Her father is a director — the only type of person who would have the foresight to film his daughter against the same backdrop for 12 years straight. Us hack marketing types would want to create this through some cheating CGI approach.

Simple but universally compelling.

About a year ago Twitter reported that close to 500,000 new accounts were being opened each day. That’s about 180 million accounts on an annual basis, right?

Hmm.

The lesson here is that accounts do not equal people.  A lot of those accounts are machines but a lot of those accounts also are dormant users who don’t do much once they create an account — because the pace on Twitter is impossible to follow and there are few tools built for consumers to help manage and consume it.

The reality is that a small fraction of people actually create content on Twitter.  But people say that like it’s a bad thing. A lot has been written about how these above vanity numbers are just that — hype.  The comparison to Facebook’s staggering growth and engagement rates are natural and daunting and only feeds the sentiment that no one is really using Twitter.

Not so fast you Nancy Naysayers!

Mass media — namely that little ol’ thing we media researchers like to call the ‘most influential medium in the history of mankind’ or simply ‘television’ — lends a great example of how Twitter content is used by the masses. People watch and consume content, not necessarily create it.

Think about it. If you’re old enough to rent a car in the U.S. odds are you averaged somewhere between 3 to 5 hours a day of TV consumption for a good chunk of your life.  How many times did you create TV programming or call or write NBC, HBO, Cinemax or any other programmer to comment on their content? Answer:  Zero times in the last (pick any number) years.

What if there was a tool to consume Tweets the way people consume TV programming? What would you call those ‘dormant’ Twitter accounts?

I’d call it an opportunity. Here I come.

- Jose Mallabo

You don’t have to be interested in politics to appreciate the war of words that’s been playing out over the Republican debates the past couple of months.  But if you are a PR person it’s really interesting to wonder how Mitt Romney messages his campaign going forward.

He entered the race on the platform of:  “I’m not a politician, I’m a business man from the private sector.” The idea is that sets up the jobs creation narrative in what he did at Bain Capital.

Mitt Romney

He’s fed the American public a steady diet of messaging that argues we don’t need another career politician into the White House.  We need a business man who’s created jobs in the private sector.

I can see how that might be a tasty morsel for people to take home and kick around at the dinner table.

Not so fast.

Having spent 20 years in corporations, I can without any hesitation, say companies are not like countries.  In business, bosses fire employees.  In a democracy, the rank and file can fire their leaders.

Big difference, grasshopper.

More importantly the loss in South Carolina to career politician Newt Gingrich under the specter of his missing tax returns presents not just a chink in the business man messaging armor – it’s like a West facing wall fell off the house.  And here comes the storm that started in Iowa when Newt called him out with my favorite sound bite of all the debates: “Let’s be candid, the only reason you didn’t become a career politician is because you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.”

It begs the question if being a politician is pejorative, why would you want to be president?  Someone please ask him that. Because I just don’t think it’s an effective messaging platform.  In my lifetime, only one president has won with a hint of the business man platform – W.  And, clearly no one in the G.O.P. race is tying themselves to that messaging boat.

Romney’s speech and messaging people have to seriously consider this business messaging platform because with his wimpy response to the tax return question makes it clear they broke into jail on this one.  That’s what my favorite media messaging trainer calls it when you raise an issue or topic then run away from the follow on questions that ensue.

Maybe I’m wrong?  A few years ago the idea ‘POTUS’ referring to a black man seemed implausible.

Perhaps there is ‘hope’ for a Mormon venture capitalist.

 - Jose Mallabo

Photo credit: Vanity Fair magazine, Feb. 2012

The blog post’s conclusion is to draw your own conclusion about social media’s impact on holiday purchasing. The post meanders from having an opinion that the ForeSee research was limited to having no point of view whatsoever. How am I going to join a conversation or rebut your point of view if you don’t have one?

While there are no official rules to blogging – the universal and unspoken rule is to have an opinion.

Here’s mine: The idea of social commerce (buying stuff on Facebook) is still a pipe dream. Rather, social media can drive brand, product and deal awareness and therefore serve as a complement to a retailer’s larger search and email marketing programs.

Since this post in late 2010, LinkedIn and Groupon have gone public. Facebook’s IPO has been delayed – but will be the biggest one in the history of ever. The point being, these companies are all well capitalized, have hundreds of millions of subscribers and are not going anywhere. So industry pundits and luddites alike need to bite down on the reality that marketers will continue to throw marketing dollars at them to hock their wares regardless of whether we have any proof of a causal relationship between the social media consumption and clicking the “buy” button on a shopping site.

At 2.9% e-commerce conversion rates there is no proof needed.

While this question of “Was social media a big factor in holiday purchases?” will come up again and again over the next few weeks and months, I encourage marketers and PR people to do one thing:   challenge the question.

As Augie Ray correctly points out social media is a mere infant and it will take time to prove its correlation with purchasing behavior. In the meantime it serves a lot of other organizational needs that are no less important than shopping cart clicks. Don’t get suckered into the conversation about social media and its impact on transactions because you’ve got more to attend to with your 2012 social and media dollars such as:

• Reputation management

• Product and corporate branding

• Influencer relations

• Partner relations

• Customer service

• SEO

• Issues management and crisis communications

• Recruitment and workforce engagement

While the analyst community continues to look under the hood for purchase conversion evidence, what they’re missing is that the owners of these social media programs may not at all be focused on driving holiday (or non-holiday for that matter) transactions.

Pause.

Bite down. Chew. Gulp.

And therefore, there might be some reason why the transactional or purchase conversion evidence is not to be found.

In fact, most brands and retailers I know are still investing more in tried and true search and email marketing initiatives to drive transactions and conversion online and in stores –- while using Facebook and Twitter as complements to those initiatives and for all of the other communications objectives listed above. That explains why search and promotional email remain the primary drivers for purchasing behavior for the holidays.

There. I said it.

Don’t go back to high school. But do take my poll on LinkedIn

-Jose Mallabo

Travel bags for travel.

Travel bags for my motorcycles.

Backpacks, messenger bags and traditional laptop bags that get stuffed with my laptop, iPad, Kindle, Motorola Droid and BlackBerry and all of their individual chargers whenever I go more than 100 miles away from home. (It’s 2011 and still no universal chargers on our horizon – I sigh with Martha Stewart’s 2006 vent.)

As I sit here with a crick in my neck from falling asleep while reading my Kindle, I know full well I’ll be buying a slim, light back pack as a Christmas gift for myself this year. By far this back pack from Alpinestars is my favorite in my current fleet of bags.

Its shoulder straps and chest harness are ergonomically correct and keep your all of your junk in place. It holds a 15” laptop with ease and is fairly water resistant. I road 400 miles on my Triumph through the entrails of Hurricane Irene with my laptop and gear in there – they stayed drier than the rest of me. The best part is the contoured and padded backing that makes wearing it feel like a gentle hug from your grand mom.

The drawback: You kind of look like a character from “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” when you’re not on your bike.

No doubt people will be going to Best Buy and Apple to find gifts for their families this Christmas and holiday season. How about a bag for that gear instead? Check out this round up of slim bags. The site loads rather slowly so you might want to pour a cup of coffee and come back.

I really like the look of this Everki back pack largely because of its dedicated slot for a Kindle or iPad. But, alas Everki.com doesn’t want to load . . . to the Amazon!

-Jose Mallabo

So when Bengie Molina’s double tied it up my neighbors probably thought someone stubbed a big toe in my house.  It was easily the biggest double I’d ever seen. . .until Garret Anderson’s 3 run double down the line a few innings later.

Thanks to YouTube for giving us all a way to watch this game over and over. 2011 was a tough year for Angels fans. But we’ll always have 2002, YouTube and next season!

I remember walking my first Bay to Breakers race about a decade ago.  I had a very broken arm and lugged around a cast that ran from my fist to my armpit. An hour into the 7 mile race someone with a bullhorn was yelling to the masses: “The Kenyans have already won. Go home!” I laughed and limped along with the thousands of others — appreciative of the update.

Social media isn’t too different. The early adopters have been claiming victory over traditional marketing channels since Facebook and Twitter were mere puppies. Search, email and general multi-media marketing/advertising might have a few things to say about that.  But if you just look at the growth of Facebook and Twitter memberships over the past year — they’re signing up more people now than they were two or three years ago — you can start to see the not-so-early-adopters getting on the bandwagon.

And that’s OK. We all can’t be died-in-the-wool Yankees, Patriots, Red Sox or Phillies fans. Someone has to get on the bus last. So grab your licensed apparel and get on the social media express. But to the newcomers to social, I’d caution you from drinking solely from the awareness pitcher. Check that box and skip ahead to finding out how social media can drive lead generation and business development — because that’s the Kool Aid pitcher the cool kids are filling up from.

It can look a little like this one that I know was used in generating ~$200 million on software/solutions business leads for an enterprise facing company with a big blue logo.

Not as sexy as a Facebook page with videos of the trendy people at your company doing fun things in skinny jeans.  But it works.  And it will take this kind of coordinated approach to driving business for social media to run with the Kenyans.

-Jose Mallabo

Someone light my cigarette.

Back when I was working at LinkedIn and really driving my social network activity into a professional realm, I was itching to bail on Facebook.  I joined to re-connect with high school friends just before our 20th year reunion but since then had been wavering on my activity there.  It just felt too icky too often. The first ick moment came when a former boss asked me about something I posted on my Facebook profile. She was lurking me.

Ick. Double ick.Two years later, 98% of my personal social networking activity is on LinkedIn, Twitter and this blog. And professionally, I manage the GSI Commerce blog as part of my job.

Reconnect with high school pals? Done.

Ongoing Facebook purpose? Unclear.

But what really tipped me over was this quote from this 2-year old Newsweek article: “When I think about all the hours I wasted this past year on Facebook, and imagine the good I could have done instead, it depresses me.”  It’s basic macroeconomic theory applied to social networking. The opportunity cost of clicking through pictures of people in wonderful “look at me you’re not here” places is less time from things that matter.

I’m off Facebook. And off to spend more time on iFoster.org as a board member, other business ventures . . . and throwing baseballs to my nephew who wants to be the next Jose Reyes.  If I throw enough fly balls to him maybe he’ll be the next Torii Hunter instead. Either way, last I checked I can’t throw batting practice on Facebook.