Back in action – The Monday Jan 10th Roundup

Here we are, the first roundup of the new year. Hope every one is back (and if our analytics are any indicator they sure are, last week netted us nearly *double* traffic compared to the week before).

This week we have a bushel of posts from experts around the web. From what makes social media rank, to Facebook messaging, to creating goals, there’s a ton of new content ready for the new year.

• We start the week SEO Skeptic, and a treatise on the philosophy behind the semantic web, and how this relates to SEO. A fascinating read, and I hope you all will take a look at it.
• So Google’s all into social media now, y’know, right?  And Greywolf is looking at what makes certain social media content rank higher than others.

• Facebook has announced its new meta-messaging system, which is an interesting little piece of tech. It ties together your email, chat, messaging, and tries to automate your communication to whatever you’re doing. It sound’s a little like Google Wave if Wave had been introduced properly. However, it still suffers the same problem: I don’t want another inbox.

• Stephan Hammel takes a look at how to track PDF docs and falls back on what we always knew: it’s all redirects. It’s not that bad a solution actually (I mean, it IS how we track email), it’s easy(ish) to implement and if you’re using an analytics app that tracks IP addresses then you can use it to get a relatively accurate count of the number of readers.
• I came across this blog today, talking about measuring social media (a bit of an interest for me). I’m always a little astonished by how 90% of blog posts on analytics are like this, even following the same steps: set goals, find KPI’s, find tools, track, report. Is it no wonder then that so many people have trouble with analytics? This is like those people who say that the key to success is following your dreams.

• Data driven design is good, yeah? We all talk about it, we all focus on it but we don’t usually talk about the perils of data-driven design. 90 Percent of Everything does, though, discussing how our obsession with goals can make us miss greater opportunities.
• Following up on 90% is Adam Mosseri, designer at Facebook, discussing how Facebook is trying to be a “data informed” and not a “data driven” company.

• Some more smart branding coming out of the Obama administration: it looks like they have decided to take the “Obamacare” meme and adopt it, turning it into a positive image. Clever, it will be interesting to see how a battle for word meaning between one of the largest American entertainment networks and the tech savvy Democratic marketing arm turns out.
• Logic + Emotion has 11 Actionable Trends for 2011. These are some of the most hilarious jargon I’ve ever heard: attentionomics, digital curation, transmedia storytelling, integration economy… well, I guess there will be some more fodder for whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com
• One more, ‘cuz it rocks: A World of Tweets. See  how many people are tweeting around the world.