Meet Laurie Petersen, New Media Pioneer.

In honor of my friend Laurie Petersen’s visit this week to the Bay Area, I will cut and paste a smattering of her incredible Digital and New Media Pioneer credentials:

 

• Editor-in-Chief at MediaPost’s Marketing Daily
• Senior Vice President at
  Gruppo, Levey & Co.
• Executive Producer at The Deal.com
• Editorial Director at
  Barnesandnoble.com
• Supervising Producer at iVillage
• Editor-in-Chief Media Central at Cowles Business Media

Specialties:  Strategist, writer, editor, producer, researcher, manager, virtual world and community specialist. Thrive in start-up situations.

Linkedin does not do justice to her spit and spirit. I first met Laurie a zillion years ago back in the dinosaur days of that infamous incubator: The AOL Greenhouse. Laurie was deep into iVillage, which was deep into evaluating my site, The Health Zone. She boldly jumped on a plane and came out to visit The Zone and we bonded bigtime. Laurie’s like that . . . she collects interesting peeps from all over the planet and then sticks by them. She’d better stick by me this weekend at the TWTRCON Smile 140 Party — because she is a networker extraordinaire, while I am a corner-hugger.

Read Laurie’s sparky common sense commentary Oh Mother! on Minyanville.

Wanted: Adventurous and Creative Clients. Must Be Willing To Experiment with New Research Tools.

Here’s a good working definition of Market Research:

An objective approach to finding solutions to problems in marketing. Involves qualitative and quantitative research and analysis of the findings to help marketers’ best target and reach their audiences.

For me, the operative phrases are finding solutions to problems and reach their audiences.Thanks to the emergence of Social Media, problems and solutions are the pulsebeat of our non-stop global online conversations. From the tell-it-like-it-is Power Mom bloggers to the 200 million+ Facebook members to the exploding Twitterverse, we’re chattering about everything from politics to products to people. As of December 2008, more than one billion of the world’s population is now on the Internet. Why on earth would market researchers resist these irresistible methodologies?

Here are my favorite new market research tools — I dare you, O Clients, to (hire me) to give these a try:

Twitter

Quick, easy and budget-friendly, Twitter is a goldmine of fresh consumer insights. It’s a global stream-of-consciousness on every topic imaginable. Plus, all kinds of tools and third-party services are available to convert raw data into actionable information including trends and hot topics.

Trendrr is my favorite for trend tracking and comparison. Its Twitter Search graphs are invaluable – virtually real-time, they provide graphing of keyword mentions by the hour.

Tweetmeme: Here’s how to find the most popular links on Twitter.

For your iPhone: Twitter Trend: This free app provides a tag cloud for looking at emerging trends on Twitter.

Twithority is an easy way to have the most recent Twitter trends tweeted to you. The links provide a view of Twitter trends based on both time and authority.

Hashtags.orgIf you were checking this site right now, you’d know that #liesboystell and #liesgirlstell are the numbers one and two hashtags of the moment.

Twist: Twist is a trip. Twist provides a graphical interface for trends and keywords on Twitter.

Facebook: While most of us are waiting for Facebook to do some serious monetizing via its growing datamine, in the meantime, there’s Facebook Lexicon. Lexicon aggregates and analyzes millions of Facebook Wall posts every day to provide a searchable database of trends over time. Users can query a single word or two-word combinations and compare as many as five strings per query. The results display a chart plotting the frequency with which the words are being discussed each day. All this is done automatically with no person reading individual Wall posts and all information aggregated anonymously to protect your privacy.

Brand Community Platforms Every brand researcher in existence has to be drooling over this hot new opportunity for brand-love: BzzAgents new Bzzscapes. Now brand passionistas can erect online altars to their favorites, then watch as fellow fans join in, adding their own content to the social media mix. Will the overzealous (companies included) try to game the system? How organic and authentic can these sites be?

Private Online Communities: From Ning to Communispace, building your own private online community is easier than ever and can be valuable low-risk market research tool. These ‘walled gardens’ are a safe place to engage your with best opt-in customers, test ideas, evaluate user experience and experiment with new initiatives.

Projective Expression/Journaling Platforms
Glogsterbrings graphic blogging to the masses, and just happens to be a promising online ‘projective expression’ tool, similar to the popular Focus Group technique: Collaging. The service is focused on letting people create “posters” of various bits of premade and user-generated content. Using the right tools, Glogster users can create colorful stuff with a distinct visual style — one that could be used to represent “My Customer Service Experience with Yahoo” or “If I Could Invent My Own Perfect Hair Color It Would Be …”

Glogster offers private .edu accounts, which could be used for corporate market research.

Another site, Scrapblog, lets users create personalized scrapbooks with photos, video and thousands of creative elements, and also lets them print the scrapblogs. They’ve added top scrapbooking designers with high-quality content that’s available to purchase. The problem with this site is the user is locked into Scrapblog’s formatting — which does not even provide a ‘blank’ scrapbook for true customization.

A cool new site currently in beta, Plumkeeper, is described as ‘Family Journaling Made Easy’. This promising technology leverages everything consumers already do online –including emailed stories and photos, funny text messages, mobile photos, Facebook, Twitter and more. This makes for uber-authentic market research indeed– as it plucks from existing attitudes and behaviors in all their spontaneous authenticity. If I had a Mom or family-oriented product, I’d tap right into Plumkeeper for fresh and juicy insights.

Sun & Surf? There’s An App for That: Top Twelve List of Summer iPhone Apps.

Summer’s just a balmy breeze away. So get your iPhone into shape with this Top Twelve List of iPhone Summer Apps.

That Beach Channel
While you’re waiting for those beaches to warm up, escape to the tropics with this app for around $2. Zip off to ten balmy beaches from Maui, St Thomas, Fiji, Oregon Coast, Cancun and St John. Each 2-minute HD video features the soothing sound of waves. This is your getaway until you can getaway.

Packing Pro
Are you a packing klutz like I am? After all these years of world-wide travel, you’d think I’d get it. I can even muck up a simple weekend getaway With Packing Pro you get simplified organization, preparation and packing suggestions, as well as the ability to customize a checklist for successful travel.

Lose It!
Not quite ready for bikini weather? This free user-friendly calorie-counting apps helps you figure what your daily calorie intake should be. You input your age, height, gender and current weight then choose your goal weight; Lose It tells you how many calories you can eat (or drink!) each day to meet this weight loss goal. Then the fun begins. Lose It has a large database of foods, including brand name foods like Chef Boyardee (ZOMG, is he still around?) and Coca-Cola.

Pocket Cocktails (Currently on sale for $0.99)
Speaking of empty calories, here’s a cool app that lets you browse for recipes (Sex on the Beach anyone? Tequila Sunrise?) and inspire you to create your favorite cocktails. Pocket Cocktails is organized by 8 different categories: martinis, classics, summer, tropical, creamy, shooters, warmers, and mocktails (for the kiddies). Each category shows an alphabetized list of drinks complete with photos, recipe and ingredient list. Pocket Cocktails stands out among the rest because of it’s beautiful photos.

Also check out:iVideo Cocktails: Watch it, Shake It, Drink it! (on sale $1.99)

ABC Animals
Once Mom and Dad are relaxing with their Harvey Wallbangers, it may be a good idea to give the kidlets a happy distraction. ABC Animals by Critical Matter is a friendly, intuitive educational app aimed at teaching letter recognition and sound to preschoolers through flashcard simulation. All twenty-six letters of the alphabet, accompanied by corresponding animal pictures, are represented.

SymptomMD
Along with summer fun comes stuff like mysterious rashes, weird bumps, sunburns, cuts, sprains and bug bites. At least you think that’s what they are. How do you know when to hightail it to the ER or doctor’s office — or simply ice it? The answers may be in this nifty app called SymptomMD by Self Care Decisions, LLC. Designed to help make educated decisions towards the type of care needed for relief of an illness or injury, SymptomMD could be a time and money saver, and maybe even a true life-saver. Simply select a symptom — and you’ll receive a list with advice which can range from Call 911 now to Self Care at Home.

AAA Discounts
Smart AAA members already know they can save a bundle on towing and jump starts by joining. But what members may not realize is how many other discounts are available — rental cars, hotel rooms, theater tickets. Launch this free AAA Discounts and the app asks to use your location and then pops up a map pinned with AAA member companies within the surrounding area. Tap a pin and you’ll get a description of the member company, the discounts it offers and driving directions to get there. AAA says it saves its members about $100 a year.

Tipulator
Does anybody know how to calculate a tip anymore? Why bother your pretty little head with it now that there’s Tipulator? While there are other tip calculators for free, Tipulator is simply nicer to use. Using your local currency (dollars, pounds or euros) it will calculate the tip according your requested percentage and even split the check.

Babelingo
If you’re anything like me — my French only seems to work in random parts of Italy — you may be interested in this on-the-spot-translator app by Alta Vida called Babelingo. With 11 different languages, Babelingo is great for the true globe trotter who needs some help with the basics: Conversation, Time, Getting Around, Money, Eating Out, Medical, and Lodging. Each category has about thirty words or phrases and some even feature a few sub-categories with additional words and phrases.

TED
Even though I’m ticked at the TED Conference for leaving its longtime home in Monterey, I’ll stand by this inspiring free app as a great way to not only preserve your soon-to-be-summer-addled braincells — but actually teach you stuff that matters. TED started in 1984 as a way to bring together thought leaders to talk about technology, entertainment and design. Since then, the uber-pricey TED has branched out, featuring a community of big-idea’d luminaries in a range of fields from science to arts, culture, business and global issues. This app lists 293 videos, with talks limited to 18 minutes.

Mobile Dating For Sexy Singles
Once you’ve put the Lose It app to good use, it may be time to download this Mobile Dating For Sexy Singles. This app for 18+ puts ‘Love on your iPhone’ with the ability to send kisses, quick flirts, send messages, cycle through profiles and more.

UrbanDaddy
UrbanDaddy , a leading email magazine and digital publisher of local lifestyle and entertainment information, today announced the launch of its first iPhone application, “The Next Move” The application guides users to the latest hot spots with a unique real-time “concierge engine” that essentially puts an UrbanDaddy editor in the palm of your hands. It’s sponsored by none other than Lexus’ new summer-perfect convertible.

With thanks to super app site: http://www.appcraver.com.

image courtesy of www.sandbarstosunsets.com

Are You An E-Hole? The Six Tell-tale Signs.

Normally, when I’ve told friends “Hey! I’m writing a book”, the response is polite to vague to “I’m so sorry. I’ve given up reading for Lent.” In LA, they’re likely to suggest a fair exchange: I’ll read your book if you read my screenplay.  In Silicon Valley, they look blank until you explain that a book is kinda like a giant Wordle app or literary widget.  In New York, they immediately kvetch about agents while in Paris they offer to read it once smoking is reinstated in cafes.

But this book?  Amazingly, people have not only urged me to write it but to write it laser-fast. Three of my Twitter pals have already asked if the guide will be published in time for Christmas stocking stuffers. I’ve almost been persuaded to write an e-book first and then follow up with hard copy.

Is this because I am such a crackerjack writer? Although I’d love to say yes, the true answer is ‘probably not.’  The fact is, there is a clear and compelling, even urgent, need to make sense of the good, the bad and the blurry of the digital era, particularly the consumer-friendly, tool-rich phenomenon known as Web 2.0.  The Internet does genuinely ‘change everything’ — including the ethics and etiquette of how we use these tools. Countless books have already been published on this subject, many of them scholarly works of genius from academics that probe everything from user-generated content to mass collaboration to digital innovation and citizen marketing.  

If you’re looking for books of this decidedly brainy ilk, click to close and move on to Amazon or your local library. The goal of my upcoming guidebook is quite simple: to help keep you out of online doo-doo and encourage you to dip into this dynamic digital world. And maybe have some fun while you’re at it.
 
Here’s a small sampling from my new book:
How Not To Be An E-Hole:  The Ultimate Guide to Online Etiquette and Ethics.
 

Are You An E-Hole? The Six Tell-Tale Signs.

Sign 1:  Is Social Media all about you?  Social Media can indeed be Me Media.  Today’s tools make it fast and easy to get the word out about your inherent rockstar-ness. Isn’t everybody fascinated by the ham sandwich you had for lunch? Doesn’t the world want to know about your cool car, your hot bod and the gaggles of groupies hanging on your every tweet?  Smart folks see that switching from Me to We is the secret to shining at Social Media.  And yes, it is possible to be an E-Hole in only 140-characters:  http://tweetingtoohard.com/

Sign 2:  OverSharing  Over-sharing can occur on any of the Social Media channels. Over-Sharing is defined as sharing anything from the too-intimate details of your world (tweeting during your during your prostate exam) to the too-mundane (I had scrambled eggs for breakfast) to the too-frequent.

Sign 3:  Are you a FRAMMER?  Friends just ain’t what they used to be. In fact, my buddy Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Correspondent at CNN, who covered my recent Facebook Addiction story, believes the very definition of Friendship is at stake: “What exactly is a friend these days?”  Well, it sure isn’t FRAMMING them. Friend Spam is being spammed by your so-called Facebook Friends including:

• A barrage of shameless self-promoting links, events, fan pages, webinars, promos, etc.
• “Cherry-picking” among a Friends List — picking the most ‘useful’ for marketing and networking.

FRAM hurts more than traditional spam because, after all, it’s the ultimate in permission marketing. You haven’t merely signed up for an impersonal newsletter, you’ve opened the door wide to your life. You’re not an address on some database sold and re-sold by dead dotcoms. You’ve willingly extended an invitation to participate in your own personal universe.

Sign 4:  Uber-Exuberance   Apps, widgets, links, videos, photos — it’s a smorgasbord of Social Media tech and toys out there. Are you so sure all your friends want that ‘growing gift’ of cactus, that beer or cup of coffee you’re dying to send? Does everybody want to take that quiz, play 25 Random Things and beat you at movie trivia?  The sure sign of a Social Media newbie (and often Accidental E-Hole) is assuming everybody will appreciate these occasionally amusing time-wasters.

Sign 5: Where are the Privacy Police when you need them?  It’s true: Facebook keeps changing its interface, which confuses the heck out of who can see what. What was private on Tuesday may be part of a News Feed on Wednesday. So if you’re not careful about the changing-rules, your mother-in-law may be able to see the pictures of the dinner party she wasn’t invited to posted prominently in Highlights.  Or your boss might see that comment you made about ‘blowing off work’. Or your sorority sister might post racy stories about an era you’d prefer to forget on your Wall for all to see.  The secret to avoiding E-Holism?  Use the Privacy settings!

Sign 6: Keep It Social, Stupid.   Keeping it social means you never forget these new tools are all about people and being personal. Keeping it social means you avoid using robots as well as acting robotically. So personalize your Friend, Follow and Connection Requests, say no to Auto-DMs on Twitter, and develop new online relationships authentically. Don’t think you can FRAM like mad, never bother to check the youtube links your buddy proudly sent of her kidlet’s concert, and then expect favors, shares and RTs (Re-Tweets on Twitter).  Keeping it social is keeping it reciprocal. Friendship is a two-way conversation, not a Me-megaphone. 

Guru’s Note: Please send me your favorite E-Hole stories. Were you an Accidental E-Hole? Do you know an Intentional E-Hole? Do tell all. Email me at: hello@guruofnew.com or post a comment. Thank you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should Sears Go Social?

 

I’m a Sears girl from way back. My Dual Action Agitator copy, in tandem with the poetic “Save $40 off on this big Kenmore Refrigerator” was nothing short of Steinbeckian. My advertising Alma mater, Ogilvy Chicago, worshipped on the altar of Sears.

So of course I was intrigued by the giant’s latest move — launching a new social network called MySears.

Brandweek reports the chain has registered more than 200,000 MySears users since it rolled out the site in late March. The look-alike site for sister chain MyKmart just launched a week ago. Both are powered by Chicago-based technology company Viewpoints Network.

Retail chain passionistas visiting MySears can express themselves via these increasingly ubiquitous Social Media features: taking polls, connecting with your fellow Sears buddies, creating a social profile, uploading photos, tagging, blogging, and participating in (my favorite part) the Ideas section.

Lest your passion for Sears not be completely fulfilled, consumers can also follow MySears and MyKMart on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter.

According to the Brandweek report, Rob Harles, vp-community for Sears, said the chain’s goal is to glean new insights from customers and give the brand more of a human face. “Ultimately we’re going to try to use this to first and foremost learn about our customers and secondly use those lessons and use that to integrate that into the shopping experience,” Harles said.

Hmm. Translated from the marketing-ese, that sounds suspiciously one-sided. ‘First we’re going to study you and then we’re going to use what we’ve learned to figure out how to sell you more stuff.’  The headline for the site lays it out clearly, assuming you’re there to shop : “Get Advice Before You Buy.”

Obviously I’ve no quarrel with using Social Media to figure out how to better reach customers and improve sales. Profit rocks, especially these days. But it doesn’t take more than 30 seconds of rudimentary Social Media listening tools to tap into the existing conversation about Sears. Much of what’s being said isn’t pretty. Shouldn’t some of this chatter be answered first? (Kind of like cleaning the house before we invite a gaggle of guests over for a big party) Shouldn’t resolving negatives be the first priority of any customer-first company, much less the mission of a new participatory consumer site?

A sampling:

RITBeast: Reminder: Never have any dealings with #sears unless you feel like gouging your own eyes out and stepping on them while being nut-kicked.

legallush: Listening to Sear tech suck dryer lint from my hoses in laundry. Stupid dryer gets hot but doesn’t dry. #sears

glamorousamanda: Rant end. Do not buy products from #Sears. They will not honor their warrenty nor do they care if your home catches fire from products!

MySears Ideas: Listen Sears…….. people WANT to buy from you but you make it harder and harder.

Do we really need all the Social Media window dressing around what should be the main course — serving customers? Couldn’t we just have one colossal: CLICK HERE FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE button, with some seriously vetted reviews posted below it and an in-depth Peer 2 Peer Forum?

This road feels strangely familiar. Over the years, in Customer Experience projects for both Microsoft and Yahoo, we worked hard to ‘put a human face’ on these mammoth empires via an array of social media features. But whatever we tried, all anybody ever wanted to do with these pieces-of-corporate-humanity was find somebody to fix their email, browser, software, personals ad or just plain rant. This is why Yahoo Answers was such an instant hit. Human beings simply want their questions answered, especially when said questions revolve around things they paid for. They don’t necessarily need Friends or Polls or Pictures, unless it’s a photo of that broken microwave door they need replaced.

So what should this new MySpacian MySears do to avoid the fate of the late, not-great The Hub, built and quickly dismantled by Walmart back in 2006?

• Let MySears evolve organically. Let the community spell out over time what it wants and needs from the site and its satellites. Are users primarily interested in broadcast tweets about upcoming sales? Are they flocking to the discussion boards? Engaged communities vote with their attention.
• Manage site expectations. Research whyconsumers are visiting and where they came from. Did the majority find their way there because they think the site is devoted to customer service? Did someone post a Craftsman discount link on a couponing site, sending an avalanche of users in search of it? 
• Accept that consumers create their own uses for sites and social media features – including their own ideas of how products should be tagged –which may have little to do with your intentions for your brand. Just for fun, go visit Amazon’s Customer Communities and check out some of the Revenge-Tags, including some of the DefectiveByDesign tags.
• Find your Frank Eliasons (@Comcastcares) and empower your staff to participate as Tony Hsieh has done so successfully with @Zappos. Be careful of ‘ghost’ tweeters or posters. Don’t rely on your Viewpoints vendor to substitute for real Sears employees. Kudos to BlueCrewGuyinMA, who’s all over the site, answering questions and in general acting as the site’s Go To Guy.
• Encourage usage of the Discussion section, with its fledgling Peer to Peer type forum.  Many of your customer-service seeking users will be satisfied with this kind of help, as they frequently do yield real solutions to customer problems.
• Research potential Passionista segments a la the Craftsman Club and nurture them with ego-rewards as well as discounts and insider information.
• I like the potential of the Ideas section on MySears,which reminds me of Dell IdeaStorm. Like Dell, after the Dell Hell debacle, Sears needs to heal itself before it can roar back. So far, the “We Listened. See Ideas in Action” is empty. Let’s hope this changes soon.
• And finally, have some fun with the site.  The intrinsic beauty of social networking is that it’s supposed to be lighthearted. So have a Tweet-Up in the Craftsman aisle. Partner with Family Journaling site Plumkeeper and have a “Kids Say the Darndest Things (About their Dads)” Contest and invite your Facebook Community Moms to enter. Set up a Linkedin group for Retail Innovators.

So should Sears go social?

Guru’s Note: What I found oddly fascinating is @MySears use of Twitter — particularly its choice of who to follow. Smart Tweeters often check a Twitter ID’s first Follows as it can reveal either strategy or the threat of spam. In this case, @MySears has 923 Followers so far — and is Following 1995. But here’s the reveal: the first SIX of rows of Twitter IDs @MySears has chosen to follow are all variations on Mama: @CursingMama, @PsychoMama, @GeekMama, @Baby_Mama, @TheCreativeMama. So far, none of these Mom-tweeps appear to be tweeting like mad on behalf of @MySears like @ResourcefulMom does when promoting one of her many popular Site-Warming Parties. So one can only assume either all these Mamas are close personal friends of @MySears or that someone has advised them to cozy up to Influencer Moms on Twitter. Given the robust purchase power of the 80+ million Moms in the US who spend some 2 trillion every year, it’s no surprise @MySears would sagely search keyword: Mama.

Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry.

Looking at this beguiling face, you’d never guess this woman is responsible for turning my sweet, innocent daughter into a wild and crazy gypsy.

Yes, thanks to Lenore Skenazy, this hyper-hovering helicopter parent (moi) is about to (queasily) participate in my child’s Happy Birthday Nostril-Piercing Adventure.

Without Lenore Skenazy (did I mention she’s also known as ‘The Worst Mom in America?’) and her new book: “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry”, I would have concocted a Top Ten Reasons Never To Go Near Your Nose with a Needle, starting with “It will explode” and ending with “It will fall off.”

Then, because this Worst Mom in America, is actually a pal of mine who kindly quotes me in her savvy Ad Age column, I was privileged to receive her new book well before all the Mom-buzz started. I actually got my Purelle-parched hands (Swine Flu) on it just as women’s clubs throughout the Bay Area were bubbling about Lenore’s common sense child raising stance.

Here’s what Lenore has to say:

When I wrote a column for The New York Sun on “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone,” I figured I’d get a few e-mails pro and con.

Two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and all manner of talk radio with a new title under my smiling face: “America’s Worst Mom?”

Yes, that’s what it took for me to learn just what a hot-button this is — this issue of whether good parents ever let their kids out of their sight. But even as the anchors were having a field day with the story, many of the cameramen and make up people were pulling me aside to say that THEY had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids– and boy were they glad. They relished the memories!

Had the world really become so much more dangerous in just one generation?Yes — in most people’s estimation. But no — not according to the evidence.

In all her writing, Skenazy sees herself not as a pundit, but as a normal, curious, often amused but just as often fed-up, middle-aged mom out to get the facts. Her observations can be heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” she has written for Mad Magazine, and she edits the “What Next?” humor contest in the magazine The Week. She also spent several years as an on-air (younger, cuter) Andy Rooney, first at CNBC and then at the Food Channel.

A second book, “Who’s the Blonde That Married What’s-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip of the Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know…But Can’t Remember Right Now”
( www.whostheblondebook.com ) is being published by Penguin in June.

Guru’s Note: I am already a whizkid at the Who’s the Blonde book — and I challenge anybody to try to top me. I’m thinking of playing it on Twitter. Wanna tweet with me?

What’s Wolfram/Alpha and Why Should You Care?

I’m feeling somewhat Ginger-like, with a smidgen of HAL 9000 thrown in.

True Geeks will remember when Segway was dubbed ‘Ginger‘ and Geeks as notable and prescient as Steven Jobs and Jeff Bezos claimed it would be as ‘big as the PC’.

We all know HAL 9000, the soft-spoken. lip-reading computer.

So when I started hearing about a revolutionary new search engine called Wolfram/Alpha and the usual pundits began to wax nerdily eloquent, my Ginger-be-smudged cynicism seeped in. Was this “computational knowledge engine” a Google-killer? Would we all soon be getting answers to our raging questions rather than diligently searching for them? And didn’t we already try the Q & A thing via a perky butler named Ask Jeeves?

The newfangled search engine Wolfram|Alpha is different than Google or Yahoo. Ask it a question — one that involves something like National Pi Day or a wallop of statistics– and it will speedily deliver an answer based on its avalanche of curated data and ‘Mathematica’ technology. One hundred brainiacs, led by Brit Stephen Wolfram, a physics prodigy who won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” at 21, are sitting in Champaign, IL, feeding the knowledge base reams of data.. As you might guess, science is Wolfie’s strong suit, but it also knows plenty about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music, and more.

Let’s say you start with some ego-surfing questions. Try your birthday or your name. This is how I discovered Esther Dyson and I have the same birthday and that there are 871,156 Sarahs currently alive in the US. Wolfie will also candidly admit when he’s stumped, and tell you he’s not sure what to do with your input. I got that response when I typed in: “Brett Favre, Packers.” (Truthfully, NO ONE knows what to do with that input.)

Wolfram/Alpha ponies up graphical answers when appropriate, and also suggests other sources of information.

The Geeks on Twitter have been playing with the search engine since Friday night’s official launch via Justin.tv — and as of noon today, Wolfie already had some 4100 fans on its Facebook page. Many are already discovering Wolfram Alpha’s ‘Easter Eggs’ tucked inside its masses of data, just waiting for the perfect question to show off its geeky humor.

Zenspace: Mashable’s 20 Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs are why I LOVE the Internet — http://tinyurl.com/p24mb8 and http://bit.ly/14rCRW #wolframalpha

nickhebb: Wolfram|Alpha is fun. If this is baby’s first steps, imagine what it will be like when its old enough to drive

Jaielle: #wolfram alpha still needs more work… it can find “square root of ten million” but not “square root of 10 million”

For all its obvious brilliance, I don’t expect Wolfram|Alpha to go mainstream anytime soon. But then I didn’t expect the new Star Trek movie to go mainstream either!

.

Aye, Maties! Facebook Lets You Talk Like A Pirate Everyday.

If there’s one burning question that’s plagued our civilization for centuries it would have to be: Pirates or Ninjas?

In the midst of this eternally raging battle, along came a swarthy crew of real Somali pirates and as quickly as you can say yo-ho-ho, all ‘ayes’ turned away from the landlubbing Ninjas. Now Facebook has joined in on the rogue-ishly viral fun with its Easter-eggish language pack switch, which allows you to change your language to English (Pirate). Simply scroll down to the bottom of the page and ‘Arrrrrrrr —!’

So don’t wait for International Talk Like A Pirate Day on September 19th — walk the plank today, me hearties!

On Twitter: #pirates, #facebook, #ninjas

Guru’s Note: This feature was available back in September but I only recently discovered it via a Tweet last week. Facebook’s Pirate English is a trip, if a little bizarre when you try to decipher the Blackbeardish lingo on your page. But here’s what I love: I am so heartily tired of the deadly serious tone Social Media has taken. Share has been buried by sell; analytics are intoned like gospel; even the @aplusk (Ashton) versus CNN million-followers contest was blighted by pseudo do-gooder games and Machiavellian manuevers. Folks, this is Social Media. It’s supposed to be at least a little bit lighthearted. I watch as the posts roll in and and OMG, it’s pure pontification. Yes, it is business (in all candor, one I make a good living from) but Mon Dieu! Even the ad world eventually figured out their viewers don’t want to be bored to death. Maybe a bottle o’ rum might help?