Marshall Kirkpatrick has a nice retort to a thought piece published in the Washington Post today proclaiming social media’s growth over…

Dead? Social Media’s Explosive Growth is Only Beginning: “Social media in the age of instrumentation and connected devices may be more about aggregate social activity than about the long voice blogging and Tweeting.

The intersection of people, machines and passively monitored objects (the cheapest input of all!) all combine to form an entirely new world of opportunity.

That may be the biggest opportunity yet.”

There’s a fascinating conversation going on in the comments section of a post here yesterday about my idea that all traffic is not good traffic. Scott Jangro adequately summarizes the point that Marshall is making above about in-and-out traffic through various spaces in relation to online marketing. His comment could easily be unpacked into a book or treatise about marketing in 2012.

For our purposes here, if you take what Scott wrote and combine that with what he, Damien and the team are doing with Shareist or what affiliates are doing with Pinterest, it becomes very interesting to ponder the conjunction of mobile traffic with aggregation and curation services on the web and their impact on affiliate marketing.

At least I think so.

The idea that curation will become a hot talent in the coming years as frictionless sharing and more aggregate traffic becomes ubiquitous is nothing new, especially in the world of education (part of the “Essential Skills” for our Middle School is curation).

However, wrap curation and its rapidly apparent place in the affiliate marketing industry and a particularly interesting new niche becomes a very viable space for hyper-targeted affiliates to explore.

I’m strongly considering moving over the class hub my students and I use (currently on WordPress) over to Shareist.

Here’s a great “List” that Scott Jangro has put together on affiliate marketing (basically serves as his blog/tumblr/delicious/pinterest site):

Affiliate Marketing: “Jangro’s List”

I’ve been in the Shareist beta for a while and keep neglecting my interest because I know it’s going to drag me away from WordPress.

Over the next few days, I’ll be diving pretty heavily into the platform to kick the tires and see what my students think. If they do and it’s as easy as I anticipate, I can see moving some of my other affiliate sites that way.

The ability to quickly share, organize and curate is so effective for affiliate marketers and I like how Shareist handles things compared to Pinterest, which is more “product” based by nature.

Scott and his team have done a great job putting the platform together. Now I just wish he would use it more himself (and bring back BUMPzee).

GigaOm has a nice writeup of how mobile apps fared in 2011 and what might be ahead for the app space in 2012 including this fascinating tidbit:

The year in mobile apps: Where we’ve been, where we’re going — Tech News and Analysis: “For the first time ever, we used mobile apps more than opening up a browser window to access Web-based services. Flurry Analytics found that users had crossed over in mid-2011; we spent 81 minutes a day in apps versus 74 minutes in a browser. A year earlier, the tally had been an average of 64 minutes in a browser versus just 43 minutes in apps.”

If you’re not already engaging mobile users (who, as a percentage will continue to rise exponentially next year) in your affiliate efforts (publishers, advertisers or networks), 2012 is the time to get on ball.

If you don’t know how to make an app, it’s time to get programming. It’s not hard, I promise (scroll down to the bottom of the post).

I was a guest on Daniel M. Clark’s Inside Internet Marketing show this week and had a blast talking about being “back” in affiliate marketing and how the industry has changed in the last half-decade (and how Daniel came up with the name of his show)…

He’s Been Here For Years – Sam Harrelson | Inside Internet Marketing: “My guest this time is Sam Harrelson, longtime blogger and affiliate marketer, and recent nominee of an Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award! Sam’s up for Best Blogger at Affiliate Summit West 2012.”

We also hit on some hot button issues like the good ole days of ABestWeb, perceived differences in the ongoing CPA vs CPS debate and the role of the Performance Marketing Association in the wider scope of the industry and its future.

The show is about 40 minutes long and good listening if I do say so myself.

Nice quick reminder from Merianna…

From Teacher to Marketer: Getting Your Wings | Merianna Neely: “After your ideas have simmered and you have a good idea about what you want your affiliate marketing experience to be, then you have your wings.”

Road full of promise indeed.

Marketers tap into existing cultural movements (or create them)… so, it’s always fun and educational to dip into Google’s annual Zeitgeist page:

Google Zeitgeist:“What mattered in 2011? Zeitgeist sorted billions of Google searches to capture the year’s 10 fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011.”

The page is all new and redone for 2011 and I highly recommend just playing with the navigation to get a sense of how the web will continue to evolve in 2012.

Brilliant idea for an app based on a very real change in how the web is used (and one I often observe being used by the middle schoolers I teach when they search for information on the web):

Teen’s iOS App Uses Complex Algorithms to Summarize the Web | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: “D’Aloisio believes long lists of hyperlinks that take you straight to content-filled websites were great for Google in the early days of the web, but things have changed. “Hyperlinks aren’t effective anymore. It’s information overload,” he says. He found this particularly true of hyperlinks when he started using the Twitter app six months ago.”

Installing now.

The ramifications for marketers are, of course, substantial.

With an IPO (and constant rumors of a Facebook phone or mobile device) coming in the near future, this makes sense on the surface…

Facebook Plans First Foray Into Mobile Ads – Bloomberg: “An idea being considered is putting Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ads, which feature friends’ interactions with brands, within the mobile News Feed, said the people, who declined to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The News Feed lets users view status updates, photos and other content.”

The question becomes one of value to advertisers and the constant pressure of ad dilution due to supply and demand of the spaces. Certainly, eyeball numbers are no problem for the world’s most popular web destination. However, advertising on social spaces, especially ones considered to be more intimate and “personal” such as Facebook are a different beast altogether than advertising on traditional platforms.

Does Facebook have the ability to blend its already popular mobile experience (more than 350 million mobile users according to Facebook’s latest numbers) with its web-based Sponsored Stories stream of ads or will the experience be something different akin to what Twitter does with Sponsored Tweets on its mobile interface? That’s yet to be determined until the ad stream officially rolls out.

What can be determined if Facebook does deploy mobile ads is how effective Facebook continues to be (or not) at eating into Google’s marketshare of web ad inventory and delivery. If Facebook can pull off a successful launch and provide decent conversion rates, it should ring even more alarm bells at Google HQ in Mountain View.

The new update to WordPress self-installs (.org) is live and it’s a beauty…

WordPress 3.3 Sonny: “Experienced users will appreciate the new drag-and-drop uploader, hover menus for the navigation, the new toolbar, improved co-editing support, and the new Tumblr importer. We’ve also been thinking a ton about what the WordPress experience is like for people completely new to the software. Version 3.3 has significant improvements there with pointer tips for new features included in each update, a friendly welcome message for first-time users, and revamped help tabs throughout the interface. Finally we’ve improved the dashboard experience on the iPad and other tablets with better touch support.”

I’ve been using the very good Blogsy app for blogging on the iPad, but I still have wanted a more “native” web-based exprience for blogging.

The addition of the better touch interface on the iPad really is a winning feature for me because I’m using the tablet as my main computing device more and more these days (and don’t see that personal trend reversing).

If you’re using WordPress on a self-install for an affiliate site, go upgrade. Here’s to the excellent WordPress team that keeps making the web better and better.

There’s a cottage industry of folks who question social media’s effectiveness as a marketing channel, especially Twitter. It’s a tired argument since traditional marketing metrics are ill-suited for the social web (let alone 2011).

This new piece on my old stomping grounds of ReveNews reminds me of the great battles-of-will that Trust and I had back in 2006-2007 (sadly the comments got lost with the buyout):

Twitter Gets a Facelift – Does It Stand Out or Blend In? | ReveNews: “At this point, Twitter may have taken off and is flying high — but we have yet to see whether it will have a soft or a hard landing.”

So very 2007.

Sigh.