There's a new tool out that wants to provide a real-time geolocation services to anyone interested in letting the whole world know where they are at any given moment. It's called Loki, and it's basically a mashup of Google Maps and the cool WiFi location-finding technology from Skyhook Wireless, the company that provides GPS-like functionality to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

By installing the Loki toolbar and clicking on "Locate me", the toolbar uses your WiFi antenna to ping local hotspots and triangulate your location. This information is then fed to Loki, which updates your location status. If there aren't any WiFi hotspots nearby, you can update your location manually through their website. But that's not nearly as cool as the automatic feature. Check it out:

There's been a lot of buzz lately about the microblogging phenomenon. There's also been some shakeout recently, as the top 3 players in the microblogging application space, Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce, have been competing for the loyalty and activity of a relatively small (but fast growing) community of "always-on" netizens. Until Google purchased Jaiku last October, not many people had even heard of "microblogging". That's because before 2007 there weren't enough people actually doing it to warrant a buzzword. But when Google buys a startup, analysts (and journalists) take note.

Jaiku was a Finnish startup with a cool product and a lot of promise. Or so everyone thought when the Goog put down cash to acquire them. Traffic and membership initially spiked, then, within a month, started to slide... A similar effect happened when Pownce launched last summer. It got a ton of press, loads of initial traffic, and then it too saw its numbers rapidly dwindle.

All the while, Twitter has kept a fairly steady growth rate, with a massive traffic bump last summer as microblogging hit the mainstream (probably due to the Pownce launch and its Kevin Rose/Digg connection). The difference is, Twitter achieved critical mass - a tipping point - that the others failed to reach. Without enough users and traffic, there's no reason to be on Pownce or Jaiku, in the same way there's no reason to be on Friendster (who's only current claim to fame is being the web's biggest social-network loser). Despite all the glowing press and cool features, without a healthy and active community Pownce and Jaiku will have a hard time staying alive. And that's too bad, because having signed up for all three, I can honestly say that they are all great services. The only way I can see them all thriving is if they all agree to adopt a more open ecosystem like the IM world has done with Jabber. That way Twitter users could mingle freely with Pownce and Jaiku users, something that would benefit everyone. And that would be something worth microblogging about.

This week I attended the IAB Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Intensive One-Day Course, here in Toronto. The day-long event was hosted by Mitch Joel, a digital media rockstar, principal of the Twist Image agency based in Montreal, and host of the Six Pixels Of Separation podcast.

The course was very thorough, very informative and it was presented in a very engaging and inspiring way by a man who not only "gets it", he lives and breathes it! The course covered the following main areas of the online landscape:

• RSS and Syndication (Google Reader, feeds)
• Tags and Tagging (Flikr, Del.icio.us, YouTube)
• Online Social Networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Blogs and blogging (including Twitter)
• Podcasts
• User Generated Content (or Consumer Generated Content)
• Wikis (Wikipedia, PodCamp, etc.)
• Virtual Worlds (Second Life, Webkinz, Habo Hotel, etc.)

A big focus of the material was skewed towards determining ROI and identifying the metrics that can be used to gauge the effectiveness of these new media outlets. Obviously this is something that advertisers and agencies need to have in place before they they green-light any new project on one of these platforms, because the methods used in "traditional" online media (display media) don't necessarily apply. There was much discussion around how to accurately or more importantly effectively track the "performance" of a non-traditional campaign that may not be easy to quantify. This dilemma was particularly evident for the people in the crowd who were trying to sell the idea of doing a cutting-edge campaign to their client or management. The old rules are good for some things, but don't always work. For example, how do you measure the effectiveness or impact of having a Podcast or a Blog on your brand's value? Well, there are ways, but they may not all fall under the category of "scientific data". And sometimes the effects are not directly related to the cause. 

What may seem like a great idea at the time doesn't always work out. There were quite a few humerous examples of companies that tried to be "hip" by adopting the latest platform for their new marketing campaign, only to end up on the wrong end of the PR-backlash stick. These examples were not only amusing, but also very telling and served as great cautionary tales to those who might not otherwise do the research and think their ideas through to the potentially disastrous outcome. Case in point: the Walmart flog (fake blog). Mitch actually opened his presentation with a cartoon that lampooned the account executive who came up with that not-so brilliant idea.

The other message that was repeated over and over again, was that a lot of these things are so new that the long-term viability and marketing potential have not yet been proven, so there's quite a bit of "let's just put it out there and see what happens" going on. Ultimately, as with many technological innovations, the expression "only time will tell" is the closest we can come to predicting what will work and what won't. To be sure there will be winners and losers, and as with so many other things in life, the more you play, the more chances you have to win. The point to take home (or back to the office) was that these are pioneering times, and there will be casualties along the way, but these are also very exciting times full of opportunity and ripe for savvy and selective advertisers and marketers who are willing to take a chance.