The problem with neglecting to post The Vortex on a weekly basis is that it easily spins out of control. I’m staring at a raft of links I’ve saved up, wondering which ones will flag me as Out of Date, the ultimate sin in the technosphere. If you see something past its sell-by date below, just pretend you’re in a time machine.

News from the Social Media Vortex

-The social network we all forgot, MySpace, lost its founding CEO Chris DeWolfe this week. The rumored replacement is – surprise! – a former Facebook exec. Owen Van Natta, who hasn’t been confirmed officially, will hopefully figure out how to unseat his former employer as the top global social network. Also on his list – lose the wallpaper.

-In other news from the 20th century, Yahoo is shutting down GeoCities, in a move that likely had many commenting, “But how will my cat blog now?”

-In a Wall Street Journal piece, Mark Penn discovers that there are now almost as many bloggers in the US as there are lawyers. Bloggers of course quibbled with his math but the point is clear: we must defeat them! Quick, someone start a blog comparing the merits of frivolous lawsuits versus writing opinion pieces in your mom’s basement.

Apps on the Radar

-In place of an app I’m liking, I’m issuing a plea for an app I can’t seem to find. Anyone know of a translation app for the iPhone that *doesn’t* need a data connection to work? The ability to translate umpteen languages into English doesn’t do much good if you’re abroad with no data plan or Wifi.

Ephemera

-In the category of Horrifically Inappropriate Technology, we nominate ‘Baby Shaker,’ the new (approved!) iPhone app. So to confirm: cursing in iPhone apps – hell no; assault and battery of infants – welcome to the App Store!

-And in the category of I’m Thinking He’s an Atheist, we nominate John Soden III of Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco. This little gem is a bit old but you’ve got to love a guy who sends an office-wide email on Good Friday saying, “Unless you’re an orthodox something, please get into the office… Join Wells Fargo and become a teller if you want to take bank holidays.”

Tweet of the Week

-My Tweet of the Week section was thrown a curveball this week with the launch of Tweetingtoohard, a site that honors self-important tweets. Of course the flip side is that Twits will now be jockeying for position on the site, leading us even further down the Me Me MEEE abyss that is Twitter.

-In lieu of highlighting the self-important then, I’ll just settle for the funny. Which is apparently hard to find, as my nomination goes to Jason Kottke on April 1st: “Why is the Internet taking so long to tell me what to think about latest episode of Lost? It’s been over for 32 minutes!”

Video analytics is not a term that strikes excitement in the hearts of social media fanatics. It’s far too enmeshed in advertising lingo like “impressions” and “views” to appeal to the average Web 2.0 fan. But few among us can deny that ads fuel our beloved social tech economy. Further, I doubt many would object if our favorite sites and brands could find a more integrated, targeted and relevant method of ad delivery. In order to do this effectively, companies must turn to sophisticated measurement tools that deliver a deep level of insight about user habits and behavior.

The subject got a bit of attention this week when BrewPR’s Brooke Hammerling called for industry-wide standards in video analytics in a post for Silicon Alley Insider. She argued that terms such as “views” are too open to interpretation and manipulation. One commenter, Greg Stuart, former CEO of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), parried back that the “view” term has been clearly defined – “at least as it’s defined for advertising” – by the IAB. The Washington Post weighed in on the topic yesterday, reiterating the lack of industry-wide standards. It’s also worth noting that advertisers are fickle bunch; they go where the results are. If there is no ability to measure results effectively, and no way to connect views with specific actions, then advertisers have no meaningful way to directly evaluate their online video ad spend. Thus, the huge opportunity in this space: not just for effective tools, but to define the terms of the competition.

We featured Visible Measures at DEMO 08, a company that interprets user behavior at significant intervals of viewing. As we said then, views – however you define them – are the easy part; understanding exactly how viewers interact with a video is a tougher nut to crack. With an average of 20-40 different events occurring during viewing, including rewinding, fast forwarding and the like, a rich field of user behavior would lie fallow without services like Visible Measures.

To evaluate effectively, you have to follow your users across all viewing platforms and mediums, which brings us to Divinity Metrics, a company whose product chases your video around the Web, delivering analytics on all occurrences of a video across the Internet. The majority of analytics companies today focuses on measurement within the video; important to be sure, but the very nature of viral video demands a tool that can extend beyond walled gardens to the places viewers are congregating. Divinity Metrics’ Scope product measures viral video in real time and delivers all manner of analysis on user behavior to its clients. This is not a tool to track the viewings of your cat playing the piano. It’s aimed at interactive marketing agencies and major brands who must continuously shape online strategies in order to compete effectively in the new media marketplace. Divinity Metrics’ analysis is an aggregation of all relevant channels online, including YouTube, MySpace and BitTorrent sites, so clients get a one-stop dashboard shot of every behavior and user associated with a video. Through analysis of the social activity around a video, and the type and quality of traffic garnered, clients are able to plan campaigns that resonate effectively with audiences.

The company won’t disclose names of specific clients at this point – they plan customer announcements soon – but the roster consists mainly of film and television networks, ad agencies, music companies and video producers. They’ve been around for a couple of years and are super smart about the sector, a fact immediately evident with just a glance at the product dashboard. Divinity Metrics has built an impressive product and service – entirely Web-based with the ability to export data via xml – that answers a real need. It isn’t alone in the field, with last month’s launch of YouTube Insight and its closest competitor, TubeMogul, which also distributes video for its clients, getting much more play in the media. But from what I’ve seen in this space, Divinity Metrics is an expertly designed, high-end analytics tool for those entities with a large stake in the online video business. If you’re ready to get serious about in-depth analysis of your brand online, they’re definitely worth a look.

Josh Catone’s piece, Visualizing Social Media Fatigue, on ReadWriteWeb added fuel to a fire I’ve been stoking for some time now. Problem is, I’m too tired to write about it. Just looking at the map he references makes me want to take a nap.

It’s no stunning revelation of course; we’ve all been begging for relief from information overload for some time now. (I remember referring to the social explosion last year as a “massively multi-headed monster.”) But the tools being created to alleviate the problem aren’t really solving it – and are creating problems of their own. I suppose it’s an inevitable result when a market struggles with something, particularly in technology: a certain number of fits and starts are necessary on the way to a seamless solution.

In recent weeks I’ve found myself signing up for several profile aggregators, or life streams as some call them, in the vain hope that one will solve all my social graph headaches. It’s not working. Instead of logging on to multiple social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr, I now find myself logging on to multiple aggregator sites like Plaxo Pulse, Friendfeed and PageOnce. Each offers different ways of aggregating all manner of sites, and each has its own friend list. The constant input of status updates, blog posts and profile changes from all my friends on each different service is sometimes interesting but most often maddening. And don’t get me started on Twitter.

I love the social Web. I love the status updates on Facebook and the business networking on LinkedIn and the mountains of feeds that inform me on Google Reader. But I’m not the norm. I spend all day online and get paid to wade around in the social graph. I have an abundance of time to devote to corralling this information. The rest of the world does not. My suburban mom friends can barely make time for a Scrabulous game on Facebook. If we truly want to proliferate a social Web among the masses, we absolutely must make it simpler. Everyday consumers won’t have the time or patience to plant – and keep track of – their graph on multiple sites.

So enough with the whining, what’s a tech sector to do? I don’t think these companies are headed in the wrong direction, necessarily. The basic idea is sound; it’s the execution that is lacking. Broad initiatives like data portability are intriguing but still in the early stages and seemingly a long way from real-world validation.

While we want to be careful about putting too much power in the hands of one company, I think the safe bet for the moment is to construct our social graphs around one dedicated, already existing site. The aggregator services need to give us the tools to plug in to preferred networks rather than out. Plaxo Pulse has a promising interface – why not enable it to supplement my Facebook news feed? Or if you spend more time on MySpace, plug your Friendfeed in there. I’m not just talking about tiny app boxes on your profile page either; I added the LinkedIn app to Facebook months ago and haven’t viewed it since.

We’re now faced with two choices: re-direct feed streams into one existing service until we figure out data portability or, god help us, aggregate the aggregators. At some point, we’re going to aggregate ourselves right into absurdity.