This past week, I took a trip to Costa Rica with a few friends including Rahmin Sarabi, founder of unclasses.com, James Gross, VP at Federated Media, and Matt Jessell, Stategic Programs Manager at Federated Media.

With collectively over 15 years of web experience, most of our conversations were centered around how the web is changing media, consumer behavior, and our daily interaction – typical for a group of web guys on a vacation. Sorry, no bikini girls taking body shot stories here.

But in the context of a third-world country, heavily influenced by the US recession, the web seemed more relevant than ever.

It has become an equalizer; a channel of communication to connect and broadcast to anyone and everyone around a topic in real-time.

Before the leaving for the trip, James had connected with the founder of SurfingNosara.com, Erik Antonson. Erik has been experimenting with social media as a distribution and communication channel and wanted to meet with us to “get advice and talk strategy”.

What came next was a surprise. In an hour conversation with Erik, I realized that I had very little to offer. The specific strategies in using Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages, Blogs, Video, and other social media mediums are elementary. The technology is simple and the additional tools such as Twollow, TwitterHawk, Involver, etc can be found in online resource guides.

So how is it that a group of web dudes from San Francisco couldn’t give Erik a more concrete social media strategy?

Because he got it. Living in Costa Rica, thousands of miles from any technology hubs and in the middle of the jungle, he got it. He may not have the best SEO or SEM strategy, or may not be utilizing the best tools to scale his consumer engagement, but understood the foundation the social web was built on.

He knew to:

1) Focus on relevant and real-time content.

Erik posts regularly with interesting and engaging content. No automated content rss fed content from an api of twitter search with geotagged stories from ghost bloggers (I think I got most of the bs terms used). It’s real content from him and his crew.

2) Be authentic.

He’s not going to pretend to be a brand, or hide behind a logo. He is the founder, owner, the company, and a person you can ask questions and talk to.

3) Be passionate about what he is doing.

Erik is a realtor. But he actually cares about what he is doing, and it is easy to recognize that. It is apparent from in his posts, his videos, and the community he has built.

4) Use marketing channels as means to communicate, not sell.

He understood that these mediums are a means to communicate and engage around conversation. He actually cared about your experience, the relationship, and building an online community around Nosara. He makes it nontransactional. (Yes, he’s a realtor and yes, this is possible)

5) Make decisions as if he was 16.

He thinks about his life and his company as if he were a young, optimistic adolescent. He makes it fun, appreciates the process, and in the end, is doing more of what he enjoys. Why does this matter? Because making an extra dollar is not the end goal.

Again, the web has become as equalizer. Understanding the trends, tools, and fundamentals of the social web are no longer restrictive to those in the microcosm of San Francisco geekness. All too often we associate “living in San Francisco” with technological know-how. Sure, the entire globe isn’t using FourSquares or Vark, but Erik started with a solid foundation of focusing on content, his relationships, and his passion; and with these principles in mind, he is going to crush it.

Check out his shiznits at SurfingNosara.com.

In a recent Kanye West blog post, he states his esteemed opinion on the value of Twitter.  In typical self-absorbed Kanye form, 

(This spaz comes courtesy of losers making fake Kanye West Twitter accounts) I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS. REPEAT… THE HEADS OF TWITTER KNEW I DIDN’T HAVE A TWITTER AND THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ACCOUNTS HAVE HIGH ACTIVITY ON THEM. IT’S A FUCKING FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!

I agree that the Twittersphere, by following squatters, is providing positive incentives for them to continue to squat.  However, unfortunately Kanye seems to miss a big part of the value of Twitter; searchable and real-time news and information transfer. 

Sure, I don’t want to know that Kanye is on a beach or why spell check is not working on his blog, but I’m sure he wants to know about the latest trends in music, or how consumers are reacting to his lyrics, message, brand, or songs.  Information, feedback, news, and content in real-time is not a trivial function of the social web.  

I especially enjoyed his statement that “I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME”, implying that being creative and delivery content are inversely related.

Last, I’m going to make a prediction.  Kanye regrets his statement and in the next 18 months starts using Twitter.

All the current talk is about social media – how Twitter is taking over e-mail, how Facebook has more users than most countries have citizens, and how engineered virality can replace a marketing budget. With all the chatter, one might think that social media should be a substitute for advertising, a reason to eliminate a company’s marketing staff, and even cure cancer.

All too often, abstract concepts in social media marketing and communication are not concretely defined or measured. The result is the perception of a far-fetched land of geeks getting together and somehow magically altering business operations, marketing strategies and branding.

On June 27, 2009, at the NAA Education Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, the “Thought Leaders in Social Media” panel aims to provide some experiences and relevant insight into how to use the social web. As a precursor, let’s introduce the panel and take a look at how these individuals have applied social media strategies to increase brand recognition, retention and revenue.

Panelist #1 – Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Tony Hsieh has grown Zappos.com from $1.6 million in 2000 to $840 million in 2007, a measly 525,000 percent increase.

How was Tony able to change a company from a little over $1 million in revenue to almost $1 billion in revenue?

If you ask Tony, he’ll say, “customer support.” For most people, these words act as reminders to answer phone calls and please the customer. And, granted, Zappos does both of those brilliantly. However, Zappos has consistently adopted social media as part of its customer support strategy to engage and listen to customers.

“We actually take a lot of the money that we normally would have spent on paid advertising and put it back into customer experience,” says Tony. “We’ve always stuck with customer service, even when it was not a sexy thing to do.”

Zappos shortens the engagement loop with the entire organization by being very active on Twitter. Tony has more than 350,000 followers, and more than 400 of his employees are using Twitter.

For Tony, growing the business has not just been about answering phone calls, but about building a brand around the principles of engagement, creativity and a laser focus on fulfilling customer needs. These initiatives have resulted in 7.4 million total customers, 75 percent of purchases coming from returning customers and repeat customers ordering more than 2.5 times every 12 months. Talk about retention.

Panelist #2 – Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research

Jeremiah Owyang is a senior analyst at Forrest Research and a leading expert on social computing, social media and interactive marketing. Jeremiah’s blog was ranked 19th by Advertising Age, he has consulted for large brands such as Hitachi Data Systems, and he is a speaker and educator at many conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo, SXSW and CES.

In a recent study titled, Social Media Playtime Is Over, Jeremiah writes:

The recession has put more pressure on interactive marketers to deliver measurable results. While many marketing budgets are being cinched, more than 50 percent of interactive marketers say they will increase their spending on social marketing. Why? These inexpensive tools can quickly get marketing messages out through interactive discussion and rapid word of mouth and, properly managed, can deliver measurable results. But in this downturn, interactive marketers must move beyond experimentation by making social applications a permanent part of marketing, measuring and demonstrating their value, and integrating them into marketing efforts.

As a part of the study, Jeremiah found that 53 percent of marketers are determined to increase their social media budgets and 42 percent will keep budgets the same, a total of 95 percent of marketers bullish on social media marketing. Even though these budgets are small (three-quarters are less than $100,000), Jeremiah recommends that marketers do not approach social media marketing as an experiment. “Remember, the most expensive cost isn’t the tools, it is the soft costs–strategy, education, process, roles and measurement,” he says.

Jeremiah continues to provide empirical data and demonstrate why social media outlets can be an integral part of marketing and distribution. His message is spot-on; it is not just about being there, but it is about having a strategy and goals for the engagement.

Panelist #3 – Pete Flint, Founder of Trulia.com

Flint founded Trulia.com in 2005 and it now is one of largest and fastest growing real estate Web sites in the United States. Trulia.com has over 5 million unique visitors a month and has raised more than $33 million in funding.

Trulia has been able to bridge the gap between buyers and real estate professionals by building a community called Trulia Voices. Some stats include:

• Visits to Trulia Voices increased 146 percent year over year
• The volume of question and answer activity in Trulia Voices Q&A increased 114 percent year over year
• Real estate professionals’ answer volume increased 96 percent year over year
• Consumer questions increased 181 percent year over year

How has Trulia engaged both millions of home buyers and hundreds of thousands real estate agents?

Again, the answer seems to be centered on the engagement of the customer. Heather Fernandez, Vice President of Marketing of Trulia, says, “Consumers are looking for guidance and education and are relying on our pool of more than 200,000 real estate professionals for advice and insight.”

With multifamily housing traditionally closely tied to the real estate sector, Trulia is a relevant example of how user-generated content can change the flow of communication to consumers.

Moderator – Eric Wu, Co-Founder of RentWiki.com

I’m a 26-year-old entrepreneur and co-founder of RentWiki.com, a socially-driven rental search that connects renters with peer advice. I’ve spoken at conferences such as NMHC Technology, AIM Conference and the Harvard Business School Entrepreneurship Conference. In 2006, I was named one of BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25.

Conclusion
Having a Twitter account, a Facebook fan page and a viral YouTube video will not cure cancer, but they can and will affect your bottom line. The underlying message is not about usage or presence. It is about having a consistent strategy to engage consumers, listen to customers and focus on their needs. As Jeremiah puts it, “Fish where the fish are.”

Eric Wu is Co-Founder of Rentwiki.com. He can be reached at eric@rentwiki.com or 415/640-4970. The “Thought Leaders on Social Media” session will be presented 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 27 in the Mandalay Bay’s Lagoon Ballroom as part of the 2009 NAA Education Conference & Exposition.

For those that don’t know, TenCent is the owner of the leading IM franchise in China – a product known affectionately as “QQ”.  TenCent was founded in 1998, has 355 million users,  US$1.2B in annual revenues, and a US$11.2B market capitalization.  The stock chart for the past 5 years is included in the adjacent graphic.  The two primary drivers of revenue for TenCent are digital items and casual game packages and upgrades.  Advertising, which doesn’t work well on U.S. products like IM, doesn’t work well in China either.  Advertising revenues for TenCent represent only 12% of total revenues.  Recently, I asked a leading Internet analyst which company in China is best positioned above all others?  He quickly replied “TenCent”.

Facebook already has very large succesful third-party games and could build some killer ones internally.  Additionally, virtual gifts are approximately 1/5 of Facebooks revenue.  Surprisingly, an estimated $50 to $60 million is made from Facebook virtual gifts.

Though I agree that the digital goods and games model will undoubly be extremely profitable if executed correctly, here is my easy and fast recommended revenue model for Twitter and Facebook.

1)  I’ve been saying for years that our all aspects of our offline lives are migrating online.  Our conversations, our interactions, and our thoughts are being held and recorded online.

2) We are already recommending books, restaurants, electronics, websites, and all sorts of consumer goods online.

However, these mentioned on Facebook and Twitter are not hyperlinked. What if Twitter and Facebook hyperlinked mentioned of goods or services relevant to the conversation?  For instance, if a friend recommends a book on Twitter, it would link to Amazon so I could purchase it or read a summary/reviews of it. Think Zemanta.com or Apture.com for online conversations.

Would I pay for a link to a neighborhood or apartment in a conversation on Twitter or Facebook?  I am cheap and I would pay boatloads for that.

So similar to the Google model that brings back relevant advertisements based on key terms, advertisers could pay for links in the text of conversations as long as it is extremely relevant.  If I mention Apple Macbooks in a conversation, the “Apple” text is linked to Apple’s homepage.  No doubt there is downside to the user experience if it is not executed correctly, but I think a few relevant links here and there would actually be helpful.

On that note, “I’m going to Barnes and Noble right now to attempt to buy an advanced CSS book.”

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For instance, to keep the site freely editable, Wikipedia will need
to replace its stock of hardcore admins and editors as they retire or
quit. But Goldman thinks this will be a problem, since many of these
editors first started their work when Wikipedia was a quite different
place. Now, the editors themselves discourage the contributions of
others through “xenophobia” toward outsiders; Goldman believes that
they see “threats” everywhere and points out that the greater part of
all edits made to the site are actually reverted by these editors.

In addition, plenty of political jockeying takes place among
editors. And editors have few incentives for their work—no way to make
money, no real way even to earn attribution. Together, these problems
mean that as editors get burned out by patrolling for spam and
vandalism, fewer new people will be interested in stepping up to plug
the gap.

The result: a death spiral among the editorial community.

Wikipedia could also move in the other direction, making it more
difficult to edit (at least some) articles on the site. Jimbo Wales has
been a big backer of moving to “flagged revisions,”
for instance, and the site already has limited features to “protect”
controversial articles. But this is also tricky, because it will raise
the bar for both spammers and for new members. This discourages new
contributors to Wikipedia and also makes it more likely that current
site editors will cease their voluntary labor—some will decide that
“this isn’t what we signed up for” when they started work on the
crowdsourced project.

Though I see some validity in the points, and I agree with the challenges it faces as the incentives to participate do not have compounding affects.  Similar to Yelp, no one wants to be the 524th, but they want to be the first.  However, I do not agree that the openness:

1)  Is a detriment to the quality of the content.  Yes, there will be specific examples of inaccurate information, but as a whole, it profives a massive volume of information.  Even large history books, science books, etc written by professionals have errors.  

2)  Cannot be a combination of crowdsourced project and professionals.  With the transparency of the internet, it would not be diffciult to find deemed “experts” in the field to provide some validity to versions of a article.  A tag verifying that the article’s accuracy on that particular version by a professional would ensure that they article has some truth, instead of rallying on the masses or the original author to agree. 

I think the semi-protected status solves many of the spam and flamers concerns, though it does reduce the amount of contributions.  But we’re talking about accuracy on already created articles and Wikipedia can still have open articles for the new topics. 

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1)  Be bold –  Buzz terms do not work.  Social networking, social media, etc.  Everyone is Facebook + YouTube + Digg.  They told stories of how they helped people.  How people needed them.  The problem they were solving.  The were unique, creative, and genuine.  My favorite was their Obama O’s strategy for the inauguration.  http://www.airbnb.com/obamaos

2)  Button up –  You need to create buzz from the ground up.  Newspapers will google you and see how is talking about you on Twitter.  TV shows will see which newpapers are talking about you on newspapers.  

3)  It takes time – They spent 3 hours a day, contacting people.  They sent thousands of emails, called thousands of people, and did what it takes to tell their story.  

These guys are smart, young, and aggressive and they showed the a little bit of hard work and creativity goes a long way.  If you haven’t checked out their AirBedandBreakfast.com, you need to do so.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.