Alley Insider pointed out that traffic is falling – an alarming statistic for a high growth company even if many people use Twitter on mobile (non-trackable) devices).

Then it looks like people are searching for Twitter less according to Google Trends.

There are reports of people simply tiring of social networking, at least as a topic (here’s the CNN report and a poll showing 75% of their online readers losing interest.

Social networking isn’t going away.  But tools like Twitter will likely become just that, tools for larger purposes, such as simply one way with keeping up news headlines.  May the hype go away and productivity set in.

• Opt-in and opt-out recommendations
• Privacy guidelines
• Rules for data capture, disclosure and usage
• And examples

You can download the guidelines here.

What the CDC shows is an ecosystem made up of a hub (CDC), multimedia (YouTube) and distribution (Twitter, email etc), all optimized to provide users what they need in a search. 

1. The Main site – http://emergency.cdc.gov/
2. Swine (H1N1) specific site – Swine Flu – http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/
3. Example of collateral – http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/recommendations.htm
4. Multimedia on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/CDCStreamingHealth
5. Distribution/Alerts via Twitter (as well as email, RSS and related tools) – http://twitter.com/CDCemergency

The result is all key properties showing up on page 1 of a Google search for the swine H1N1 flu.  Different search strings do get different results but the CDC results are generally at the top or referred to in other articles at the top.

The search string: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGLJ_en&q=cdc+swine+flu+h1n1+flu

Sample screen shot:

At the same time, Politico announced they will give stories to papers for free and share ad revenue – and Political and Addify will share the ads.  In other words, they are taking the Web video model to print.  Creating content, integrating in advertisements, and then pushing that content out as much as possible to increase viewership of the content and ads.  I’ve always favored Web video as it carries brand messages and advertisements wherever it goes.  But, as Politico is showing, text content can do the same thing.  

Read more at http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/09/10/the-start-of-reverse-syndication-and-end-of-the-ap/

Plink offers unprecedented capabilities to interact with media, allowing you to add information or annotations to your media, which you can then share it with friends. Plink takes social tagging and conversation into the picture instead of around it. Once a picture is tagged – or “plinked” as they say (and I like the sound) – the tagged part of the photo can be linked to another site. Interested in that phone the celebrity is using? Circle and tag it. Like the furniture in the family photo album? Circle and tag it. Literally.

Plink has the ability to create a vastly more social shopping experience. You can plink a picture while shopping to see what others said or to provide for others by putting in your own plink (similar to tagging). Except for live chat during shopping (which I don’t see working), it’s the closest online equivalent to asking others in the store what they think about the sports jacket you’re trying on. It also function as the photo equivalent of seeing something you like while walking down the street and having an ad for the item, or even the store that sells it, instantly appear right next to you. For example, you can tag a shirt in a picture with a question of where to purchase it and someone can respond by tagging it with "The Gap."

For marketers, Plink is a potentially invaluable source of user feedback, similar to user generated reviews. No longer are marketers limited to analyzing text conversations. Instead, with enough participants, they can analyze exactly what people are looking at in pictures and precisely how they are discussing it. This intelligence can then be applied, such as by targeting a new urban line of clothing against photos with tags implying the desired demographic of consumers.

Beyond conversation and marketing, there are powerful data mining applications. Plink will collect aggregate data so that marketers can see if and how their items are showing up in photos. For example, if people tag a lot of photos with a specific mobile phone model while also tagging particular clothing items, the marketer now knows more about the fashion sense of people buying that phone.

The same potential also exists for video. Where a lot of companies are looking at sponsored and product placement videos, the opportunity to see how people tag and click on plinked videos could provide valuable transaction and tracking tools for web video marketing and PR campaigns. I’m told by Chris Guerra, Plink’s vice president of business development, that this is in the works. While similar technologies are being produced by PLYmedia, Overlay.tv, Asterpix and VideoClix, we have yet to take a look at them from a social media and tagging perspective.

Of course, the big challenge is getting people to plink and then seeing if they get addicted enough to regularly plink items they see in photos. If – and that’s a big if – enough people try it, and if  – another slightly smaller if  –  the value of clicking through specific items to related web sites has enough volume, there could be a lot of potential. Chris Guerra added that they are also looking at both standalone and add in services, such as Yahoo BrowserPlus http://browserplus.yahoo.com/.

Like most companies asking people to provide data, Plink has pledged that protecting privacy will be a top priority. Individual user information will be kept confidential with only aggregate data made available to companies.

The first Plink application is in Facebook (Facebook seems to be the launch pad for any web based app these days) where people can tag parts of the photos in Facebook albums. You can try it out here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=7544227845.

We’re curious to give this a test run as it could take ad targeting into a whole new interactive space.  For example, what if the data could be made public by advertisers that want to use this function as a vote driving mechanism within the site.  For example, an issue campaign could be centered around voting for the ad as a way of voting for the issue.  There’s also the possibility of testing creative by putting ad variations that also encourage voting.

There are a lot of possibilities but, as always, the key will be in the executive.  Facebook has long had interested targeting ideas. Even before Beacon we had tried out campus, political, gender and other demographic targeting.   The problem has been in the execution.