My friends, today we made art. Mixed art. Transmedia art. Call it whatever but we took one of the oldest Romanian poems (Miorita – romanian for The Sheep – an allegory of life and death, crime and betrayal), mixed it with a little twitter API voodoo, added some cool and fresh design, social media sharing features and made it sparkle: I give you Myoritza 2.0.

The four characters in the Poem were given Twitter accounts and through a little programming magic we made sure they say their part just when they were supposed to.

It was really successful but stay tuned for this result. We had fun doing it, I know people had fun watching it.

The experiment gathers status updates from Twitter users, mixing them in a 347430 verses (so far) piece of art.

“I soon found that people were very excited to be part of this and consider it some form of artistic expression of the collective consciousness of Twitter.” declared Andrei for the Telegraph.

This is not the first time Andrei experimented with social media interaction. His Quizoo game was a hit when launched.

If you find the idea interesting, don’t forget to digg it.

It is ”a reservoir of the experiences of our species.” Something we inherit and pass on.

I was amazed to find this theory as I felt humanity tends to reach something I would call collective thinking (the sum and sinergy of all human information and intelligence). The concept is not new. Asimov, the SF writer, wrote about the concept in his well known Foundation Series. Others have thought and talked about it.

As unlikely as it may seem I think we are close to something of the kind. Twitter (yes, ha, ha … Twitter) is at the moment the concept most likely to reach something of the kind. People talking, thinking, communicating together may be the dawn of a new era for human kind.

The era of the collective conscious.

The leading CRM software providers at the moment are SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com with Microsoft growing at a fast rate. Microsoft has actually the highest growth rate, followed by Salesforce.com . The first backed up by its financial power and the second backed up by innovation and flexibility.

It should be noted that “flexibility and innovation” are terms that should be taken with a pinch of salt. The software cannot outpace the process too much as it becomes unusable for the company adopting it.

The benefits

What is the CRM good for? Everything. As a company revolves around its clients a customer-centric approach in management would have huge benefits in any company.

Imagine running a company (well – in case you are not already running one). Start with the beginning: a small company, focused on every customer and willing to serve him or her as good as possible. This is doable when you have a customer base of 5, 10 or even 50  clients. But what happens when you have over 1000 clients, 2000 prospects and you are running large scale advertising or marketing campaigns? You must automate.

This is where the Customer Relationship management comes in. Both as a process and a technology.

Who puts the “Social” in Social CRM ?

Salesforce.com apparently. They have recently integrated Twitter in their platform (quite a nice product). Many of you might ask – why Twitter? Why such a small social network? Well, according to Compete.com, Twitter is not so small anymore. With around 54 million page views it is surpassed only by Facebook and Myspace.

The social networks are the hubs your customers congregate now. This is where they share their views, opinions, feelings, thoughts and a whole lot more.

Brands should tap in this vast resource. They should listen, understand and reach out for the new customers.

The Social CRM has emerged as companies look for non-intrusive but useful ways of integrating social networks and their users. What seemed like a distant shift in perception several months ago seems closer than ever with the new trends.

Have a look at a very interesting presentation regarding the subject, put together by Fabio Cipriani, a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Netherlands and author of Blog Corporativo.

Connecting the dots – Online Marketing and Social CRM

Online marketing is just a part of OCRM (Online Customer Relationship Management). Just like the classic marketing is for the classic CRM.

The trouble with online marketing is that it doesn’t get the credit it should. We, the interactive enthusiasts, are yet to prove overall efficiency. How else can we but with the help of the CRM and its social features. Altough the Social CRM has just started its journey I am sure we will start seeing a great adoption rate in the future.

This might seem a little odd as Facebook has less than a third of Google’s traffic. An explanation might be the fact that users are less focused and tend to “click around” while socializing with friends.

Is Google loosing ground to younger web applications like Facebook or even Twitter? Sure. Are these companies threatening Google’s supremacy? Not really. But the times are ever-changing.

Basically Nick Turpin (this is his real name) goes around London, taking pictures of interesting activity. Nick, of course, uses his shiny new Samsung Pixon to do that. Users can vote anywhere inside a picture to determine what will the street photographer shoot next.

You can follow Nick on twitter, by RSS, through an widget, by email or even on GPS (nice little touch here pointing out the GPS feature).

The website is multilingual therefore having a broader range. I love the social feeling on this one although the execution is rather rough around the edges.

Check out Creative Review’s take on this one.

Where is this world going to? Pop interactive, I say.