An emerging set of tools is making it easier than ever to track and compile a vast array of data and display it in a way that’s extraordinarily easy to understand. You can now point your cell phone at a street and instantly get restaurant reviews, or type in your address and find reports of crimes that may have occurred in your neighborhood. It may soon even be possible to track emotions on a national and global scale.

Specialists from scientists to accountants have been dealing with data for decades, but what’s new is that there’s a whole lot more data of relevance to consumers. Additionally, people are generating a whole lot of data themselves these days.

I believe there are several reasons why we’re seeing more data visualization in popular culture and why it’s becoming simpler and more innovative. Computers and software have gotten cheaper during the past few decades, and the technology needed to build applications is now in the hands of more people. Meanwhile, more data are becoming digital, making it easier to parse and catalog.

Finally, through the advent of social media applications like Facebook and Twitter, coupled with a rise of increasingly sophisticated cell phones, a cultural shift is seemingly under way.

I see individual people defining their own social networks for other people to see, and that, I believe, has led people to become interested in exploring data in ways they weren’t interested in before. We’re putting tools into the hands of millions of people, but more importantly, we’re connecting those people.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about innovation and technology

Having an identifiable and vocal face of a company has been a very successful strategy for many companies – Richard Branson of Virgin and Jeff Bezos of Amazon readily come to mind – but it becomes problematic when the opinions of a business leader fail to match up with the perceived message and values of their companies and/or brands, as noted above. Now imagine that situation amplified throughout the entire culture of a company. Social media is doing just that.

As this shift towards openness takes place on both an individual and organizational level, aided by the emergence of social technologies, the feedback loop is getting shorter and shorter. This can be a boon to corporations looking to connect with consumers in an effort to build meaningful relationships and communities around their brands, but it can also backfire. While there’s little doubt that social tools are an effective means of communicating to and reaching out to customers, how much sharing is too much? After all, bad press arguably travels faster than the positive kind, particularly in a culture of almost real time.

While it’s easy to place the onus on our employees and consumers to know the difference between business and personal, these lines are blurring more and more every day so we need to be extremely mindful of how we approach these interactions. There may be no single answer that is applicable for all situations, but leading by example is good place to start.

[image via markus941]

CNET examines this question as increasing numbers of charities get on board in the already crowded space, noting that two major concerns begin to surface: a thinning pool of money to go around and too much noise for users to sift through.

Fundamentally, the strategy doesn’t have to change, but it does need to get smarter. In order to ensure lasting success, here are a number of considerations to keep in mind, both for social media and beyond:

1) Message – Regardless of what channel you use to spread the word, that message needs to be abundantly clear. Any good organization needs to have a defined mission statement and reachable set of goals.

2) Audience – Simply broadcasting to the masses without any consideration for who the people are you are trying to target, will result in a call to action that falls on deaf ears. Personalized communications that speak to your audience will show greater returns.

3) Community – Of course, soliciting monetary donations is the lifeline for any good charity, both in achieving its aims and maintaining its longevity, getting people involved, as volunteers and advocates, are the true measure of success. Building a committed cache of members is important, but implementing a culture that can leverage their interest is essential.

4) Diversification – While social media provides a cheap and effective way to reach large numbers of people, it can’t be the only platform through which an organization delivers its message. Traditional outreach methods – events, mailings, and phone calls – exist for a reason, they still work.

5) Scale – Position your organization in such a way that it is able to grow. Keep your expectations reasonable in the beginning, but be prepared to expand to meet demand as more interest is generated.

6) Infrastructure – An intelligent system that enables individuals to give and/or join easily is essential for charities of any size.

Though the website has no immediate plans to make money from these transactions, either through a surtax or issuing Facebook currency, by enabling consumers to make their purchases without leaving the site, they’re promoting a greater level of engagement with the platform. And this comes as no small consolation to a company that focuses almost exclusively on online advertising to generate revenue. Current estimates place that figure at $500 million for 2009.

For the time being, these virtual retailers will exist independently on Facebook and one wonders how they will be incorporated into the site’s overall infrastructure to drive traffic to the businesses, given that Facebook relies primarily on homepages and personal connections for its navigation. It will also be interesting to see if these storefronts will be forced into the one-size-fits-all design of Facebook or if they’ll be able to differentiate themselves with a unique platform. This is an especially important consideration for brands like Apple (though it’s not clear if they’re signing on), that rely heavily on image to sell their product.

And lastly, considering how important the retail experience is to making a sale, particularly within the online environment – information, imagery, recommendations and checkout – I will be anxious to see how the application actually performs in relation to a popular model like Amazon or eBay.

The level of success these early adopters are able to have within the larger context of Facebook will go a long way to determine if Facebook is more than just a social forum for friends. Connecting brands with consumers is something the site has shown it’s capable of doing, but whether they can take them through the checkout line is something we’ll have to see.

While the move is on to develop the algorithm that will make this idea a reality and no doubt revolutionize the way we consume our stream of information in process, what might the search look like and how will it function exactly? ReadWriteWeb provides an excellent analysis of how our future searches will function based on what they refer to as “Social Relevancy Rank,” a constantly updating feed of data filtered through the people in our trusted networks.

Based on this model, the most relevant information would come directly from your closest (online) friends and then move downward through a progression of an ever widening web of affiliations – taste neighbors to friends of friends to influencers – until it final reaches results from the crowd.

If it works, it would create an entirely new level of value to our time spent online and one imagines would most benefit the relatively small (but growing) community of creators – thought leaders, bloggers, designers etc. – who are actively engaging with the web at large. If such an engine were to take hold it will be interesting to see how the information reordering takes shape, particularly when it comes to corporations and to a lesser extent traditional media outlets.

Advertising Age points to a recent product offering from General Mills that goes against the prevailing wisdom that says, “Create a mass-appeal product; distribute it nationally; stoke demand with big-budget, shotgun-style advertising to spray the widest possible market; and hope sales hit the magical $100 million first-year benchmark.” By using a social media strategy that reaches out to the 2% of the American population that are allergic to gluten (as well as the 10% interested in avoiding it), the packaged goods giant is introducing a line of gluten-free baking products targeting this small audience.

This open communication stream is enabling these big brands to get more in touch with their customers’ needs and anticipate future demand with new products. The shift is also allowing brands to get into small markets earlier, as opposed to “relying on the old model of waiting to see if an upstart niche brand will be successful and then snatching it up” down the road.

On the entrepreneurial side of innovation, Fast Company notes the growth of what they refer to as “post-industrial microenterprise,” a personalized brand of manufacturing that resembles our reliance craftsman of the past. These small studios and shops are appealing to consumers with specific, often very custom requests and what’s most important, the willingness and means to pay premiums to get what they want. “There are folks making specialty sports car racing parts, specialty camera accessories, and specialty Jeep parts and more to small niche markets of enthusiasts that all have common and specific needs. There have also been folks setting up little job shops in their garage, bidding on machine projects via other sites. Some of these folks are refugees of America’s industries who are turning to these micromarkets as a means of sustenance.”

Needless to say, it’s exciting to see this range of opportunities that are opening up on the web for businesses of all scales with the advent of smarter, more social tools that help to reach an evolving demographic of niche consumers.

As further evidence of this fact, a recent piece over at Internet Revolution, discovered that only 4 out of the top 10 charities by revenue in the US currently display links to popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace on their homepages. This is rather staggering, considering that these aren’t merely start-up charities with a few employees, operating on shoestring budgets, but well-established organizations. Which is not to say that creating a successful effort of this kind need be cost prohibitive, on the contrary, it’s virtually free.

And while the opportunities to use these networks are surely there: fundraising, education, and outreach to name a few, there appears to be a disconnect. In light of this and given my own interest in philanthropy, I was excited to learn about a new project titled Social by Social that offers practical, scalable advice on how to implement these networking tools into furthering the aims of your organization.

Here’s a bit more about the endeavor in their own words:

“Social by Social is a practical guide to using new technologies to create social impact. It makes accessible the tools you need to engage a community, offer services, scale up activities and sustain projects. Whoever you are, it shows you how to take technology and turn it into real world benefits.

We want to help people in the public and third sectors do more good, by showing them the power of these technologies and how to access them. In the process, we hope we can also educate funders and policy workers about the huge shift of mindset and expectations needed to commission these projects successfully, to give the innovators more space to work.

Whether you’re a small charity wanting cheap web tools to support your work, a large organization seeking to engage more effectively with your community, a civil servant charged with making public services more efficient, or just a concerned citizen on a personal mission, we hope there’s something here for you.”

As a starting point and some added inspiration, I suggest you begin by looking into the project’s case studies.