contest to find videos of sandwhich lovers eating their subs “in an unusual place or while doing an unexpected activity…”