The stream of consciousness that led to the writing of this post was interesting, if not a little chaotic. I was responding to some instant messages from within Gmail when another one popped up on Windows Live Messenger. I started thinking about how many instant messaging/sharing services/social networks and platforms there are out there and how that diversity affects the way that we communicate with each other. Copying and pasting links into email/ims used to be the predominant way to show someone something of interest online. Today however, you’d be hard pressed to find any application or web-based product that didn’t have some sort of sharing/messaging component attached to it. Granted, many of the major players have worked in some form of interoperability. But there does seem to be a constant battle between merging forms of communication and yet remaining as distinct as possible. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of social bookmarking. The need for this separation is obvious, if you consider that each method of communication represents the voice of a brand that’s trying to be as loud as possible in order to remain competitive. Enter aggregate sharing services like Share This, Add This, and the Sociable plugin for WordPress, which attempt to inject some order into the chaos.

Click the image to enlarge.

So what does this mean in terms of how we communicate online? What does this mean to marketers?

Well, there are a couple of things worth noting here. The tools that are germane to both of the communication pathways I mentioned will continue to get released. As they do, people will continue to have a myriad of options for spreading viral content. I think the key will be having an understanding of the longevity of the message that underlies that content. Viral videos for example, have a relatively short window to get people interested enough to execute a call to action and visit a website or submit an email address. If those destination websites are interesting in and of themselves, you might be lucky enough to score a conversion and/or get people to return. That being understood, the viral content that got them interested in the first place might be spread through focused bursts via”smaller” channels; IM, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. But if those users find a compelling reason to act afterward, that’s when they might choose to increase the size of the audience for that content and make use of the aggregate sharing services. It’s almost as if the focused pathways allow for a type of proving ground among smaller peer groups in order to decide if the content has the appropriate “A-ha” factor before it proliferates throughout the Cloud.

Finally, I completely appreciate the fact that as of right now there is no easy way to spread the content of this post anywhere. That will change as I adapt to a theme that allows for extra widgets.

I figure the first post on this blog should explain the name, which in turn should give readers a sense of what it’s all about. In the 1998 film Pi written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, protagonist Max Cohen is seen sitting in a cafe explaining to onlooker Lenny Myer that when you divide each successive number in the Fibonacci sequence into one another, the result “approaches Theta.” He then explains that Theta is a Greek symbol representing one of the key numbers in mathematics linked to The Golden Ratio, a mysterious and profound concept that manifests itself across several aspects of our Universe.

What’s interesting is that (like many ideas derived from the movies) this is only partially true. In actuality, the symbol Phi is more closely linked to this concept than Theta. But unless you’re either versed in mathematics or take the interest to research it further (the latter applies to me), you’d be among those confidently distributing “the Theta hypothesis” at your next dinner party.

What I’ve realized is that there are a lot of similarities to this albeit unintended deception in the world of Digital Marketing, a world that I’ve been a part of for the last several years. At some point, we’ve all met a Max Cohen who attempts to explain a concept like Online Segmentation or CPM ad campaigns, but fails to do so because of errors in communication or what have you. We’ve all been in Lenny’s shoes, blindly adopting the explanation and treating it as gospel. In fact as far as the world of Digital Marketing is concerned, I’d wager that there are thousands of Theta hypotheses out there, influencing corporate decisions and consumer behavior.

The important question doesn’t really have to do with the perceived “wrongness” of such hypotheses though. I think there’s a lot more value in examining the responses that are generated as a result. Let’s look at the recent atmosphere surrounding two social networking darlings. Facebook has been receiving seriously negative feedback in light of its new layout, whereas Twitter is positioning itself to be the next emerging giant in the marketplace. Should Facebook focus on figuring out “what went wrong”, in order to self-correct? Should they primarily try to understand what Twitter is doing correctly that’s driving their success? Or is there more value in evaluating the landscape for what it is; constantly in flux. It could be that by the time they’ve re-evaluated their Theta hypothesis and executed a new strategy, consumers will have moved on, even beyond Twitter, to the next greatest thing.

The over-arching theme for this blog involves looking at Digital Marketing from that perspective. Rather than wrestling with the semantic innards of concepts like Social Networks, Microsite Campaigns, Mobile Subscriber Turnover and the like, I’ll be discussing how those concepts drive responses and stimulate change (if any) in an industry that refuses to remain static and easily understood.

There’s also the fact that “Approaching Phi” was a rather unwieldy blog name. But I digress.

Enjoy.