Pattern Finder

Zentact: Social Software or Spam Generator?

There was a post on ReadWriteWeb yesterday about a social networking tool called Zentact. It's a recently announced service that lets you tag people within your list of contacts with relevant terms. For example, for someone tagging me, they might use terms such as "analyst," "Burton Group," "search," and "Williams College." Then, when browsing the web, if you ran across a page that discussed Burton Group, Zentact would notify you and make it easy to send a quick note saying, "Thought you might find this interesting." The pitch is that it "transforms contacts into relationships."

The service strikes me as useful if used with restraint; I'm worried that it will become popular within the PR community and that my Inbox will get filled with even more drivel. Time will tell....

On the Analyst Panel at the Gilbane Conference

For the next two days (Wednesday and Thursday) I'll be attending the Gilbane Conference in Boston. I always enjoy going because it's a focused conference and not overwhelming. (Attending AIIM can be a bit much, I think.)

On Wednesday at 3:45, I'll be participating in the Keynote Industry Analyst Panel. Frank Gilbane will be the moderator; other analysts participating will be:

• Melissa Webster, Program Vice President, Content & Digital Media Technologies, IDC
• Kathleen Reidy, Senior Analyst, the 451 Group
• Stephen Powers, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

I think this will be the third time I've served on this panel. The analysts are usually in agreement on major things (e.g., I bet we all say SharePoint 2007 is going gangbusters), but often have different twists on other areas. Toss in questions from the audience, and it makes for a really interesting session.

If you're at the conference, please come up, introduce yourself, and say hello.