I've been talking to several good industry friends, we are concerned about the social media feeding frenzy that has ensued of late.  Over the last few months, I've transitioned between disbelief to outrage several times over after seeing several self-proclaimed "experts" launch into initiatives like this.

So I feel compelled to get something off my chest that requires a brief personal retrospective.  I hope to honor your patience with something worth reading here, so let me know how I do:

 1. A Wave Rider's History

I formally started my career while boogie boarding on the "interactive / new media" surf in 1992, while I was still in college and working as an interactive designer / sales associate for a "virtual concierge" kiosk company that failed, never paid me and closed its doors. After graduation, I helped establish what became the interactive services division of 1-800-FLOWERS. We had little funding, worked on a ridiculous shoestring budget and we often pulled all-nighters. Our first "cutting edge" store was comprised of text descriptions of product - found within folder hierarchies of CompuServe. We offered 800 number ordering that we later converted to secure online purchasing. As rudimentary as it was, we sold product - thereby catching and riding the "Proprietary Online Service"  or ISP Wave successfully.

Very soon, we had created stores on every available online service, including Prodigy and eWorld and others. I remember the day Steve Case and Ted Leonsis came in to meet with our team. They said "We need your brand to build our own brand!"  We inked a multi-year deal to become the first transactional merchant on America Online and the exclusive floral provider on AOL. I still have my "1994 AOL Roadshow" T-shirt from that visit in a drawer somewhere.

As we experimented with kiosks, ITV, CDI/CDRom and PDA trials -- we saw something brewing that we thought would produce some really ncie waves. So, we grabbed our boards and paddled out to catch the Internet Wave.

Frankly, our initial ride wasn't all we'd hoped. Our 4A's agency was clueless about the Internet, so we hired a company we met at a conference to build our first website. The "company" turned out to be two geeks who were college roommates -- operating out of their Manhattan dorm room. Shortly after our launch, had a fight: One principal took the hardware -- the other took the software and they left us holding the bag.  We were wiser for getting bitten -- and we rallied with a better site. As we'd hoped -- our profit grew with the momentum of these waves. Within two years, we did $10 Million in sales in online commerce (a LOT of money back then) - and the number quickly grew tenfold.

As I progressed in on in my career, I rode a number of other waves in the .com boom, serving blue chips and startups riding the digital marketplaces, B2C, B2B and B2E portals, "virtual communities" and other waves. One day, it was all about "community." The next day, it was all about online marketing or advertising. The day after that it was about search and SEO ... But it was all about waves and ripples -- ripples and waves.

  

2. Waves and ripples are nothing new.

While the tide may have shifted a bit -- we're still in the same water, we're still riding waves and trying to describe the experience with new words. Today, we find ourselves in the waters of Web 2.0, Social Media, Cloud Computing the "Social Enterprise" the "Conversation Age" which looks toward the "Next-Generation Web" or (heaven help me for using this horrid term) "Web 3.0". The only difference is we've matured, along with technology - and there are more of us paddling around in the surf.

3. With the waves and the bait, come the sharks.

Those who have ridden enough of these waves can attest that historically, with each new tide, a different congregation of "experts" and agencies will surface. Some individuals are less smarmy and bottom-dwelling than others. However, they all circle the water like sharks, making it hard to distinguish the intelligent, harmless beasts from their more sinister counterparts.

If you're in the water, you might start to encounter few various breeds of shark :

• The One Trick Wonder is all show and no substance, claiming broad expertise but proving to be narrow and limited
• The Outright Liar is crafty and deceptive. He lacks the practical experience and knowledge to teach you what you don't already know and will cost you plenty until you figure this out
• The Lifetime Consultant who has never owned or managed a business - yet claims to know yours and how to fix it
• The Schmooze Puppy is handsome, fascinating and fun - and will selll you tricky projects that are equally pretty -- but also costly, time consuming, expensive and which provide limited ROI
• The "Strategerist" cannot build or execute but knows how to create great looking power point documents with broad, sweeping goals. Typically attacks and retreats
• The Builder who likes to build stuff -- that may not work with other "stuff" or in concert with a strategy
• The Delegator can't build anything or deliver anything, but can talk a good game and "knows people"
• The Glossy Analyst makes way more money than you do -- by asking you questions and writing about your success
• The Mental Mentor is highly esteemed -- in his/her own mind. This hype driven expert creates other experts, through paid seminars, webinars, extended courses and certification in just "x" days for "x" dollars.
• The Career Acrobat has taken Mental Mentor's course and has shifted careers to focus on (pick a topic above) and is now an expert and authority in all things

Further, observation shows that many of these sharks also have Egregious Self Promotion Disease (ESPD). This renders individuals unable to stop talking about how wonderful they are - and how wonderful others think they are. I have noted that ASPD also produces an uncontrollable compulsion to self promote within every available online or offline channel - often to the exclusion of doing any real work (Note: Outsourcing to India doesn't count).

4. Surf Responsibly

The bad news is this: There's nothing we can do about the sharks. Simply put, the chum is in the water and they're not going away soon.  The proliferation of so-called "experts," teachers, gurus, pipers, consultants, professionals, guides and mentors who want to help companies "DO" social media (or pick buzzword here) is growing proportionate to the rate of proliferation of apps, sites, services and tools. They are hungry to exploit the waves and make as much money doing it as possible.

The good news is this: They're only dangerous if you engage with them! Wise up, tuck in your arms and legs - and be careful to avoid them.  If you need help with digital or social media, find people or agencies that win a lot of work through word-of mouth, who measure their success based on what they've done for clients lately. Look for "seasoned surfers" from whom you can learn and engage the "young and talented" who are eager-to-learn and full of promise. 

Everyone you engage should be a smart, talented, passionate, excellence junky.  They should have some sort of proven track record in digital media (2 years of Facebook experience is not sufficient!). They shouldn't just be knowledgeable, but humble and teachable. Make sure they will roll up their sleeves to work for you and with you -- helping you understand how to balance and stand on your own two feet. Make sure they understand integrated strategy and can connect your online and offline experiences for success. These folks will help you surf with caution -- and when you get up on the board they'll enjoy the ride with you (and not just at your expense).

5.  C'mon in, the water's fine!

The waves are good. The proliferation of sites, apps and tools keeps things challenging, stimulating, fun and interesting.  The movement is opening up new ways to improve our businesses and relationships. The churn is fueled by cheap, accessible technology and the use of open source code.  The winds are blowing, and there's no signs of slowing soon.

So what's not to love?  Grab your board.  I'll see you in the water!

(Amazing photo (C) Copyright Kurt Jones 2003. And yes, I know it's a dolphin!  Check out his site at http://www.kurtjones.com/)

@alizasherman lets it fly on the topic of social media certification. Important topic. weigh in!

I'm warning you now. I'm on a rant. Just got wind a few days ago that there is a new certification program for Social Media Specialists. For the LOW LOW PRICE of

ONLY $2795 for platinum members!

*$2845 for premium members or $2995* for basic members
 NOTE: if it works better for your cashflow, we do offer a split-pay option!
Contact us for further details: isma@ismaconnects.org

WT*? Who out there thinks they actually know what it takes to be a Social Media Specialist to come up with certification criteria?

via babyfruit.typepad.com

Posted via web from thus sayeth the dork

Dear Sony,

I recently purchased my fourth Sony Vaio - a custom FW390. It cost over $2200.00 by the time I upgraded to 80 gigs of RAM, a high speed processor, advanced graphics card and other features.

I thought you were a smart move. We had already dated for five years - and you were my fourth Vaio. You were sleek, handsome and you had a battery that could last a lifetime. And sure, maybe we weren't the ideal fit -- but a Mac with similar configuration would have been about $4,000. You were slim but powerful, reliable and a great traveling companion.

But then, you betrayed me. You made yourself over into a dysfunctional mess. Your new design proving to be an inconvenient, non-ergonomic nightmare of cables and irritation.

• All USB and audio ports are located at the front right of the machine, interfering with the opening/closing of the Blu Ray disc in back, as well as my mouse..
• This thing is designed so there are cables shooting out of both sides of the computer - which also takes up valuable workspace (Video cable is in the front third left of the computer? Duh.)
• The control buttons on the screen are about 1/8 inch thick and wide - with counterintuitive labeling - they are hard to distinguish and impossible to read.
• My energy saving LED display already has an artifact in it - squiggly red line
• NO DOCKING STATION available - so I have to halfway shut my screen to use my 25 inch monitor.

When I got the computer I did call to express my disappointment. You told me "if you don't like it, call it quits and send it back".  My only option was to return it.  After a week of research and two weeks of extended business travel - I did have an extra week on the 30 day refund policy to return it and I didn't.  Shame on me.  Perhaps I just hoped I would get used to it.  Now, I'm left with regret, and the bill. 

I did write Sony Style on Twitter to provide some helpful feedback -- and got no response. I put my feedback in a customer satisfaction survey also and heard nothing back. Perhaps an acknowledgement of the problem, a little sympathy, apology - proactive response would have kept me around for one more chance.

...but it occurs to me that your lack of response only underscores what I feared:  that you really don't care about me after all!

I feel a little silly, Sony. I mean, I write about brands and customer experience for a living. I wanted to love you -- I wanted to be your friend. But it dawns on me now that if you really cared, not only would you respond to my complaints -- you wouldn't have shown such disregard for the user when you designed this machine.

So, after more than a decade of being your friend, I am breaking up with you.

I've met someone new -- we dated several years ago -- and he knows how to deliver. His name is Mac and suspect we will be very happy together. I realize you're under warranty.

You might feel bad -- and you should.  It's not me -- it's about you! You shouldn't have taken me for granted -- especially in a down economy when every customer counts.  But cheer up.  Maybe you will find someone else, just as hopeful and clueless as I was. I hope she reads this letter.

Good luck,
Leigh

In the midst of client deadlines and work, a lot of us feel pressure to give more than we have --  provide more value than we might be currently capable of.  There's pressure to be everywhere at once,  friend everyone, attend every conference -- all while giving away lots of stuff for free. Because of my work schedule, and my family who needs me, I tend internalize a lot.  However, lately I've been walking away from meetings and interactions feeling a sense of unease. So, this is an attempt to process and purge some of those feelings and hopefully, to do something positive with them.

To put this in context, I started this blog in early 2005 to write down my thoughts on customer experience. My passion for CX stems from my love of people, combined with my roots in information architecture and design, as well as operations, CRM and business strategy.  This complements my natural interest in making make things better for people - inside and outside of the enterprise.

There's a lot of talk about customer experience today.  As I've said before, CX is an easy thing to become an evangelist for. However, delivering great experience isn't easy and the fact remains that very few companies do it well.  Even so, we continue to pile on more  -- do more...

This is relevant to the era of social media because the more channels and tools we use to communicate, the more difficult it is to create seamless, solid, positive customer experience.  Companies today become so enthralled with keeping up with the dizzying level of channel proliferation, they often lose sight of customer experience.  Facing a sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" pressure to engage actively on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, crowdsourcing sites, wikis and more -- they often proceed without proper planning or resourcing in place.

It's a mad rush -- and for some consultants and agencies -- it's a gold rush. 

But before we all rush ahead ... getting caught up in the frenzy, it's important to think pragmatically about what we're really trying to accomplish   To keep level heads, we should start by asking ourselves one simple question:

How will these activities improve my business?

In my opinion, if we are not making things better for employees, customers or prospects we are only adding to the noise.  If we're not applying these tools to make our business better and drive qualitative results -- we are also doing our companies a disservice.  Too many "social media experts" are pushing tools and "strategery" at the expense of common sense and solid thinking, contributing to perceptions about social media -- and ignoring the many best practices that have been established.

I was shocked recently, to hear Andy Sernovitz tell a group of  over 350 marketers that if they wanted to get started easily in social media they should do this:  "Go out and find the lowest paid person in your company who can type and put them on Twitter."  He later contradicted himself on that point, but the damage was done.  In my opinion, as stewards of knowledge and experience -- we can't afford to be talking out of both sides of our mouths!

So, to clarify what I believe to be some misconceptions about social media, here are what I believe to be:

10 Truths About Social Media

1. If your base-level customer experience stinks, using social media tools probably won't help much.
   
2. Social media isn't free. It is cost-efficient when planned for and managed appropriately, and like any investment that comes with a price, what you will yield is proportionate to what you invest.
3. Web 2.0 and social media tools are merely a means to an end - what you do with the tools, and how you integrate them to improve the base business are what matters.
4. If you are not using conversational media to drive some specific and measurable objectives you are probably wasting your time
5. "Transparency" is an illusion. While conversational media increases visibility into your operations, you can maintain enough opacity to protect your sensitive underbelly.
6. "Authenticity" is a terribly abused word. There are plenty of authentically bad companies and products out there. Strive to be authentically good and constantly improving and you'll win.
7. "Influence" is relative term.  However, it generally belongs to people that consistently deliver positive, remarkable experiences -- across channels and over time.
8. "Trust" is fluid and hard to measure. Deliver on every promise, exhibit high level of ownership / stewardship, be a mensch and gaining trust won't be an issue.
9. If your senior leadership wants to relegate social media to an intern or agency -- resisting the notion that these tools may transform the enterprise, consider changing jobs.
10. If you are looking for help, beware of snake oil. Strategists who can't execute are as dangerous as "one-trick ponies who only know how to use a single tool.  Find someone who can develop a solid strategic plan, execute, help your organization prepare, educate and stand by to help, if needed.
    

Going back to my roots, focusing on creating a better company, products, services and ultimately -- a better experience for prospects, customers and even employees is where we should focus.  Doing this well requires rolled up sleeves, attention to detail, a love for people and an understanding of best practices across an array of disciplines.  Pushing past the hype, and fixing our eyes on becoming better, wiser, faster, stronger, more responsive, authentically good  -- and using new technologies to accomplish quantifiable goals, we can drive success -- even in a rough economy.

I've got a follow up post in the hopper to my "Trust" piece - but have been waylaid with client work the last two weeks PLUS getting ready to migrate my site... so I haven't had a minute to write!  Here's a quick update. 

Next week, I ship off to Madison, Wisconsin and then Chicago, IL where I'll be doing some one-on-one therapy and moderating a panel at the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer.  I'm excited to talk relationship building on Twitter with Ann Handley - one of my all around favorite people, author and Chief Content Officer of Marketing Profs. John Bernier, all around nice guy and head of Best Buy's Twelpforce will also be there - and I'm stoked to meet him in person...along with Monique Trulson, all around ebusiness whiz from Hello Direct who is now with Brady People ID.   There's a lot to look forward to, as Marketing Profs draws terrific speakers and creates a wonderful format for deep interaction -- and fun.  I'm also stoked to visit with other friends, including Beth Harte, Mack Collier, Jay Baer, Paul Chaney, Becky Carroll, Amber Naslund, the rest of Marketing Profs crew (especially Shelley Ryan) and others!  If you're near Chicago and it's convenient, check out the information about the Digital Mixer here.... and I hope to see you there, too!

Peter Kim and David Armano both posted on the subject of Plagiarism recently. I started responses to both -- but today's post is largely a response to Peter's post from yesterday.  Actually, this started as a comment and grew - and I'm warning you now -- it's a somewhat unedited rant. 

In truth, nothing is really free. There is a direct cost associated with research and the work we do as professionals. Our time is worth money -- so are our thoughts.  For excellence junkies like myself and many of my peers, there is also the emotional capital we invest in birthing original thought, visualizing something new and contributing something of value to our community.  

We rationalize giving "stuff" away with the argument that this will help build our influence, credibility, stimulate discussion and build relationships that yield specific business outcomes (gigs, sales, etc.).  By and large, this works.  So we do it because the trade off is, in some sense, profitable.  

This is true even when we deal with bad apples:  These are the copy cats and snake oil salesmen who skirt licensing and permissions and make unethical use of IP and content. We've all seen them at work and many of us have seen our work replicated and re-branded by others in a way that has been disconcerting - and even maddening.

In response to the snakes..n. I have always tried to maintain an optimistic perspective.  I generally believe what goes around, comes around... and that MOST people aren't jerks. I have held out hope that smart people will be able to recognize the copy cats and snake-oil salesmen.

In short -- didn't question the trade off, until recently...

In the not to distant past, I encountered a situation where one of my course attendees from a major university announced her intention to take my ideas and course materials and repackage them into a workshop, for which she was charging a premium.  Prior to taking my class, this individual couldn't recognize an ear from an elbow with regard to social media - yet the person's desire to reincarnate into a social media "guru"seemed focused and intentional.

I made the discovery two days before the class. While at first I was amused, I then considered the hefty, password protected companion website I'd created for the course.  It featured my own laboriously assembled class presentations as well as an array of fully accredited and referenced articles, how-to's, videos, research, case studies , etc. from a variety of sources (some of which I paid to license and others from respected sources and peers in the field).

Needless to say, the site took weeks to assemble - not including the months of collecting I'd done or the pre-course survey I did to make sure I had content tailored to specific types of business.  To be honest, if I'd counted those hours in my prep time, I didn't break even teaching that course.  However, in truth, I didn't put the site together for money.  I wanted to be open about sharing - promote the outstanding work of folks in my social media network -- and enable course participants (mostly SMB's) to help themselves succeed long after I was gone.  

I never considered that a course participant might build success by repackaging my work and charging others for it! 

After doing a sanity check with a few good friends, I responded by:  

• Adding a Creative Commons License to the Wiki with legal disclaimers  
• Adding a course segment on social media ethics where planned to address this type of issue and my practice of taking legal action against offenders. 
• Praying to God for wisdom about how to deal with the problem.

What happened next is something people have called "Divine Intervention."  My "copy cat" was stricken by a "freak illness" the day before class and ended up hospitalized during the days of the course. As a no-show, the person never gained access to the course materials - and I was relieved.

Crisis averted...but BOY did it all make me think ...

• Has this made me more reticent to trust? Yes Peter!  Absolutely.
• Has it made me think more carefully about what and how I share? Yes - and I think I'm afraid I'm still too open for my own good ...
• Is Plagiarism changing how I will proceed with monitoring and Creative Commons attribution? Yes.
• Will the tools and monitoring and licensing be enough? No, Peter!  I don't think so - and here's why:

In my opinion -- beyond the lack of proper awareness and education in this area, I believe the plague of plagiarism is a reflection of a larger crisis of ethics.  

As we both know: You can't legislate morality.  

Consider the fact that most people do not think twice about ripping CDs and sharing music and images in a manner that is an active violation of Federal Law. The sad truth is that the illegal use of material and especially digital assets is pervasive in our cultures...often "accepted" and practiced -- in households, businesses and even churches across our nation and around globe. While there are some who won't do this because of their own moral convictions -- It is likely that a large number of our readers do this without thinking!

So, why should people view our digital content and IP any differently?

I submit that they do not.  We'll see the results outside of business service offerings, white papers and blog posts in the term papers of the future.  And with the proliferation of media, it may be more and more difficult to figure out where people are getting their material in the future.

Moving forward, what can we do?  Lots of good comments on Peter's post aboout this.  My thoughts:


1. Each one of us must take initiative to protect our investments with the resources and tools we have at our disposal.  My tool kit includes many of the ones Peter mentioned... Many of these will mature over time - and get better and helping us monitor the "snakeosphere."

2. We can leverage the law where it matters most.  Existing laws should help protect us, but I'll go out
on a limb to assert that the law may be most useful for those with a great deal of time and money to spare. For a large number of us, using the law and the courts to resolve issues is likely to be "resource prohibitive." 

3. We can find ways to empower the "Social Media Sphere" to police itself.   Community and peer pressure can often go far to change the behavior of the masses.  Many of us have asked questions about what we can do about plagiarism. The big question is how we can police ourselves without giving seedy people attention they may actually benefit from?  Stuff like mentions, site traffic, inbound links, etc.  Google doesn't penalize people for "negative" attention. ;-)

To his credit, Peter "ousted" a few offenders in the comments field of yesterday's post.  It needed to be done. However, this is slightly problematic from the standpoint that publicly ousting a snake oil salesman from a high profile, thought leader's blog immediately creates traffic and links in to the web properties of the offender that can boost things like the "T-rating" "G-rating" and site traffic and comments. On the up-side, a least we know who to look out for! The problem is, this can result in greater visibility that might work in the individual's favor...


Also to his credit, Armano didn't link to the guy who was ripping off his feed (at least I didn't see a link).  Incidentally, guy was ripping off feeds from other thought leaders, making up quotes and facts about himself,.  This guy even had the audacity to rip off his entire site design from Google, and swipe a commercial social media video created by Sprint, removing the brand name and inserting his own!   I'll admit that when I saw this guy at work, I wanted to "out" him to everyone I knew  -- "sicking the social media community" on his butt, so to speak... Perhaps we all did -- but we seemed to apply restraint so as not to give this guy any attention that might be used to his advantage. The problem with this is, we can't warn others about the snake oil peddlers this way.

Moving forward, perhaps using a hash tag on Twitter like #snakeoil  - just  as a way to index this discussion. I'n not sure that would be highly effective as a policing method, though. A few people have suggested creating a "Snake Oil Wiki"  - and I'd say it would have to require people to submit screen-grabs of an accused person's offenses AND (in the interest of fairness) offer a forum for accused individuals to defend themselves.  This way - it's fair and the evidence remains when sites are changed (as they often are post-discovery). Not sure who wants to take that on, from a legal perspective...but it'd certainly require counsel and legal backup!

In the mean time, I'll continue on...trying hard to provide value and trying to be an optimist.  I'll rely on the tools that are available -- in addition to applying prayer as needed when the jerks try to ruin my day. After all, as my story tells, it has proven to be my most effective tool, to date!   ;-)

Last year at SXSW, Charlene Li gave a great presentation on Social Media Networks and how they will soon be "like air" (naturally, everywhere). She presented the following slide and the diagram got me thinking about trust.

As context, Li was talking how, beyond the contact lists, implicit data helps fill in gaps about the level of closeness or intimacy individuals have with each other. She went on to talk about how this will change in the future based on usage patterns detected by Google and other social networks... painting a picture of a future "social algorithm."

I don't disagree with Li's assertions at all - in fact I think she's spot on. It's the slide above that kept coming to mind. Taking that graphic at a literal level, I don't agree that the implicit data represented above really does help fill in gaps regarding people's relationships in any way other than a subjective one - nor do I think it reflects any kind of accurate indicator of an individual's level of "closeness" or "intimacy" with others (trust). Incidentally, I'm not sure Charlene actually asserted this... I believe the slide was used in a figurative manner.

But it still got me thinking about both sides of the trust equasion. How do individuals (specifically with regard to social media) think about trust with regard to other people?   How do marketers look at Trust in the networked economy?

For individuals, here's my take on what the trust spectrum might look like:

Playing off the concept of "circles of trust", we see an outward radiation of trust and intimacy.  At the "inner circle" there is high trust.  In the outer circle there is "no trust"  In further examining trust dynamics, it's fair to assert that people tend to transition back and forth between spheres, depending on events, mood, conversation, disposition and other factors.   

If you buy this concept, trust, or intimacy is therefore somewhat fluid. It's also device and technology independent (although the actions at the right of that diagram show how I might interact with individuals using social media terms).  We'll come back to this in at the end.

Looking at individual trust from a marketer's perspective,  there are probably three core areas of consideration marketers want to examine when targeting "high trust" individuals.

1. VOICE:  Understanding where an individual is trusted is an essential component of targeting. Voice examines an individual's level of engagement (posts, tweets, discussions, comments) across various topics (e.g. Frugal Living) and the overall sentiment of that engagement (positive, negative, neutral) over time.  In other words:  

For example, I might trust Beth Kanter as an authority on non-profits and social media.  However, I might not trust her as a good referral source on which flat screen TV I should buy.  As such, voice is a critical area of examination related to targeting high-trust individuals.


2. REACH: Examining the network of the individual is also an essential component of targeting. This includes an understanding of the person's online and offline influence, across traditional media channels (e.g. television, print, etc.).  In the online channels, reach examines the size and scope of the individual's active network within various sites and networks, as well as the frequency of communication that occurs. 

Furthermore, examining how the communication and dialog flows across online and offline channels may be germane to gauging the efficacy of an individual's reach. 

INFLUENCE:  There's been a lot of talk about influence today - and I don't want to rehash all that dialog. At a high level, and in simple terms, I see it as an outcome of a number of other considerations.  Primarily, I believe it is a measure of an individual's reach divided by the number of high trust relationships (see circle diagram above) times voice...something like this:

If influence directly impacted by the ebb and flow of trust within an individual's network, it it's important to note that influence is also somewhat fluid and relative. And all of this is already measured as a factor of time.

The sticky challenge is measuring the level of trust individuals have within their network. The truth is this: As outsiders, we can only gauge an individuals relationship on a trust spectrum based on a myriad of attributes, including length of relationship, messaging frequency, physical relationship, public/private discourse, "lists", discussion topic(s), sentiment, recent events, real-world connection and other complex and sometimes esoteric factors.  In the end, some of this data will be available and some will not.  As such, the outcome is somewhat likely to be somewhat subjective...depending on the time frame reviewed, quantity and amount of information analyzed (etc.).

What do you think?