Alas, an early spring chirp was finally heard this week signaling a possible resurgence. At the Chirp Conference Twitter execs announced a series of significant changes that address much of what the industry has been crowing about:

• The really big news is promoted tweets, a new advertising platform where advertisers can buy access into a topical Twitter stream. With some similarities to Google’s AdWords platform, this might just start building a justification for the billion-dollar valuation the revenue-neutral service has earned thus far.

• User Streams, a new data service provided by Twitter to desktop applications. This allows developers access to real-time data directly from Twitter. Look for a flock of new Twitter-enabled applications in the near future.

• A developer roadmap to calm the fears of developers and marketers about the service and where it is going. Look for increased functionality around location awareness, annotations, and other features.

• A new home page to address the high abandonment rate of new subscribers. Early tests show a 20% increase in retention.

Along with the technical discussions, Twitter management also shared data about the service that has long been speculated and rarely confirmed. It turns out that Twitter is bigger than we all expected. According to cofounder Biz Stone, Twitter has nearly 106 million registered users and 180 million unique visitors a month—far above many previous industry expectations. To date, the service has been tight-lipped about this type of information. Even more impressive, Twitter is growing at a rate of 300,000 new users a day, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Twitter still has a rough flight ahead. Archenemy Facebook is gearing up for the annual F8 Conference, which promises the unveiling of new features and direction for the 400 million user–strong social network. But for now, Twitter can enjoy the warm glow of springtime optimism.

While the Aardvark addition pales in comparison with other acquisitions in recent years, such as the $1.6 billion paid for YouTube (now the second-largest search engine, masquerading as a social video-sharing site), it continues to extend Mountain View’s reach into the social web while taking another competitive swipe at perennial runner-up Yahoo! – this time targeting the popular Yahoo! Answers service with which Aardvark competes using a decidedly social media flair. The upstart leverages your own social network connections to provide answers to a user’s questions.

Earlier this week, Google Buzz came thundering onto the social scene offering much the same functionality as Facebook. With Buzz, users can create profiles; embed media from sharing sites such as Picassa, Flicker and YouTube; share information; create groups of friends; post status updates, etc. ¬– all from the comfort of a couple hundred million existing Gmail accounts. While disrupting Facebook’s momentum seems unlikely, the heft of Google’s offering, its reputation for solid technology and its immediate availability to the vast Gmail user base make it a social networking contender worth watching. While I was writing this post, this tweet came across my screen: “Google Buzz makes Facebook look like some college kids’ computer science project.”

One could catch the buzz about Buzz by following the very popular trending topic on Twitter. You could also point your browser to Google and take advantage of Google Social Search. For the last couple months, real-time content from Facebook, MySpace.com and Twitter has been integrated into traditional search results, blending in wall posts, blog entries, tweets and video tags and bringing real-time relevance to users’ queries.

Few dispute that social media is here to stay, that the rise of social networking has truly changed online behavior and that new technologies and evolving trends promise to maintain the dizzying momentum we have seen over recent years. Even fewer should dispute that, however social media matures, Google will be an ever-strengthening force.

My desire to promote Anderson’s book to those interested in understanding more fully the sea change that we’ve been living through the past 10 years came over coffee this morning. Garmin and Tomkin, companies who develop and sell GPS navigational products watched their stock prices plunge by 16.4% and 20.8% in one day – erasing billions of dollars of market capitalization. Yesterday, Google announced a free voice navigation application.

Garmin and Tomkin’s woes reminded me of a sidebar example in Free where Anderson described the effect that Craigslist.com has had on the traditional newspaper classified advertising business. Craig Newmark’s largely altruistic project, which has never been a runaway revenue generator, is credited with evaporating $30 billion in receipts from our hometown newspapers.

Throughout the book, Anderson illustrates how savvy businesses are succeeding with indirect routes from product to revenue . He shows that a generational and global shift is at play and highlights the challenges that we face as marketers in this new economy.

He also notes, and I’m sure the C-suites residents at Garmin and Tomkin can now attest, that Google has mastered this concept. A company best known for its free services continues to post record revenues, profits and climbing stock prices. Even in a tough economic climate, Google posted Q3 profits up 27% over last year.

Anderson is an entertaining writer and dedicated observer of the online marketplace and related technologies and behaviors. This latest book, actually offered for free through a number of online promotions, is an interesting read.

Search engines are nothing new and as marketers we are very aware of the prominence search plays in the lifestyles of consumers. We have worked for years to perfect our search strategies and optimize our websites. We have collectively built various search marketing platforms such as paid search into mature marketing channels. Even now, more than 10 years after Google emerged from a Stanford dorm room, internet search marketing continues to build at a mind-boggling pace.

While the 100 billion searches in the past year is a truly impressive number, the real news is that this represents a 40% increase since last year. And just so you don’t think that the old dog is getting run over by the new pups, Google continues to set the standard seeing a 58% rise in executed searches over the past 12 months.

Forrester put in context how important search will become in a related report last week predicting that spending on online marketing will top $55 billion in over the next five years (up from $25 billion this year). Search marketing will continue to see the largest investment – rising to $31 billion in 2014 from $15 billion in 2009 – dramatically outpacing the spending on other online channels.

What does this mean to marketers? Several things:
• Search will remain the preeminent online marketing channel.
• Competition for consumers via search will increasingly require a strategic approach.
• Targeted search, such as mobile and local will continue to build.
• Related online marketing channels will continue to gain prominence in the integrated marketing mix.

If search is part of your marketing mix now, bravo. Get used to it; it will become even more important to you. If you haven’t yet engaged you have your work cut out for you. You need to catch up to a fast moving train that continues to build steam. Take a deep breath, grab a strong cup of coffee and get to work.

There are approximately 4000 beans in a pound of coffee – 100 billion beans would yield 25 million one-pound bags. It took one cup of coffee and 7 google searches to produce this post.

Most companies already collect analytics data, and analysis tools are readily available. In the case of website traffic and online marketing initiatives such as search and email marketing, tools such as Google Analytics and email tracking software are commonplace, but few marketers leverage the data to its fullest extent through sophisticated analysis The differentiator, just as Davenport states regarding large complex multi-national organizations, is the level of reliance on analyzed data when making decisions. Organizations that build an “analytical culture,” where data and sophisticated statistics are heavily relied upon in decision making, will build a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Let’s apply this principle to a hypothetical case study about online customer acquisition.

Both Company A and Company B have websites, purchase online display ads, engage in search engine marketing (SEM) via Google Adwords, and regularly communicate with customers and prospects through ongoing email campaigns. Both are contemplating a blog to establish several key individuals as subject matter experts (SMEs), have a company LinkedIn page, and encourage employees to participate in online conversations. Both companies wonder if Facebook and Twitter can help them in their efforts. Neither have immediate plans to initiate a mobile device marketing initiative, but wonder if they should. Company A and Company B are very average. They each also collect similar amounts of tracking data.

The Company A marketer knows how many people came to his website last month and that traffic increased by 13% over the previous month. He knows that his monthly email newsletter was sent to a list of 14,000 current customers and prospects, that the open rate and click rate were well within expected thresholds, and showed a slight increase over last month. He congratulates himself on the new design that he conceived. Finally, he knows that he spent $11,000 on a Google AdWords campaign during Q1 and that the click-through rate steadily increased throughout the process. Overall, web-based sales and sales inquiries are trending upward. He is happy, but more importantly his boss is happy and sent him a very complimentary note.

Company B is a different place. The marketing executive has diligently worked to create an analytical culture. She sees that her website traffic is up by nearly 20% and can attribute the spike in activity to a particular segment of users. She executes a targeted email campaign that highlights a specific product line that users in this segment have historically purchased. The predictive model she uses to track trends over the past years suggests that a similar spike is likely over the next several months with a different segment of her users. She confirms the planning meeting for the related campaign.

After lunch she reviews the results from the multivariate testing (MVT) study that she has been running on the various landing pages used in her AdWords campaigns. Noticing that users are converting 2% better on the page that includes a six-word headline and a call to action highlighted in blue versus the eight-word headline and the image she was very attached to, she orders the change. Though the click-through rate on the campaign was acceptable, the conversion rate she had been watching needed to come up. She now knows that her cost-per-conversion will slightly decrease. She plans another MVT experiment for next month.

Finally, at the end of the day, she reviews the samples for the three email newsletters that are scheduled for delivery next week.  The first, which goes to past customers of her core product in the New England market, needs a copy edit.  Another, going to prospects who downloaded a sales sheet via the website, looks good.  The final one, set to deliver to customers who have been identified as targets for the recent release of an updated accessory product, will just have to wait. The CEO has invited her to share her insights with the directors at their meeting in Paris.

Davenport points out that historically, the “business as usual” model has meant taking whatever customers that came and looking backwards on financials to understand what happened last month. Companies who leverage analytics have gotten rid of this definition of business as usual. A distinct competitive edge is available to organizations that decide to use data and sophisticated statistics in decision making and who are no longer satisfied with the same kind of information others use.