The Splinternet Empowers Marketing: How Will You Use Data?

March 29th, 2010 | Jascha Kaykas-Wolff

Josh Bernoff of Forrester published an article @ Forbes today titled: The Web Is Turning Into The Splinternet

He brings up some thought provoking topics and generally a challenge to use data to drive your decisions:

And the analytics that we’ve all grown used to depend on an open, standard Web. Analytic tools are developing for these new platforms, but they’re not nearly as mature as what we’ve got for Web pages.

My message here is not to avoid the new platforms–in fact, they may be the most exciting evolution of the online environment since the Web came into existence. But realize that as you embrace these shiny objects, you can’t take the same old online tools for granted. Everything will be a little more painstaking and you’ll have to invent a lot more as you go along. It’s worth it, as long as you take into account the extra effort the Splinternet requires.

I agree with Josh, the Splinternet is here to stay, for good. I also believe that standardization will come. The catch? That it will not come in the traditional sense (i.e., Web Standards, etc.), it will come in the form of data and business processes. However, I don’t agree with Josh’s assertion that traditional analytics tools are not mature enough in the Splinternet (compared to Web Pages).

Marketing is empowered with data; Marketing is burdened with data.

Our opportunity and challenge is to unlearn the often obtuse and action-less data that we have been trained to look at on web pages to create the business process standards of the future. In all sincerity, it’s the same

Pick your data pipe in the Splinternet

challenge and opportunity in the Splinternet or not. We have more data than we know what to do with and every new channel (Facebook, iPhone, Android, etc.) means more data is becoming available to us. We have to take action with it.

Iterative Marketing Takes Hold

What comes of the Splinternet? I predict the only standardization we get as marketers moving forward is on our data and how we use it in our businesses. The notion of Iterative Marketing is beginning to take hold. We will use our data, no matter what channel or new shiny thing we collect it from to try more, fail faster, and not repeat our mistakes twice.

It’s the use of data that puts us in the unique position to take advantage of the ‘shiny new thing’ but always keep us grounded to our business.

Data+Iteration+Splinternet=Marketing.

How will you use your data?