Via Blue Glass Interactive. Marketing infographics. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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Most Topular Stories
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The content marketing explosion [infographic]
Holy Kaw!9 Feb 2012 | 4:44 am -
Google Chrome Update Brings Faster Browsing
Mashable!9 Feb 2012 | 1:12 amThe new stable release of Google’s web browser Chrome brings several improvements, most importantly faster browsing and more protection from malicious downloads. From now on, when you start typing in Chrome’s address box (or omnibox, as Google calls it), as soon as Chrome autocompletes the URL you’re likely to visit, it will prerender the page, making your overall browsing experience faster. As far as security goes, Chrome now does checks on executable files you’ve downloaded from the net. It matches the executables against a whitelist – a list of programs known… -
Groupon's First Earnings Call Missed the Mark, But It May Not Matter
ReadWriteWeb8 Feb 2012 | 9:28 pmToday in its quarterly earnings call, Groupon reported that it did not meet fourth quarter expectations. The company posted a $43 million loss, or $0.08 cents per share. Despite the loss, Groupon's revenue in the fourth quarter 2011 grew 194% to $506.5 million, up from $172.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. In fact, the fourth quarter 2011 was the company's first quarter of operating profitability since it opening international operations in the second quarter of 2010. This brings everyone back to the same question: Is the daily deals model a real, legitimate business, or is it just a… -
Clusterpoint Secures €1m From BaltCap To Scale Its Database For Clouds
TechCrunch9 Feb 2012 | 4:44 amBaltCap, a leading venture investor in startups in the Baltics region, has signed a €1 million investment in Clusterpoint, an enterprise software startup created by Latvian programmers and backed by seed investors in the UK and Baltics. Clusterpoint has built a database platform designed for cloud computing infrastructure which they claim is highly scalable. They are competing against open source solutions such as MongoDB. -
Throw Away the Maps
chrisbrogan.com6 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amPeople judge us by the path they’ve seen us walk before. They can’t anticipate our future steps. We, ourselves, look to how things have been, what seems to be the lay of the land, without realizing that the maps are not the territory. Want to succeed at work? Then don’t try to do your job. Instead, work towards something larger, more meaningful, and something that blends your convictions internally with your best ability to help others externally. Want to create something new? Then throw away the old, or maybe join two disparate old things together into something new. The…
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Holy Kaw!
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The content marketing explosion [infographic]
9 Feb 2012 | 4:44 amVia Blue Glass Interactive. Marketing infographics. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
8 historical figures who ate disgusting things
8 Feb 2012 | 11:26 pmBefore you read this article, you may have thought your dog had the grossest eating habits ever. But Fido's penchant for poo is nothing compared to some of these sickos highlighted in Cracked. For example, Victorian scientist William Buckland: He didn't just stop at the meat of animals, either. While on a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral, a strange mark was found on the floor. A debate broke out as to what the stain could possibly be, at which point Buckland got on his hands and knees, licked the stain and confidently announced it to be bat piss. But the craziest thing Buckland ever did, at… -
5 explanations of why teenagers act the way the do
8 Feb 2012 | 11:22 pmUnderstanding the teenage mind could be a life's work. For those of you who don't have that kind of time, however, Mental Floss gives five things that could explain the mind of the teenager. For example, parents, have you ever wondered if your teenager is somehow getting dumber? Parents of teens often wonder what happened to the bright child they used to have. How can someone go from getting A’s to getting C’s when they seem to be doing the same amount of work? Once again, changes in the brain are to blame. While the merits of IQ tests are debatable, scientists used to think IQ… -
Surviving the loss of a star employee
8 Feb 2012 | 11:16 pmSome groups have stellar members who carry the team. That's all well and good until that member leaves. Then what? This Smartblog video will help you answer that question: Full story at Smartblog on Leadership. Top news for leaders. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Disneyland circa 1957 [video]
8 Feb 2012 | 11:14 pmThis video was shot in 1957, less than two years after Disneyland had opened. The footage is newly restored and ready to take you to the happiest place on earth as it was in its early days. Full story at Mental Floss. All the top Internet videos in one place. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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Mashable!
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Google Chrome Update Brings Faster Browsing
9 Feb 2012 | 1:12 amThe new stable release of Google’s web browser Chrome brings several improvements, most importantly faster browsing and more protection from malicious downloads. From now on, when you start typing in Chrome’s address box (or omnibox, as Google calls it), as soon as Chrome autocompletes the URL you’re likely to visit, it will prerender the page, making your overall browsing experience faster. As far as security goes, Chrome now does checks on executable files you’ve downloaded from the net. It matches the executables against a whitelist – a list of programs known… -
‘Bachelor’ Contestant Courtney Gets Auto-Tuned [VIDEO]
8 Feb 2012 | 9:19 pmFans of The Bachelor are all too familiar with this season’s over-the-top contestant Courtney, who makes snide comments at the camera and likes to take off her bikini top. Now, a video has popped up on YouTube that has turned some of her signature phrases — from “Winning!” to “I do modeling” — into a catchy Auto-Tune clip. The contestants are vying for a rose from winemaker Ben, and Courtney has rubbed many of them the wrong way, and this video shows why. This is not the first time YouTube users have turned pop culture moments into Auto-Tuned videos. -
Facebook Talks About Social Games and Mobile Apps for 2012
8 Feb 2012 | 9:09 pmFacebook revealed its roadmap for social games and mobile apps for the rest of the year at the Inside Social Apps 2012 conference on Wednesday in San Francisco — and it’s good news for app developers. Want to create an app for Facebook’s Open Graph? The mobile space presents a huge opportunity to create cross-platform social games, said Carl Sjogreen, director of product management at Facebook, who spoke to a packed conference center filled with IT insiders about Facebook’s projections for the mobile social gaming and app space for this year. “You sort of had to… -
What Digital Non-Profits Can Learn From Companies Like Google
8 Feb 2012 | 8:46 pmDaniel Atwood works with organizations in the social sector to craft meaningful experiences for customers and constituents, and to find innovative product, campaign and messaging ideas in unexpected places. We live in a world where new digital products are solving problems daily — from managing our finances to remembering the groceries. Often, they’re solving problems we didn’t know we had, like the need to connect several times a day in 140 characters or less. Occasionally, they’re creating new problems (but that’s a topic for another conversation). What… -
Comment and Highlight on Websites with commentto
8 Feb 2012 | 8:30 pmThe Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: commentto Quick Pitch: Comment anywhere. Genius Idea: Commentto is a browser add-on service that allows users to highlight, bookmark, comment, save and share bookmarks and excerpts on websites. Do you ever want to add extra knowledge to a news story or other content on the web? Well, browser add-on commentto lets you comment on anything you want. Commentto allows users to highlight…
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ReadWriteWeb
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Groupon's First Earnings Call Missed the Mark, But It May Not Matter
8 Feb 2012 | 9:28 pmToday in its quarterly earnings call, Groupon reported that it did not meet fourth quarter expectations. The company posted a $43 million loss, or $0.08 cents per share. Despite the loss, Groupon's revenue in the fourth quarter 2011 grew 194% to $506.5 million, up from $172.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. In fact, the fourth quarter 2011 was the company's first quarter of operating profitability since it opening international operations in the second quarter of 2010. This brings everyone back to the same question: Is the daily deals model a real, legitimate business, or is it just a… -
Daily Wrap: January's List of Apps You Need to See and more
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 pmDan Rowinski rounds up the best apps, in our opinion, of January 2012. This and more in today's Daily Wrap. Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well. Sponsor New iPhone, iPad and Android Apps for January 2012 In what is surely a labor of love, Dan Rowinski combs through the mass of apps released… -
Stop Saying "Finally"
8 Feb 2012 | 5:50 pmFIIIINALLY! Google released a Chrome beta for Android! GODDDDD. What took them so long? All the Ice Cream Sandwich users have been waiting, like, FOREVER! Finally, Tweetbot for iPad came out. I've only been asking them for, like, EIGHT MONTHS! Jeez. Apple fiiiinally released iTunes Match after a whole month, and it didn't even work right! Listen to how this sounds. How do we, the tech bloggers, get away with headlines like this? Where do users get off complaining impatiently about updates to a service that costs them $2.99? Or a free service? Let's have a reality check. Remember how awesome… -
10 Ways to Win Over Writers
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 pmAs a PR person, product developer, CEO or whatever, you're probably more interested in getting noticed by the media than developing a relationship with a particular writer. That's one way to go about it. Then there's that old-fashioned "building a relationship with a real person not a robot" idea. You know, treating people like people and taking the time to get to know them. Oh right, yeah, forgot about that. Writers, like artists, are sensitive to ideas and people. But not every writer will get you or your product - and in the tech world as in any world, each writer has their own… -
Nginx Continues Growth, Adds Commercial Offerings
8 Feb 2012 | 4:30 pmAccording to the Netcraft Web Server Survey for February 2012, Nginx was "the only server to experience a non-negligible market share increase this month" by picking up 0.27 percentage points. Good news for the upstart Web server, just as the brand-new company behind Nginx takes the wraps off its commercial packages. Nginx has had quite the growth spurt over the past year. In February of last year Nginx had 7.57% of the market, or about 21 million domains hosted with Nginx. Microsoft had 20.04%, or about 57 million. Apache was at 60.10%, with more than 171 million domains. Sponsor…
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TechCrunch
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Clusterpoint Secures €1m From BaltCap To Scale Its Database For Clouds
9 Feb 2012 | 4:44 amBaltCap, a leading venture investor in startups in the Baltics region, has signed a €1 million investment in Clusterpoint, an enterprise software startup created by Latvian programmers and backed by seed investors in the UK and Baltics. Clusterpoint has built a database platform designed for cloud computing infrastructure which they claim is highly scalable. They are competing against open source solutions such as MongoDB. -
Live from Riga – TechCrunch Baltics meetup #TCBaltics
9 Feb 2012 | 3:37 amWe’re running the first ever TechCrunch Baltics meetup today with a mini-conference and pitch contest in the lovely city of Riga, Latvia. The Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are tiny countries, but punch above their weight in terms of their technical prowess. Estonia in particular was made famous as being the base from which Skype was developed, and now the rest of the region is coming alive with startups and accelerators. You can find the agenda here. Up to 8 selected Baltic startups will pitch to a jury and audience that includes many key investors in the region and… -
Montblanc Takes Google To Court To Obtain Identity Of, And Sue, Counterfeit Advertisers
9 Feb 2012 | 2:21 amGoogle has been going to great lengths to keep advertisers who sell counterfeit goods online out of its AdWords program, but as far as Montblanc, the Germany-based maker of ‘writing instruments’, watches, jewelry and whatnot, is concerned, they ought to be doing more. Montblanc-Simplo GmbH, as the holding is called, is taking Google to court in an effort to obtain the identity of a certain – or more – persistent counterfeit goods seller(s). TechCrunch has obtained the court documents, which make for an interesting read. Montblanc says it has received numerous… -
Remember Netvibes? It’s Finally Acquired By Engineering Giant Dassault Systèmes
8 Feb 2012 | 11:48 pmIt’s been a long and winding road since Tariq Krim created and eventually left Netvibes, but today Netvibes has been acquired by huge French engineering giant Dassault Systèmes for an undisclosed amount. Krim continues to pursue his original dream of organising the social web on Jolicloud. -
Analytics Dashboard Netvibes Sold To Dassault Systèmes
8 Feb 2012 | 11:06 pmNetvibes has just been acquired by European product design company Dassault Systèmes (sure this isn’t the type of thing I usually write, but I like the founder Tariq Krim so bear with me here … ). French startup Netvibes is a sentiment analytics dashboard that allows Fortune 500 companies to track their social media presence throughout the realtime web. Dassault is a “3D experience” design company — which lets designers virtualize how products will work in the real world — so the acquisition actually seems jarring at first, but Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini…
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chrisbrogan.com
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Throw Away the Maps
6 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amPeople judge us by the path they’ve seen us walk before. They can’t anticipate our future steps. We, ourselves, look to how things have been, what seems to be the lay of the land, without realizing that the maps are not the territory. Want to succeed at work? Then don’t try to do your job. Instead, work towards something larger, more meaningful, and something that blends your convictions internally with your best ability to help others externally. Want to create something new? Then throw away the old, or maybe join two disparate old things together into something new. The… -
The Next Social Networks
5 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amThe rage in social networks right now is Pinterest, partly because it’s probably the first social network that has a much higher adoption rate by females than males, and partly because it’s an interesting concept: somewhere between visual social bookmarking and scrapbooking. What also might not be immediately obvious is that it’s just “easier” to interact there. In that way, Pinterest has something in common with Instagram, which is community around photos. What I’m interested in, though, is Gentlemint, which I keep calling “Pinterest for… -
Learn From Adele – Build Your Platform
3 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amJacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience. What Adele Could Teach You About Impact I’m writing something about this right now for my upcoming book with Julien Smith, but I had to share some of the… -
Rob Gokee is a Musical Wizard
2 Feb 2012 | 8:05 amI had such a great experience working with award winning musical composer Rob Gokee. We did some musical work together, and the process was so amazing. Rob helped me create my theme song for Shhh! The Secret Show. So anyhow, he and I sat down to do an interview, and it’s a bit long, but it’s totally worth it. We talk about what collaboration feels like at a distance, what it takes to get music like this made for your own show, and a lot more. Rob’s a hero to me, and has been part of the community for a while. I was so fortunate to have worked with him. Can’t see the… -
Build Your Platform – Start
30 Jan 2012 | 1:30 amThe following is part ONE of a series called Build Your Platform. If you find it interesting, please consider subscribing for free to get the rest of the series. This post is long. You might want to bookmark it for later. The age of social media oversaturation is upon us. People are declaring Twitter bankruptcy to go along with their email bankruptcy. They cite not wanting to start on yet another social network as their reason for not getting more involved with Google+. And just as soon as you start getting into Pinterest, you hear about Path, but wait: there’s Gentlemint, which is…
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NYT > Most E-Mailed
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California Housing Market Braces for Facebook Millionaires
9 Feb 2012 | 4:32 amThe Bay Area and Silicon Valley expect the windfall from the Facebook stock offering to make their in-demand region even hotter. -
States Negotiate $26 Billion Deal for Homeowners
9 Feb 2012 | 4:28 amNearly two million Americans could benefit from mortgage relief from the nation’s biggest banks, as part of a broad government settlement to be announced as early as Thursday. -
U.S. Is Planning to Cut Its Staff at Iraq Embassy by as Much as Half
9 Feb 2012 | 2:07 amThe swift realization that the diplomatic buildup may have been ill advised is a remarkable pivot for the State Department. -
Drilling Reaches Lake Vostok, Long Trapped Under Antarctic Ice Sheet
8 Feb 2012 | 11:08 pmScientists said Wednesday they had reached the waters of a lake that has been sealed off for millions of years. -
Is This Living Room Big Enough for My TV?
8 Feb 2012 | 10:10 pmHuge televisions, once an expensive oddity, are now the affordable norm.
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@ProBlogger
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How to Succinctly Report a Blog Issue to Tech Support
8 Feb 2012 | 6:07 amThis guest post is by Matthew Setter of Malt Blue. How often do you find it happening to you? You discover an issue with your site, or one of your community members emails you to tell you about it, and soon you start to see tweets about it too. Maybe it’s as simple as an error message that detracts from the professional appearance of your site. Perhaps the contact form doesn’t send messages to your contact email address. Or is it that the whole site just displays as a blank page, otherwise known as the white page of death? You’re not a programmer, a software engineer or a seasoned… -
Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger: Part 2
7 Feb 2012 | 12:05 pmThis guest post is by Devesh of WP Kube. A few months ago, I wrote a guest post here called How to Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger. Today, I’ll go into some more detailed advice to help you speed up your site even more. If you’re a blogger, you already know about the importance of blog loading speed, and the role it plays in search engine rank and marketing your blog. But if this is new territory for you, here are three quick reasons why you need to speed up your blog: Google includes website loading speed as an important metric in their ranking algorithm. If you want… -
How I Beat my Best Month Ever by Doing Something Good, Better [Case Study]
7 Feb 2012 | 6:04 amMid-December 2010: on my photography site, we launched a new campaign—our first ever 12 Days of Christmas promotion. The result was my biggest month of earnings ever up to that point. The idea was simple: offer discounts on 12 products over the 12 days leading up to Christmas. I used a mix of my own ebooks and products from other photography sites with affiliate commissions. The result was massive. Not only did we see some great revenue generated, it created some lovely buzz on the site. Due to the success of the 2010 campaign, in mid-December 2011 we launched our second 12 Days of… -
Six Steps to Make Sure Your Site Is Ready to Go Viral
6 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amThis guest post is by Nancy Sathre-Vogel of Family on Bikes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Surely Google Analytics was confusing my site with another, way more popular site. There was no way my visitor numbers could be so high! And yet they were. One of my posts had taken off and was spreading like wildfire. Those viral post phenomena that happen to others were now happening to me. The first day, 17,000 visitors came to my website. The next day we topped out at 56,000. Readers were coming in droves. It was exciting. It was exhilarating. My site, viral! Wow! And then I took a… -
How to Handle Criticism: a Practical Guide
5 Feb 2012 | 12:03 pmImage by Stuart RichardsAs bloggers, each of us has to deal with criticism. Blogging is a very public activity—almost all of us has the goal of gaining readers to our blogs—and the more people you reach, the more likely it is that you’ll hear criticisms. “You’re wrong…” “How can you say that? You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I couldn’t disagree more…” “This is the last time I read this blog!” These are just some of the criticisms bloggers regularly face—I’ve received versions of…
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Scobleizer
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Hacker News vs. Google+
5 Feb 2012 | 10:20 amI might as well have titled this “Hacker News vs Marketers.” Or “Hacker News vs Bloggers.” Or “jerks vs nice people.” But I never participate in Hacker News for a few reasons and I just was faced with these reasons again when I read the responses there to my blog post yesterday. 1. Programmers often have an attitude of “I can code, you can’t, so I am defacto better than you.” This often comes out in Hacker News comments. 2. Programmers love to bash people anonymously and then, in real life, they will come begging for PR for their companies… -
It’s too late for Dave Winer and John Battelle to save the common web
4 Feb 2012 | 5:02 pmThe date was January 3, 2008. Facebook had kicked me off for running a script to try to save the common web. See, I worked with Plaxo to run a simple script. One that would have taken my contacts out of Facebook and put them back into the common web. The script did some very simple things: 1. It grabbed all my friends names. 2. It grabbed all their phone numbers. 3. It grabbed all their email addresses. 4. It gave me a simple CSV file with all that data so I could bring them back to Google, or Microsoft, or anywhere else I wanted to put them. Facebook’s answer was predictable. They shut… -
HTML 5 pushback in San Francisco? Best mobile app designers say yes
1 Feb 2012 | 3:39 pmThe new Path? The one that won a Crunchie last night for great design? It’s not done in HTML 5. This morning I saw something new coming soon from Storify. Not done in HTML 5. This morning I visited Foodspotting, which just shipped hot new apps on iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Not done in HTML 5. More and more I’m hearing that designers and developers are ignoring HTML 5, especially for the high end of apps. Why? Well, Path’s founders told me it just isn’t possible to build a great user interface, the way they did it in HTML 5. Storify’s founder told me it… -
Why Facebook will be worth a half trillion by 2015: the mobile and open graph revenue it’s leaving on the table
1 Feb 2012 | 2:48 pmLots of people think Facebook is overvalued, at about $100 billion (it just released their S1, announcing its IPO). But in talking with developers, like I did with Foodspotting’s founder, Alexa Andrzejewski, and in reading the S1 I see that Facebook has left most of the potential revenue on the table. That makes me think that the folks crying “overvalued” are nuts. Check that interview out, Foodspotting is one of the hottest San Francisco startups, aimed at people who are looking for better places to eat. Here it is from just this morning: See, Mark Zuckerberg is sandbagging… -
2012 brings a pause in the disruption
31 Jan 2012 | 4:58 pmOK, I’ve been talking with hundreds of geeks from around the world this year at three conferences, CES, DLD, and World Economic Forum. I’m seeing a trend that is worth talking about. What is it? We’re seeing the end of one of the most disruptive ages in human history. I believe that we’re seeing a pause in the disruption. More on that a little later. Just think about all the changes humans have been asked to adopt in the past eight years. Most of us, back then, didn’t carry mobile computers in our pockets. If we did use tablets, like I did, they were expensive,…
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Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog
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Lead With Purpose
8 Feb 2012 | 11:38 pmWithout a clear sense of purpose, organizations become listless. John Baldoni says in Lead With Purpose that it falls to the leader to make certain that organizational purpose is understood and acted upon. Retired Army colonel, George Reed told Baldoni that the importance of this cannot be underestimated: I don’t think you can hit purpose enough as a senior leader. It is one of those things that can be undercommunicated by an order of magnitude. You cannot oversell, overpronounce “Here’s why we’re here.” The problem is that leaders think that they have communicated it enough, but… -
5 Leadership Lessons: Great Leaders Grow
6 Feb 2012 | 9:52 pmKen Blanchard and Mark Miller have penned another business fable, Great Leaders Grow. People and organizations are not fully alive unless they are growing. They ask, “will you be a leader who is always ready to face the next challenge, or will you be a leader that tries to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems? The latter will ultimately fail,” say the authors. The solution is to GROW: Growth is the leader’s fountain of youth. Growing, for great leaders, is like breathing. It’s not optional. It is not something you do in addition to your real job. It is at the… -
Leading Views: Ideas are Immortal. Inspiration is Perishable.
3 Feb 2012 | 5:05 pmIn ReWork—a go-to book for inspiration—authors Jason Fried and David Hansson explain why you need to get on with it. Just do it. We all have ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever. What doesn’t last forever is inspiration. Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date. If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now. You can’t put it on the shelf and wait two months to get around to it. You can’t just say you’ll do it later. Later, you won’t be pumped up about it anymore. If you’re inspired on a Friday, swear of the weekend and dive into the… -
First Look: Leadership Books for February 2012
1 Feb 2012 | 12:02 amHere's a look at some of the best leadership books to be released in February. Collaborate: The Art of We by Dan Sanker Good Idea. Now What? How to Move Ideas to Execution by Charles T. Lee The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More by Jason W. Womack Make Up Your Mind: A Decision Making Guide to Thinking Clearly and Choosing Wisely by Hal Mooz For bulk orders call 1-800-423-8273 Build your leadership library with these specials on over 120 titles. All… -
LeadershipNow 140: January 2012 Compilation
31 Jan 2012 | 1:54 pmHere are a selection of tweets from January 2012 that you might have missed: Video: President Abraham Lincoln and Leadership via @jamesstrock Lonely at Work by @wallybock "Relationships grow through communication." 7 Marks of a Great Leader by @RonEdmondson @mjasmus asks "What Do You Need to do More Of?" >Key question Mike Henry Sr: You Can’t Learn Anything with Your Mouth Open We handicap our potential when we think we have to exploit others to get ahead. Succeeding is not a zero-sum game. More @DPForrester: Gotta Have It Now, Right Now @PeteThePlanner: Would you agree that Kindness is the…
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How to Change the World
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Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK
20 Jan 2012 | 10:46 amOver the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe. Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs “Our projections are… -
Design a Sam Adams beer
20 Jan 2012 | 8:24 amNow this is a fun project. I’m helping Sam Adams “tap” the knowledge of beer drinkers and crowd source its next brew. Join the party by getting the app and designing your beer: The final brew will be released in Austin in the first week of March. #sponsored -
How to Create an Enchanting Financial Forecast #OfficeandGuyK
17 Jan 2012 | 1:52 pmThis is the third post in my Microsoft partnership, and it’s all about numbers. The topic is crafting your financial forecast to include in your pitch. Bill Reichert, my partner at Garage Technology Ventures, created an Excel model and wrote this blog post. There’s a lesson in this too: Get the best person for the job. His grasp of financial models and how to present them exceeds mine by two orders of magnitude. The Purpose of Financial Projections When it comes to financial projections, there are two types of entrepreneurs: first, the “visionary entrepreneur” who… -
How to Create an Enchanting Business Plan #OfficeandGuyK
12 Jan 2012 | 8:16 amHere is the second post in my series about planning, pitching, and launching a new business venture. In partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve created a Word document that outlines a good business plan. It’s saved to my SkyDrive folder here. Feel free to download it and use it as inspiration. And if you’re working with a partner, you can use the free Word Web App to stay in sync. I provided the PowerPoint document before the Word document because a good business plan is an elaboration of a good pitch as opposed to a good pitch being a distillation of good business plan. -
How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK
9 Jan 2012 | 8:01 amWelcome to the first in a series of blog posts I’ll be doing as part of a partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps. Over the next two weeks, I’ll cover everything a budding entrepreneur needs to turn an idea into an enchanting investment opportunity—from the perfect pitch to a killer business plan to financial forecasts. I’m going to start with a little dissertation on creating effective PowerPoint pitches for your company. I embedded the sample deck for you to click through by using the PowerPoint Web App. When you’re ready to get started, you can download the…
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Seth's Blog
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Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)
9 Feb 2012 | 2:46 amIf I tell you, "I'm going to the baseball game," it seems as though you're likely to understand what I mean. Of course, you won't. When George Will goes to a baseball game, it's a religious experience. Me, I don't even like baseball. Or maybe it's my nephew's ball game (the playoffs), or maybe going to the game causes me to miss an important event, and on and on. We label the experience with just two words, and two words can't possibly capture the emotions and circumstance surrounding an event. The same thing is true with brands. If I tell you that a new business was funded by USV, that might… -
How do they know you're not a flake?
8 Feb 2012 | 2:43 amBefore your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it's even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of noise, and just about everyone worth contacting is taking defensive measures. Do I know this person? Did someone I trust send them over? Where does she work? (Ideo? the FDA? The New York Times?) Has she won an award? Is she famous? Are there typos and is the design sloppy? Are they pestering me? Do I already follow this person online? Does music play when I visit the website? Will… -
Horizontal marketing isn't a new idea
7 Feb 2012 | 2:09 amBut it is the new reality for just about every organization. Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media. Your money, your plans, your control. It might not work, but generally the worst outcome is that you will be ignored and need to spend more money. Horizonal marketing, on the other hand, means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person. It's out of your control, because all the interactions are… -
Who is your customer?
6 Feb 2012 | 2:26 amRule one: You can build a business on the foundation of great customer service. Rule two: The only way to do great customer service is to treat different customers differently. The question: Who is your customer? It's not obvious. Zappos is a classic customer service company, and their customer is the person who buys the shoes. Nike, on the other hand, doesn't care very much at all about the people who buy the shoes, or even the retailers. They care about the athletes (often famous) that wear the shoes, sometimes for money. They name buildings after these athletes, court them, erect… -
In search of a timid trapeze artist
5 Feb 2012 | 2:01 amGood luck with that, there aren't any. If you hesitate when leaping from rope to another, you're not going to last very long. And this is at the heart of what makes innovation work in organizations, why industries die, and how painful it is to try to maintain the status quo while also participating in a revolution. Gather up as much speed as you can, find a path and let go. You can't get to the next rope if you're still holding on to this one.
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Business Wisdom: Words to Manage By
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Positive Reinforcement
8 Feb 2012 | 1:30 pm"Criticism should be a casual conversation." W. H. Auden 20th century English born poet One of your responsibilities as a manager is to review the efforts of those who report to you. Another is to do so in such a way that encourages rather than discourages the person whose work you are reviewing. -
How Much?
7 Feb 2012 | 1:30 pm"The best is the cheapest." Benjamin Franklin 18th century American statesman/inventor/philosopher The vast majority of us do not opt for the "best" automobiles, technology, clothes, food, airline seats, nor most anything else you can think of. So who's wrong here, Mr. Franklin or most everyone else on the planet? By the way, my take on this is slightly different. You get what you don't pay for. -
Einstein Was Right
6 Feb 2012 | 1:06 pm"All motion is relative, maybe it is you who have moved away by standing still." Unknown Like standing on the platform as the train pulls away, you're either progressing or regressing, and doing nothing is the same as doing the latter. -
Wisemen and Wiseguys
3 Feb 2012 | 1:30 pm"A wise man's questions contain half the answers." Solomon Ibn Gabirol 11th century Hebrew poet/Jewish philosopher And you know those wise men when you meet them. They have a way of getting you to answer the questions they ask, and in retrospect, you kind of know they weren't asking because they didn't know. Those are the managers I want to work for. Coyote Insight, LLC -
You've Got What You Need
2 Feb 2012 | 1:30 pm"We have more than we use." Ralph Waldo Emerson 19th century US poet/essayist Most every parent, mine included, has at one time or another said something similar to their children. They were right. What do you have in your business that you are not but should be using to its fullest? Coyote Insight, LLC
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Entrepreneur Update
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Fashion Mogul Christopher Burch Talks Business
9 Feb 2012 | 2:00 amAs Fashion Week kicks off, we sat down with the man behind brands like Tory Burch and Monika Chiang to find out what it takes to make it in the business. -
Seven Ways to Kill Your Meetings and Unleash Productivity
8 Feb 2012 | 12:08 pmDespite studies showing that meetings are a colossal waste of time, they remain common. Here's how to collaborate while cutting back on meetings. -
The Danger of Being Franchisee No. 1
8 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amSure, it's a thrill to get in on the ground floor of a hot new concept. But it's risky to invest in an unproven business model. Here are questions to ask. -
How the White House Became a Social-Media Powerhouse
8 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amMacon Phillips, the White House's director of New Media, describes how the administration is using social media in unique ways -- and how your business can too. -
No-Cost Ways to Increase Your Sales This Year
8 Feb 2012 | 5:02 amYou don't need to spend a lot to win a lot of sales in 2012.
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HBR.org
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Yahoo's Shakeup Demands Fearlessness
8 Feb 2012 | 1:17 pmFour longtime Yahoo board members, including the chairman, are leaving the company. In this one move, Yahoo is trying to make a clean break from the past — signaling that they are primed to reboot. It's a much-needed and long-overdue step on the path to shifting trajectories. The Pattern of Failing Organizations Larger organizations follow a fairly predictable cycle when failing. It starts with denial. The proverbial "we're so awesome and our CEO is a rockstar so we're invincible" dynamic. Typically, this lasts some period of time (years, even decades) after having a lot of success. -
Managerial Intuition Is a Harmful Myth
8 Feb 2012 | 12:51 pmI've been learning a lot from Danny Kahneman's great book Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman is the world's leading expert on human judgment and decision-making and the only non-economist to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (he's a psychologist by training), so his insights and conclusions should be taken seriously. In Thinking Fast and Slow he collects them and explains them to the non-specialist. Read it and you won't look at the world the same way again. And you and the world will both be better off for it. In particular, we'll all be better off if we stop placing so much weight on… -
Bounce Back from Job Search Dejection
8 Feb 2012 | 12:45 pmImagine you're looking for a new job. Right now. You have a first-class strategy. You're off to a good start. What are you thinking as you approach potential employers? The excitement to land a position with your target company may have given you the energy to prepare thoroughly for interviews, but it also can have a downside. People with a lot riding on the interviews may feel pressure. They may not sleep well the night before. When they meet the interviewer, their handshakes may be moist with perspiration. They may look nervous. They may stumble when asked questions. Others are crushed when… -
America's Next Top Engineer: She Needs Your Role Models
8 Feb 2012 | 9:55 amImagine the world in 2030, more resource-constrained than ever—but then suddenly benefitting from a breakthrough approach to harnessing wind energy. What if the person capable of hatching that innovation is, today, a middle-school girl in a village in Ecuador? Will it happen? Or think closer to home: If the cure for cystic fibrosis is just waiting in the mind of a girl in your community, will it ever see the light of day? If we could only put the same level of resources into inspiring girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that we do into discovering America's… -
Win on Service in a Tough Economy
8 Feb 2012 | 7:50 amGreat service is always a differentiator, even more so when people are hurting. The service companies that thrived coming out of the Great Depression — think Macy's and Disney — figured out how to take care of their customers in a climate of fear and uncertainty. The fog of recession may be starting to lift, but most households and businesses are still feeling vulnerable today. History makes a compelling case that serving customers with integrity — delivering steadfast, predictable service quality — can translate into outsized loyalty and market share when the economy…
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Jim's Marketing Blog
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Are you prepared or playing?
8 Feb 2012 | 1:51 amOne of the BIG differences between successful business owners and those who struggle, is preparation. The average business owner doesn’t prepare very well. They want their business to succeed or their marketing to generate bankable results, but they fail to do the heavy lifting beforehand. They fail to prepare correctly, in advance. Preparation Last Monday, I launched a new project via an announcement on this blog. Just 7 days after launching Creative Thinking Hub, it has over a thousand subscribers, a Google Page Rank of 3 and more daily traffic than most older sites get. Here’s… -
Tip: Do great work & put it where the right people can see it
6 Feb 2012 | 10:10 amNo one likes to be pestered. Yet, when it comes to marketing, it seems some people still think they can pester their way to success. This post is about a different way to do business. It’s based on one of the most powerful ideas in commerce and I strongly recommend you take a few minutes to read this post in full. Pestering their way to the bottom Over the weekend, I received more than 100 emails from people I don’t know, all asking me to do something for them. Most want me to blog about their latest product or tell you how great their blog is. They send me spam email, because I… -
Generate massively more sales leads, with this simple yet powerful idea!
4 Feb 2012 | 1:32 amThis short post gives you a simple, yet powerful way to massively increase the number of sales leads you attract with your marketing. When someone who is interested in working with you calls you, emails you or meets with you, you welcome it. Furthermore, you are helpful, extremely friendly and not at all pushy. So, let people know! Lead generating: Removing the pressure If you want to increase the number of marketing leads you generate, your marketing needs to reassure prospective clients. It needs to tell them that their call is welcome and that they will be under no kind of obligation to… -
What everybody ought to know about their competitors
2 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amWhen was the last time you researched your competitors? It has never been easier for you to research the marketing you are competing against, than it is today. In minutes, you can tell if someone is serious competition to your business or simply a dabbler. For example: You can read their website and tell instantly if it was professionally written or written in-house. You can see the range of services they offer and the promises and guarantees they make in their marketing. In some cases, you can see what they charge too. You can check their social media footprint and see if they are using it… -
7 Simple, powerful productivity tips!
1 Feb 2012 | 1:07 amSuccessful business development is all about achieving measurable progress in reasonable time. Here are 7 productivity tips, to help you get the very most from your working day: Break your yearly business goals down into monthly and weekly goals. This makes it easier to ensure you are on track. When you have months and months to achieve something, without measurement points along the way, it’s too easy to drift off course. Plan your day and then work to that plan. The plan needs to incorporate the goals in the previous point. Set out what you need to achieve and make that your priority…
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All Booz Allen Press Releases
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Booz Allen Ideas Festival Features Keynote Speaker Dean Kamen
5 Feb 2012 | 10:00 pmBooz Allen is honored to welcome entrepreneur and innovator Dean Kamen as the keynote speaker for the sixth Ideas Festival held Saturday, February 11 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. -
Booz Allen Hamilton Announces Third Quarter Fiscal 2012 Results
3 Feb 2012 | 4:00 amBooz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation (NYSE:BAH), the parent company of management and technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., today announced preliminary results for the third quarter of its fiscal 2012 with revenue and earnings growth over the comparable prior year period. -
Booz Allen CFO Sam Strickland to Speak at Cowen & Co. Aerospace and Defense Conference
31 Jan 2012 | 8:00 amBooz Allen Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Sam Strickland will speak about the company's performance at the Cowen and Company 33rd Annual Aerospace/Defense Conference. -
Booz Allen Hosts Community Summit in San Antonio Focused on Transitioning Warriors
23 Jan 2012 | 10:00 pmOn Wednesday, January 25, Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE:BAH) will host an interactive community summit in San Antonio, Texas, focused on transitioning warriors. -
Angela Orebaugh Named as Fellow in Booz Allen's Functional Skills Belting Program
19 Jan 2012 | 6:00 amBooz Allen Hamilton has named Senior Associate Angela Orebaugh a Fellow in the firm's Functional Skills Belting program, which recognizes deep subject matter expertise.
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All Booz Allen Reports & Studies
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The Vigilant Enterprise: An Integrated Approach to Managing Cyber Risk
6 Feb 2012 | 10:00 pmRobust cybersecurity cannot be implemented without effective management of the totality of the cyber milieu--coordinating a broad spectrum of activities involving cyber policies, people, and operations, in addition to technology. -
Rethinking Transportation
1 Feb 2012 | 10:00 pmVP Fred Messina proposes a new approach to transportation congestion at airports though the use of high speed rail. -
Chinese Cyber Espionage: How to Combat the Growing Threat
31 Jan 2012 | 10:00 pmBooz Allen Vice Chairman Mike McConnell joins Michael Chertoff, former director of homeland security, and Bill Lynn, former deputy secretary of defense, in authoring an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal outlining concern about the threat of Chinese cyber espionage and recommending ways to combat it. -
Beyond Mobility: A New Strategy for Sustainable Transportation
26 Jan 2012 | 10:00 pmPrincipal Alan Falk proposes a new approach to transportation development that changes the focus from mobility to sustainable transportation. -
A Global Outlook on Cyber Power
11 Jan 2012 | 10:00 pmAs governments and businesses strive to remain competitive in a cyber era, the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton, set out to understand the importance of cyber power today.
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GigaOM
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Art discovery service Artfinder draws new funding
9 Feb 2012 | 3:30 amArtfinder, the service that helps art lovers discover and share works online, has raised a second round of funding, I’m hearing. The London-based company has quietly closed a fresh injection of funding from Scandinavian VC Northzone, pan-European venture firm Wellington and Silicon Valley’s Greylock Partners — all with an eye to helping build out its online catalog of paintings from artists, galleries and museums all over the world. The company is remaining tight-lipped on the deal, and the terms are not being disclosed, but I’ve confirmed that the round took place at… -
3 key differences between Tesla and Fisker
9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amTesla Roadsters lined up outside of the Model S Beta Customer event This week two Valley-backed and government-supported electric car companies — Tesla and Fisker — have been taking two very different paths: one up and one down. As you read this, I’ll shortly be heading down to Tesla’s design studio to attend the company’s Model X electric SUV launch event. The Model X is the company’s third electric car — which will be one of the first electric SUVs ever in the world — and Tesla could start selling the first Model X cars by the end of 2013. By… -
RSS dashboard company Netvibes acquired by Dassault Systèmes
8 Feb 2012 | 11:32 pmNetvibes, the San Francisco-based company that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS and social media feed dashboards, announced Wednesday evening it has been acquired by French enterprise software firm Dassault Systèmes. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini The deal makes sense on a few levels, as Netvibes’ engineering team is based in France (CEO Freddy Mini splits his time between France and California.) The company has also been around for a while — since 2005 — and in that time has grown from being a personal RSS… -
Report: Google gets Drive cloud storage ready to roll
8 Feb 2012 | 9:41 pmGoogle is finally about to big-foot its way into the cloud storage business, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. With its “Drive” or “G-drive” service — which has been talked about for some time — Google would take on some very popular consumer-oriented cloud storage entrants, notably Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud. People use these services as virtual closets for their digital photos, documents and music. Once their material is in the cloud, they can access it from many devices — in iCloud’s case from Apple devices. -
Forget the People’s Choice Awards, we’ve got Twitter
8 Feb 2012 | 4:09 pmWho needs an awards show to tell us what movies and actors fans prefer when we have Twitter? In yet another partnership with the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, IBM is turning its skills in social-media sentiment analysis to Hollywood awards so the world can see which movies and stars are generating the most buzz on Twitter. IBM has done similar analyses of both the World Series and the Super Bowl, and although they’re no doubt part of a marketing effort to demonstrate its big data prowess, the projects are pretty fun and rather insightful. It’s new Senti-meter, which appears as…
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Twitter Blog
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Post-Bowl Twitter analysis
6 Feb 2012 | 1:06 pmThe results are in: People love to share the experience of watching the Super Bowl with millions of other viewers from around the world. Whether it’s cheering for your team, commenting on the halftime show or discussing the ads, it seems you have a lot to say about this annual tradition—and you’re using Twitter to say it.Here’s a fun fact: in 2008, Twitter’s largest spike in Tweets per second (TPS) during the Super Bowl was just 27. Three years later, fans sent 4,064 TPS, which was the highest TPS for any sporting event at that time.This year, the TPS peak was 12,233 Tweets. The… -
Roar of the crowd: Super Bowl on Twitter
2 Feb 2012 | 11:34 amFrom @TimTebow leading the Denver Broncos to a shocking overtime win (and a new record for sports-related Tweets per second: 9,420) to San Diego Chargers receiver @ericweddle1’s sideline Tweets from the Pro Bowl—we watched all of the NFL post-season’s most memorable moments come alive on Twitter.And while the @Giants and @Patriots’ rematch and halftime show play out on TV, the national conversation is happening well beyond your den: it also happens on Twitter. Follow your favorite NFL players, coaches and commentators during the game, or just search for #SuperBowl to see how everyone… -
Tweets still must flow
26 Jan 2012 | 11:25 amSee below for an update.One year ago, we posted "The Tweets Must Flow," in which we said,“The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for… -
Hack Week @ Twitter
25 Jan 2012 | 12:20 pmHack Week is one of the ways we actively promote innovation through experimentation around the company. This week, a wide range of folks here are taking time away from their day-to-day work to collaborate and develop ideas that they are passionate about. Get comfortable with uncertainty; it leaves room for inspiration. #hackweek— benji shine (@bshine) January 24, 2012Employees across the company have formed nearly 100 teams to work on a variety of projects. Some are developing ways that could make Twitter even easier to use; others are testing out a new feature or tool that people might… -
Twitter Translation Center adds Right-to-Left Languages
25 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amBeginning today, right-to-left languages are now available for volunteers to translate in the Twitter Translation Center, starting with Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu. The Twitter Translation Center takes a crowd-sourced approach to translating and localizing Twitter for people around the world. More than 425,000 volunteers contribute to the Translation Center, and to date have helped make Twitter available in 22 languages. With their help, these will be the next four.As we prepare to add Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu to Twitter, we’ve developed new ways to ensure that Tweets and hashtags…
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twitter - Google News
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Dunne handed Twitter fine - SkySports
9 Feb 2012 | 4:51 amSkySportsDunne handed Twitter fineSkySportsMillwall defender Alan Dunne has been hit with a £2000 fine from the Football Association following comments made on Twitter. The 29-year-old used the social networking site to re-tweet a critical comment about referee Jon Moss.Championship - Dunne fined over Twitter rowYahoo! Eurosport UKall 6 news articles » -
Why Sky News and the BBC are wrong about Twitter - The Guardian
9 Feb 2012 | 4:27 amThe GuardianWhy Sky News and the BBC are wrong about TwitterThe GuardianThe beauty of Twitter is that, like Soylent Green, it's made of people. The best tweeters have personalities, providing more than just a bland regurgitation of the latest headlines. A good journalist on Twitter adds value to the news.Tweeting the newsBBC NewsAnger over Sky News twitter rulesThe AustralianSky's the limit on retweetsFinancial Times (blog)Washington Post (blog) -Forbesall 36 news articles » -
Capello quits: Twitter reaction - GQ.com
9 Feb 2012 | 2:38 amCBC.caCapello quits: Twitter reactionGQ.comQuicker than you can say "clear favourite", Twitter was rife with speculation over whether Redknapp will assume the mantle as Capello's successor, with the newly vindicated Spurs manager supported by the likes of Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand and the "Wow, Capello resigns" - what the celebs and footballers are saying on TwitterMirror.co.ukTroubling times for English footballESPN (blog)Get Harry! Rooney and Rio lead calls for Redknapp to be installed as new Daily MailBBC Sport -The Guardian -The Independentall 3,147… -
LeBron: No regrets over dunk tweet - FOXSports.com
8 Feb 2012 | 8:24 pmNew York Daily NewsLeBron: No regrets over dunk tweetFOXSports.comThousands took to Twitter to comment on the slam last Monday, which saw Griffin rise up and on top of Perkins before powerfully throwing down, with many declaring it one of the greatest of all time. This dunk was nasty, but Blake Griffin had an even New Beef … LeBron Vs Perkins?ESPN (blog)all 90 news articles » -
#SNOOPYVALENTINE: 'Peanuts' trends on Twitter thanks to savvy social-media 'party' - Washington Post (blog)
8 Feb 2012 | 7:32 pm#SNOOPYVALENTINE: 'Peanuts' trends on Twitter thanks to savvy social-media 'party'Washington Post (blog)Because the “Peanuts” franchise teamed with Nickelodeon star Ariana Grande — she of the red-tinted locks on the tween hit “Victorious” — for what they billed as a “Twitter Valentine Party.” 1. Because she plays the teen character Cat Valentine on and more »
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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
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Can You Find Success Following a Firing?
8 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amOne of the most challenging situations a person can find themselves in is trying to secure a new job after they’ve been terminated from a previous position. While there is hope of locating employment following a termination, the odds are definitely lessened for such individuals, who must fight through the stigma of being removed from a company. The bottom line is resiliency and the ability to best explain away why you were let go. For those individuals who have to deal with such a situation, keep several things in mind: Deal with reality – It is never easy when the pink slip arrives and… -
Five Delegation Thinking Traps that Trip Almost Everyone Who Wants to Scale Up
7 Feb 2012 | 5:39 amScaling Up Requires Pushing Down Lower-Level Tasks In the companies I worked with and for, product development schedules were cyclical, with seriously tight deadlines at certain times of the year and a more relaxing pace when those deadline had been achieved. To even out this ebb and flow of deliverables, we would hire freelancers, off-sire staff, and development groups. Even the most entry-level full-time people were managing and influencing the performance of someone else. The ability to influence another person’s performance in positive ways affected how quickly employees could grow… -
Does Your Business Style Connect or Make People Cringe?
6 Feb 2012 | 5:43 amGet Serious Attention In Amanda Valenti’s recent guest post here about Common Writing Mistakes, she made many important points that I encourage small businesses to take to heart. If spelling, grammar, and homophones are not your strong suites, find someone who can edit what you write. It IS worth it because Amanda is absolutely correct – these types of errors will cost you visitors and business. There is something more serious you must be aware of as well and that is what kind of image you are presenting to the world. Specifically, what you consider acceptable regarding profanity,… -
Beach Notes: After the Storm
5 Feb 2012 | 7:11 amby Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh After the storm, creative thinking … With all the driftwood on the beach after recent big storms, some people see debris spoiling the usually pristine sands. Others see a gift for creativity. What do you see when everything goes pear-shaped and plans fall apart? Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh -
What to do while you are waiting
5 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amMany people have to wait a long time for something to happen. Tom Petty was right: The waiting is the hardest part. It’s easy to become impatient, especially when we cannot see any signs that anything is happening. It’s like the seed germinating within the earth. Although there may be millions of chemical reactions going on beneath the surface, from topside, the soil resembles a mute brown plane, keeping its own counsel. Maddening. The urge to dig up the seed to check on its progress is almost overwhelming, and yet, in order for the seed to bear fruit, we must trust that the process is on…
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Social Media Explorer
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What Happened To Saying Something Nice?
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amSocial media has certainly given the power back to the consumer. But sometimes the consumer doesn’t do nice things with that power. While it could be a matter of perception (the overwhelming sentiment of most brands in online conversational analysis is positive), it certainly seems like the only time we take note of brand mentions online is when someone is whining or bitching about them. AT&T is one brand that gets unnecessarily beaten about its head and face a lot online. I’ve never quite understood this, perhaps because I’m A) Practical in nature and understand… -
Get Out of Your Own Way: 5 Excuses Marketers Use to Avoid Social Media ROI
7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amYou see it everywhere. Management teams and marketers desperately want to understand how social media is delivering to the bottom line. Marketers are getting tons of pressure from their management teams and are desperate for a way to prove their strategies are working. With so many chomping at the bit to get at true return on investment (ROI), how has it remained so elusive? Has social media become the marketing channel that we know we need to have, but can’t demonstrate why? What if Social Media ROI was really simple, but we let a bunch of excuses get in our way of measuring it? -
Empowering Your Employees With Social Media
6 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amEditor’s Note: This is a guest post by Emily Eldridge, Senior Vice President of Pure. It’s tempting to think that employees’ online discussions about your company should be curbed. Most company policies in the modern workplace exist to protect us from lawsuits – and to ostensibly protect employees from themselves. While it’s understandable to want control over our corporate image, this fear dimishes our employees’ ability to communicate. A stronger approach is to empower our staff to be brand advocates. Advocate for Your Employees Companies should decide whether their… -
How Small Businesses Can Go Big With Social Media Marketing
6 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amIt’s no secret to many of you — it-getters in the sense that you at least read Social Media Explorer and are likely bought in — that social media marketing can have a huge impact on your business. But we still see more case studies from major brands playing in the social channels than we do small businesses. With the fact that 44 percent of small businesses don’t even have a website, much less social media efforts, it’s no surprise that there’s a gap between success cases in small versus medium and large businesses. Small businesses typically face one… -
Integrating Social Media Across The Organization
3 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amOperationalizing social media across the organization is perhaps on of the most challenging aspects of social media for companies and brands. Too many look at social media as a consumer-facing communications channel and forget that departments from HR to research and development and even internal collaboration among divisions can all be helped by social technologies and strategies. We’re addressing that issue at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth in several discussions, one major one led by Zena Weist, Vice-President of Digital Strategy for Edelman. Her experience at brands like Embarq, Sprint…
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Brian Solis
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Meet the Mother of All Processes
8 Feb 2012 | 10:32 amGuest post by John M. Bernard, author of the new book, Business at the Speed of Now, and Chairman and Founder of Mass Ingenuity. Imagine going to work in one of Henry Ford’s factories a century ago, proud that management referred to you a “hand” or a “hammer” or maybe even a “wrench.” The labels reflected Ford’s emphasis on automation and management’s view of laborers as mere cogs in the machine. Screw this nut onto that bolt; weld this strap to that frame; do it over and over and over again until your brain froze with boredom. Of course, management needed workers to get the… -
2011 Was the Year of the Mobile Consumer, What’s in Store for 2012? Value.
7 Feb 2012 | 10:10 amChris Silva, my colleague at Altimeter Group, released a useful report today that I wanted to share with you here. Mobile is important and I believe you know this. However, when we consider mobile, we often think about the experience when and where it begins. But, we often miss the opportunity to lead a more meaningful journey as it may travel from small screen to larger screens across laptops, desktops and beyond. And along the way, we must now determine our role in this journey to provide information, shape decisions, and influence behavior. In Chris’ report, he reminds us that 2011… -
Season 2 Finale: How Yamaha invests in new customer experiences
3 Feb 2012 | 10:52 amThis is it…the Season Finale! And, what a way to end Season 2 of (R)evolution…. In this episode, Yamaha shares what is by far the most expansive view of disruptive technology’s impact on business infrastructure and culture on the show to date. What you’ll see is a genuine discussion with Jeff Hawley and Rick Williams of Yamaha explore how an already successful business is exploring new opportunities to better define the customer experience before, during and after transactions. It comes down to workflow. Nowadays, it either works for you or works against you. Here,… -
Smartphones, Tablets, PCs, The Devices People Use to Discover Information in Social Media (and when)
2 Feb 2012 | 3:13 pmMy friends over at bit.ly published an interesting graph that reveals the devices as well as the days/times that people use different devices and how and when they consume information. As you can imagine, it’s across the board, but as you can see, there are waves that every device follows, except the desktop. Desktops are of course the devices that we can assume people use during work hours. As such, they are most heavily used on weekdays before noon. Interestingly enough, phone traffic peaks at about the same times, but not to similar effects. What’s also telling is that tablets… -
What’s Love Got to Do with It? The 3P’s of Identity
2 Feb 2012 | 6:16 amGuest post by Allison Cerra, author of Identity Shift With the 2012 Presidential election looming, there’s no shortage of polls to help narrow the field of candidates. I find a recent one from Fox News to be particularly fascinating. Among other questions, Republican primary voters were asked which Republican presidential candidate is most likeable and which they would most trust with a nuclear weapon. While Newt Gingrich scored at the top of the heap in earning the trust vote, he scored only marginally well on the likeability scale. The topic was discussed on the network’s “Fox &…
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Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog
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Something Old, Something New, Something Blue
6 Feb 2012 | 9:04 amHey there! So I really wanted to add the Something Borrowed option too, but couldn’t think of anything, so the three in the title will have to do. So… It’s been a little quiet here last week, since Kevin Green’s great guest post about LinkedIn (and if you haven’t read it yet, you’re missing a great ongoing discussion in the comments). But there’s a good reason for that, which is where the Something New and Something Old part comes in. And yes, I’m the something old part in the image at the start of this post… Last Thursday, February 2nd at… -
If LinkedIn.com Fails in the Social Network Forest, Will It Make a Sound?
30 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pmThis is a guest post by Kevin Green. Would anyone be really upset if LinkedIn’s .com destination up and disappeared tomorrow? It’s safe to assume that recruiters scouring the site for new talent and current shareholders would be pretty peeved, even if the stock (LNKD) is trading at half price from the IPO. But how would the lack of an online destination really impact everyday users? Users that are tethered to their mobile phones and enamored by the promise of applications, innovation and integration? Of the top 10 most trafficked social networking sites, LinkedIn is a bit of an… -
Because We Never Failed
28 Jan 2012 | 7:45 pmAs children, we have unbridled aspirations. We dream to be astronauts. We dream to be explorers. We dream to be princesses. We dream to be the world’s greatest sports star. We dream. Looking back at our childhood dreams, we rarely feel we failed because we didn’t become the astronaut. Or marry the prince. Or found new lands. Or had stadiums cheering our name. Instead, we look back and remember a time when dreams had no limits, and anything was possible, even if (in reality) it never was. Yet we never use the fail word. Because, in truth, we never failed. Just because something… -
Collaborative Marketing and the Natural Progression to Real Customer Satisfaction
26 Jan 2012 | 12:52 pmI’ve been thinking a lot about collaborative marketing lately, and how we can turn co-existing businesses more into partners and less about missed opportunities. I think there’s a great untapped market for someone that really wants to grab collaborative marketing and run with it. For example – imagine you’re going on a trip. You have to fly to get there, so there are a few processes you need to go through before, during and after: Buying your ticket. Driving to the airport. In-flight activities. Hotel or accommodation when you land. Rental car. These are just the basics – I’m… -
The Only Thing That’s Dead Is Your Crappy “Everything Is Dead” Meme
22 Jan 2012 | 8:06 pmI’m a little tired. Not physically. I could always do with a little more sleep, but then so can everyone. No. I’m more tired about the constant “The End of PR”, “The End of Marketing”, “The End of Print” and “The End of Advertising” missives that seem to be flying about at the minute. I can’t open my email subscriptions without the latest link shouting out “The end of…. Where now for Industry X?”. I’m an avid blog reader and use Alltop regularly to find interesting stories from my industry and beyond. Yet it seems that there’s an “End of…” blog…
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"business intelligence" - Google News
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Project management salaries show growth, career potential - ITWorld Canada
9 Feb 2012 | 5:14 amProject management salaries show growth, career potentialITWorld CanadaProject management may not be the most exciting job in IT these days, especially when most of the talk about hot IT jobs pertains to software developers, information security professionals and business intelligence analysts.and more » -
Betfair real time analytics shortens odds on customer spending - ComputerworldUK
8 Feb 2012 | 10:02 pmComputingBetfair real time analytics shortens odds on customer spendingComputerworldUKBy Leo King | Computerworld UK | Published 06:01, 09 February 12 Betfair is in the midst of implementing a large business intelligence programme based on Oracle software, aimed at improving its conversion of customer website visits into more spending.Betfair boosts revenue with Oracle analyticsComputingall 2 news articles » -
What I Found Interesting About Gartner BI Summit 2012 London - Smart Data Collective
8 Feb 2012 | 5:57 pmWhat I Found Interesting About Gartner BI Summit 2012 LondonSmart Data CollectiveHere are some quick thoughts about what I thought was interesting / different about the Gartner BI Summit 2012 compared to previous years: It's no longer Business Intelligence! Gartner has bowed down to the market trend and dropped the unwieldy and more » -
Five Ways to Advance Your Small Business Using Business Intelligence - Newswise (press release)
8 Feb 2012 | 10:54 amFive Ways to Advance Your Small Business Using Business IntelligenceNewswise (press release)If you don't know everything you would like to know about how to grow your small business — who are your best customers, what is your most profitable product or service, what's the best location for your business — you need business intelligence (BI).and more » -
Presto, chango: Business intelligence software with a mobile makeover - GCN.com
8 Feb 2012 | 8:43 amPresto, chango: Business intelligence software with a mobile makeoverGCN.comBy Stephen Swoyer An update that JackBe Inc. unveiled late in 2011 for its Presto business intelligence (BI) platform demonstrates just how far it's come since the days focusing on AJAX and SOA application development. Nowadays, JackBe is focused
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The Numbers Guy
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In Implant Controversy, Sure Numbers Are Scarce
3 Feb 2012 | 7:11 pmMy print column examines the fuzzy numbers behind the controversy over a French company’s implants, distributed around the world and found by French health authorities to pose a relatively large risk of rupture. Yet authorities in other countries, including the U.K., say there isn’t enough evidence to demonstrate a higher incidence of implant failure. Dominique Maraninchi, general director of France’s Agency for the Safety of Health Products, said the agency has gotten reports of rupture from the implants made by Poly Implant Protheses (PIP) at roughly double the rate of… -
The Crime That’s Counted
27 Jan 2012 | 6:19 pmMy print column examines the preferred benchmark crime of criminologists for tracking and comparing illegal and violent activity: homicide. It has its drawbacks, and vagaries, which I explore in the column, but remains more concrete than other crimes. “In general, the more serious the offense, the better the statistics,” said Anthony LaRose, criminologist at the University of Tampa. Homicide figures, said crime researcher Robert R. Friedmann, “are considered as close to reliable as one can get.” Friedmann, professor emeritus of criminal justice at Georgia State… -
Private Equity’s Job Record
20 Jan 2012 | 6:59 pmMy print column examines some numbers that may help shed light on the debate, central to the race for the Republican presidential nomination, about private equity’s impact on jobs. A recent academic study has added numbers to the discussion, showing the extent to which companies bought by private-equity firms accelerate both the creation and destruction of jobs, compared to similar companies that aren’t bought out. Though the study has been praised by some economists for improving on earlier ones, it has some limitations. Because of lag time in gathering statistics, and the need… -
Elections Change Rules, Face Unforeseen Consequences
13 Jan 2012 | 5:13 pmMy print column examines rule changes for this year’s voting for nominees for the Academy Award for best picture. The Academy must balance competing priorities in constructing its voting procedure, and this year it changed the rules to place more emphasis on first-place votes. Award analysts report that those, and in some cases second-place votes, will determine the nominees, which can number between five and 10. These competing priorities, and the many possible voting methods, make for a fertile area of mathematical study. Donald Saari, a mathematician at the University of California,… -
When Polls Turn Up the Wrong Number
6 Jan 2012 | 6:35 pmMy print column examines the sizable gap between what the public believes to be crucial numbers affecting their lives, and the best estimates of what those numbers really are. This gap worries some political scientists. “Many use these faulty perceptions as evidence in deciding which policies or candidates to support or which political actions to take,” said Daniel Herda, who has studied people’s beliefs about the extent of immigration in their country. “Unfortunately, most are not critical consumers of knowledge and rarely seek out multiple sources of information to…
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Facebook Blog
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Introducing New Apps for Timeline
18 Jan 2012 | 5:26 pmNew timeline apps are now available from Foodspotting, Foodily, Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Rotten Tomatoes, Pose, Kobo, Gogobot, TripAdvisor, and others. You can now enhance your timeline with apps that help you tell your story, whether you love to cook, eat, travel, run, or review movies.Apps bring your timeline to lifeOnce you've added an app, you can begin updating your timeline with your activities as they happen. For example, if you love design, shopping or fashion, you can add the Pinterest or Pose apps to make your favorite items part of your timeline.If you love to cook, you can add… -
Listen to Music With Your Friends
12 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amMusic is one of the most powerful and fun ways to connect. Whether it's at a concert with a bunch of people or on a long car ride with your best buddy, we love listening to music with our friends. But what if you could listen to music with your friends when you're alone, like at work, at home or on the go?Today, with music services on Facebook, there's a new way to listen with friends. This feature lets you listen along with any of your friends who are currently listening to music. You can also listen together in a group while one of your friends plays DJ. You can listen to the same song,… -
Timeline: Now Available on Mobile
15 Dec 2011 | 10:00 amUPDATE on Sunday, December 18th 2011: We're excited to announce that timeline is now available on Facebook for iOS version 4.1, for iPhone and iPod Touch devices.Originally Published on Thursday, December 15, 2011: Timeline gives you an easy way to see the things you've shared, and collect all your best moments in a single place. In addition to making timeline available on the web, today we're also launching timeline on Android and m.facebook.com.Mobile timeline starts with your unique cover photo. As you scroll down, you'll see your posts, photos and life events as they happened, back to the… -
Timeline: Now Available Worldwide
15 Dec 2011 | 4:30 amUPDATE on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012: Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it. You can learn more about these new features by taking the quick tour available at the top of your timeline. If you want to get timeline now, go to the Introducing Timeline page and click "Get… -
A Faster Facebook for Android
7 Dec 2011 | 11:30 amToday we're launching an updated Facebook app for Android. It's now quicker and easier to view photos, get messages and navigate around the app.Photos get betterPhotos and albums are up to two times faster than the previous Android app. It's also easier to share photos, view comments and edit captions on the go.View photos with tags, comments and likes Messages on top Your messages and notifications are now at the top of your screen. You can respond to friends and stay updated without leaving the page you're on.Get notifications and messages at the top of every screenMenu on the side You can…
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The Official Google Blog
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Going gothic with bestselling author Anne Rice
8 Feb 2012 | 9:00 amBestselling Southern American author Anne Rice is coming to Google headquarters to discuss her latest book, The Wolf Gift, on Friday, February 24 at 10am PT. One of the most popular authors of contemporary fiction, Rice has bewitched readers with her vampire chronicles, tales of the Mayfair Witches and other metaphysical gothic fiction for more than thirty years. Submit your question online between now and Feb 23 at midnight PT, and it could be asked during the Interview with the Vampire—we mean, the interview with Anne Rice. To watch the live broadcast, tune in to the Authors@Google… -
Introducing Chrome for Android
7 Feb 2012 | 9:40 amIn 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go,… -
What’s your X? Amplifying technology moonshots
6 Feb 2012 | 6:10 pmLast week, we ran an experiment. We hosted a gathering, called “Solve for X,” for experienced entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists from around the world. The event focused on proposing and discussing technological solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. Discussions began last week with this small event, and now we invite others to join the conversation on our website and our Google +page. The Solve for X gathering, which we co-hosted with Eric Schmidt, is a place to celebrate a concept we champion internally and that we believe will inspire many others: technology… -
Supporting U.S. student veterans with a new scholarship
6 Feb 2012 | 3:03 pmThe newest addition to the Google scholarships family is the Google Student Veterans of America (SVA) Scholarship. We’re partnering with the nonprofit Student Veterans of America (SVA) to support their mission of providing veterans with the resources, support and advocacy they need to succeed in higher education and throughout their careers. The Google SVA Scholarship is available to student veterans who are pursuing degrees in computer science and related fields in the U.S. for the 2012-2013 academic year. In addition to the financial award, recipients will be invited to attend the annual… -
Super Bowl XLVI: Mobile, Manning and Madonna
6 Feb 2012 | 6:35 amNow that the final Super Bowl touchdown has been scored, the dip bowl wiped clean and the last of the chicken wings devoured, we’re taking a look at some game-day search trends to see what football fans were searching for this year. As the Giants and Patriots battled it out on the field yesterday, U.S. viewers multi-tasked, watching the game on television and also going online more than ever before, turning to their smartphones and tablets to look up players, halftime show performers and their favorite Super Bowl commercials. In fact, around 41% of searches related to [Super Bowl ads] that…
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The LinkedIn Blog
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A More Secure LinkedIn Browsing Experience
7 Feb 2012 | 1:42 pmWe are happy to announce LinkedIn now supports https for your browsing experience. This is currently an “opt in” feature that will be rolled out gradually in the next coming weeks to all of our members. Serving our site over https is a key step to enhance the security for all of you, especially for those of you using public networks such as open WiFi hotspots. Turning on https is very easy. Go to Settings -> Account -> Manage Security Settings Check the box and save changes. (You may be asked to login before accessing the Settings page). At any time, you can turn off https… -
Make Cupid’s Arrow Hit the Mark: Tips and Tricks for Snagging a Sweetheart AND a Sweet Gig on Valentine’s Day
7 Feb 2012 | 7:29 amEd. Note: With Valentine’s Day around the corner, Nicole Williams captures some ways to put your search skills to good use in finding your dream job instead! It’s been a few years since I’ve been on the dating scene, but I never departed for a date without the essential precursor to heading out with any new beau: doing the Google check. It hasn’t taken long for this stealth, inexpensive and revealing trend to hit the job market, and while the predominant talk on the street has been about what not to do (those pictures of the holiday party shenanigans). The good news is that I have a… -
The Rise of Pinterest — and Other Top Stories on LinkedIn This Week
3 Feb 2012 | 11:52 amFirst, some housekeeping: Every Wednesday night, we run the report on what stories were most shared by LinkedIn’s 135-plus million members. That means the news of Facebook’s coming IPO — announced Wednesday, Feb. 1 — had only one day to attempt to rocket to the top of our rankings. A Mashable story about the IPO came close, but didn’t have enough juice to unseat an infographic looking at the rise of Pinterest. That’s fitting, actually, as the top two stories show how fluid the current business world is. Facebook is the giant today. But new platforms like… -
What Makes Apple Tick? Adam Lashinsky Tells the Inside Story
30 Jan 2012 | 5:04 pmEd. note: If you’ve read some of the recent coverage around Adam Lashinsky‘s recent comments on what makes Apple tick, you may want to check out the entire interview below. For large periods of my professional life, I worked at Fortune — as a writer, editor and then as editor of Fortune.com. One of the many great pleasures of the place was working with Adam Lashinsky, a seasoned writer and senior editor-at-large. Each day, he’d call from his office in San Francisco and we’d talk about the business world, office politics, which execs were headed up and which down. -
The Dire Outlook For Middle Class Jobs in the U.S. — And Other Top Stories on LinkedIn This Week
27 Jan 2012 | 8:40 amIs SOPA really dead? If you believe Mashable’s headline – in what is our most shared story of the week – the Stop Online Piracy Act has moved on to its final resting place. But if you read the words of the act’s chief sponsor, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, it sounds more like SOPA is just getting smelling salts in the corner. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach,” says Smith. “Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while American innovators and job creators are under attack.” This is the second week in a row that SOPA news has topped the professional conversation.
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Yahoo! Search Blog
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Yahoo! Search Trends: New England Patriots Rush Ahead of New York Giants with 50% More Yahoo! Searches
2 Feb 2012 | 7:00 pmAs the nation awaits Super Bowl 46, people are heading to Yahoo! to get the inside scoop on one of the most popular sporting events of the year! Yahoo! searches this week for “Indianapolis Super Bowl 2012” are up 1,743%. Who Will Win? If online searches were an indicator of who might win this year’s Super Bowl, the Patriots would come out on top – the New England Patriots had 50% more searches this year on Yahoo! compared to the New York Giants. Brady vs. Manning: Whether it’s his endorsement with UGG or his relationship with Gisele Bundchen, Tom Brady has dominated searches this… -
The Times They Are a Changing…and These Apps They are A-Going
27 Jan 2012 | 12:15 pmAs all of you know, the mobile space moves incredibly fast. Our users are changing, and their needs are changing. New devices and new technologies are coming to market seemingly every day, not to mention the rate at which app stores are growing. All of us are looking for the freshest, most interesting apps and content all day, every day. At Yahoo!, we’re focused on creating deeply personal digital experiences and there’s no doubt that one of the biggest, if not the biggest, priorities for us is to bring those products and ideas to the mobile user, whether they’re using feature phones,… -
Yahoo! Search Trends: Macworld 2012
25 Jan 2012 | 3:38 pmThe “iPhone” was the top searched term in 2011 — will this year’s Macworld reveal yet another spell-binding tech game changer that propels Apple to the top of searches in 2012? As you consider stories focused on the news that comes out of this year’s Macworld, we wanted to share a few tidbits about what people are searching for online related to this year’s show. So, what is captivating the attention of Apple addicts and pushing them toward Yahoo! for more information? Macworld/iWorld 2012:Let’s face it, with people gearing up for the latest Mac news,… -
Inside Yahoo! Search: What’s Next?
12 Jan 2012 | 2:02 pmSince the start of the Internet, Yahoo! has been dedicated to transforming online search, and continues to focus on what’s next. We believe the next three to five years in search are going to inspire a dramatically different experience designed for an even more inquisitive and information-thirsty users. [Photo: Yahoo! Homepage circa 1995] With more interactive ways to consume content in the form of images, videos, apps, music, social media feeds, maps and shopping, people are demanding more from their search results. Weeding through a page of blue links is no longer the answer. There is… -
Yahoo! Search Trends: Happy New Year – now on to the resolutions!
3 Jan 2012 | 10:12 amTop searched diets on Yahoo! in the past 7 days: 1. Atkins diet 2. HCG diet 3. Paleo diet 4. Low Carb diet 5. Pink Method diet 6. 17 day diet 7. Dukan diet 8. Cabbage Soup diet 9. Vegan diet 10. Dr. Oz diet Interesting diet trends on Yahoo!: · Searches on Yahoo! for “weight loss plans” are up 12749% this week o 73% of searches come from females this week · 17 day diet plan searches are up 915% on Yahoo! this week · …
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Branding Strategy Insider
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Time For Brand Marketers To Lead A Comeback
7 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pmIt’s a good thing the game between the NFL's New England Patriots and the New York Giants was exciting because this year’s Super Bowl commercials were dull, and what a weird thing to say about the Super Bowl. Generally, it’s the very opposite of that. Perhaps it’s best not to read too much into Super Bowl ads vying for viral buzz (many of which adopted a new pre-game, social media preview approach to generate buzz, albeit some have argued it was poorly done). But there was one thing that stood out. In a noticeable departure from the tradition of Super Bowl Sunday, this year’s crop… -
When To Reposition Your Brand
6 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pmBrand repositioning is necessary when one or more of the following conditions exist: Your brand has a bad, confusing or nonexistent image. The primary benefit your brand "owns" has evolved from a differentiating benefit to a cost-of-entry benefit. Your organization is significantly altering its strategic direction. Your organization is entering new businesses and the current positioning is no longer appropriate. A new competitor with a superior value proposition enters your industry. Competition has usurped your brand's position or rendered it ineffectual. Your organization has acquired a… -
How To Transform An Under-Performing Brand
5 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pmOnce the decision has been made to continue to invest in an under-performing brand, brand owners will be faced with a new set of challenges completely foreign to them. The temptation is always to do more of what got you there. That rarely works when brands face reinvention. By that I mean brand relevance. The main reason brands begin to under perform is that people no longer care. When that happens, like it or not, you’ll be starting over from scratch. This is a hard pill for brand owners to swallow, particularly if the brand was once an iconic leader in its category. For brand owners… -
Logo Design Requirements
4 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pmA brand’s identity is a combination of visual, auditory, and other sensory components that create recognition, aid in memory encoding and decoding, represent the brand promise, provide differentiation, create communications synergy, and are proprietary. The logo is one key component. Here is what we look for when we evaluate logo design: Memorable – highest recognition and recall (both of which can be tested for) Including recognition at maximum distances (can be tested for) Aesthetically pleasing Timeless quality - the logo will not become dated Appropriate for the product/service… -
Brand Tagline Requirements
3 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pmIn definitive global research, The Conference Board has found the development and consistent use of a tagline to be a key factor in brand strategy success. A tagline that succinctly and powerfully communicates the brand’s promise is one of the quickest, easiest and least expensive ways to communicate the brand’s new position to internal and external audiences. It should consistently accompany the brand’s logo in situations outlined by the brand architecture. I believe that developing brand taglines (and elevator speeches) are the most important next steps one can take once a brand has…
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IAB SmartBrief
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Forrester cites the "big 4" of e-commerce
8 Feb 2012 | 8:21 amAmazon, Google, Facebook and Apple combine to influence online retail at different points, per a Forrester report. -More- -
Unity Technologies to make games available on LG smart TVs
8 Feb 2012 | 8:21 amUnity Technologies has agreed to make video games created with its Unity development platform available for playing on new In -More- -
Survey: Cautious acceptance of personalized search
8 Feb 2012 | 8:21 amIn an eMarketer survey, more than half of respondents said they welcomed the idea of personalized search engine results produ -More- -
AKQA turns to France as inspiration for Nike
8 Feb 2012 | 8:21 amWith its flair for style and a surging and sophisticated market of Web-savvy smartphone users, France is deemed by AKQA to be -More- -
Mobile video ads are gaining ground in numbers, effectiveness
8 Feb 2012 | 8:21 am-More-
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Google News Blog
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Sending us feedback is now much easier!
12 Jan 2012 | 5:36 pmPosted by Mariko Suzuki, Google News Strategist Do you have any feedback or suggestions you would like to share with the Google News Team? We always love to hear from you, so we made submitting feedback much easier. Simply click the “Send Feedback” link at the bottom of Google News pages. The Google Feedback gadget will appear, and you can leave us general comments, problem reports or feature suggestions. The feedback gadget will also help you send us a screenshot if you want to draw our attention to a specific aspect of the site. Use the tool to highlight an area relevant to your… -
Announcing the 2012 Google News elections section
4 Jan 2012 | 3:07 pmPosted by Scott Zuccarino, Product Manager Who just endorsed whom? What do the latest polls say? How much money did they raise this quarter? Keeping up with the 2012 elections in the U.S. and staying abreast of breaking developments can be quite a task in today’s fast-paced news cycle. So today, we’re excited to continue our tradition of supporting you during elections season. Google News is launching an Elections section on its homepage which will organize and present elections coverage as it grows through the general election -- Tuesday, November 6, 2012. The Elections section will be… -
More Powerful +1s on Google News
22 Nov 2011 | 6:10 amPosted by Erich Schmidt, Software Engineer Over the past few months, myriad sites across the web (including Google News) have adopted the +1 button to help start conversations. But there hasn’t been an easy way for signed-in users to see what news articles your friends are enjoying -- until now. Starting today, the Spotlight section will sometimes include articles that your Gmail contacts and people in your Google+ circles have publicly +1’d. You can see their profile pictures and click through to their Google+ profiles, just like on Social Search. And of course you can +1 the stories… -
Highlighting journalists on Google News
2 Nov 2011 | 1:36 pmPosted by Eric Weigle, Software Engineer Great journalism takes more than facts and figures -- it takes skilled reporters to knit together compelling stories. Knowing who wrote an article can help readers understand the article's context and quality, see more articles by that person, and even interact directly with them. Whole communities can form around prominent contributors, which is why we started showing information about content creators next to their material in Google Search. Accordingly, Google News is rolling out more information about journalists over the next several weeks,… -
More points of view on Google News
28 Oct 2011 | 3:28 pmBy Jayakumar Hoskere, Software Engineer When a big story breaks, there are often over a thousand articles written about the news event. At Google News, we work hard to surface the most relevant and interesting content to you -- so you can spend less time sorting through thousands of articles, and more time consuming news from a range of diverse perspectives. For instance, since introducing expandable stories, we have added additional labels to call out special types of articles in many editions. These labels are designed to highlight different content types on Google News, and show you…
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PUBLIC RELATIONS NEWS - Google News
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Oak Street Funding Selects Clarus Communications to Lead Public Relations Efforts - MarketWatch (press release)
9 Feb 2012 | 3:22 amOak Street Funding Selects Clarus Communications to Lead Public Relations EffortsMarketWatch (press release)CHICAGO, IL and INDIANAPOLIS, IN, Feb 09, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Clarus Communications ( www.teamclarus.com ), a business-to-business (B2B) public relations agency focused on driving revenue growth for clients, has been tapped to lead public and more » -
Premier puts Hydro's PR push under scrutiny - Victoria Times Colonist
9 Feb 2012 | 2:58 amPremier puts Hydro's PR push under scrutinyVictoria Times ColonistHydro is seeking up to 10 research companies and 15 public relations companies that it intends to "pre-qualify" for work in the coming year. Some will do polling and surveys, while others will write press releases, deal with media issues, BC Hydro seeks PR help before hiking ratesVancouver Sunall 7 news articles » -
Chumash tribe's public voice resigns - Santa Ynez Valley News
9 Feb 2012 | 12:22 amChumash tribe's public voice resignsSanta Ynez Valley NewsAfter almost a decade as the public voice, and many times the face, of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, Frances Snyder has resigned from her position as the tribe's public relations director. A tribal member, Snyder began handling public and more » -
Patty Briguglio of MMI Public Relations Speaks at Virginia Society of ... - PR.com (press release)
9 Feb 2012 | 12:09 amPatty Briguglio of MMI Public Relations Speaks at Virginia Society of PR.com (press release)Raleigh, NC, February 09, 2012 --(PR.com)-- MMI Public Relations (www.mmipublicrelations.com), a Raleigh-based, full-service public relations firm, has announced that Patty Briguglio, president of the firm, presented a review of crisis public relations and more » -
PR students implement plan to battle childhood obesity - Setonian
8 Feb 2012 | 10:44 pmPR students implement plan to battle childhood obesitySetonianThe National Bateman Public Relations Campaign Case Study Competition is focusing, this year, on raising awareness about childhood obesity. Two teams of University students have entered the competition. The teams will campaign this month in the South and more »
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Peter Shankman
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Sometimes…
7 Feb 2012 | 4:22 amIt’s 7:20am, and I’m at Newark Airport for a flight to Vegas to speak at the Social Media Strategies Summit, as well as keynote another private conference, and have a meeting with a major hotel group. Knowing I wanted to work all five hours of my flight, I got to sleep super-early last night, sure that a solid eight hours would guarantee my alertness for the entire fight, allowing me to be super-work-like, and get a ton of stuff done. Sadly, as you can see from below, this won’t be the case. Sigh. Have a good day, everyone. -
It should always be about them – Except when you’re clueless
6 Feb 2012 | 8:36 amSo I get an email today, criticizing me for congratulating the Giants in the HARO this morning by using the term “my NY Giants.” Apparently, I’m pompous and self-centered for saying “My” as opposed to “Our.” I responded that today, after an awesome win, I think everyone in NYC considers the Giants “theirs,” and more importantly, is that really the most important thing for them to worry about in their busy day? To which I get this vitriolic reply, stating that I’m completely full of shit, and that I’m nothing but a braggart, who… -
When Trying New Things in PR doesn’t work
3 Feb 2012 | 1:40 pmToday, Woody Harrelson’s PR agent decided to “kick things up a notch.” Instead of a typical press event for Woody’s new film “Rampart,” this press agent decided to show his level of “internet prowess” and offer Woody Harrelson up for interviews on Reddit, one of the most “real” Internet sites out there. (By “real,” I mean that it’s pretty much full of people who have their bullshit filters on a constant “ten” and can pick out when something is hype in about two seconds. So, of course, they did. You can… -
A thought on Television and Windows
2 Feb 2012 | 8:52 amWhile I’m sitting in my room at the W London, looking out the windows and also zoning out to CNN, it occurs to me – Why don’t hotels simply install flat windows that also have TVs in them – They use illumination-blocking technology that came out ten years ago and is hella cheap now to darken the window a bit the moment the TV is turned on. They save on precious room space, and it looks super-cool. Allows for much, much bigger screens, and when people want to go to sleep, they just shut off the tv, and the curtains come down and darken the room. Am I the only weirdo who… -
EXCLUSIVE: Ever Want to Play Angry Birds in Real Life?
30 Jan 2012 | 2:15 amAny Angry Birds junkies in the house? “Hi, my name is Peter, and I’ve spent countless hours playing Angry Birds, when I should have been working.” I think we can all relate. But rather than give you the guidance and help you need to break your Angry Birds addiction, I’m here to feed it. What if you didn’t just have to play Angry Birds on your iPad, Droid, iPhone, Browser, Computer, or other device? What if you could play it live, in real life, in your living room? Flinging Angry Birds into houses of Pigs right from your couch? Or on the Kitchen Table? Flinging…
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davefleet.com
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Trust in 2012: 4 Implications for Social Media
2 Feb 2012 | 9:00 amEdelman recently released the results of its 2012 Trust Barometer survey. Given the events of the last year, it’s hardly surprising that trust is decreasing pretty much across the board. That is, except in Canada. Results of the 2012 Canadian Trust Barometer Today we announced the Canadian results of the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer at an event in Toronto. A few highlights from the Canadian survey: “A person like me” and regular employees both saw the biggest increase in trust in Canadian Barometer history. “A person like me” in particular has re-emerged as one… -
Dx3 Presentation: Blogger Relations – Getting the Insiders Onside
30 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amLast week I had the pleasure of presenting a revised approach to blogger relations, to a packed room at the inaugural Dx3 Canada digital trade show. Following the presentation, several attendees reached out to me asking that I post the presentation online. So, here it is. Getting the Insiders Onside – Communicating with Bloggers and Influencers View more presentations from Dave Fleet. Key points from the presentation: The blogger relations process is broken. It focuses on transactions between bloggers and PR people, and is overly adversarial both due to its nature and the way that… -
Seven Social Media Insights on CES
18 Jan 2012 | 4:00 amBy now you’ve probably had more than your fill of analysis from the many, many products and announcements revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Now that I’ve had a few days to decompress, I thought I’d do something slightly different and provide a few insights from a social perspective. CES is not a social media conference (duh) CES is, first and foremost, an electronics show. It attracts a very different audience compared to conferences like SXSW or BlogWorld. While those social-focused conferences are fertile ground when it comes to social media programs, CES is… -
My 2012 Reading Challenge: 36 Books
9 Jan 2012 | 4:00 amFor the last two years I’ve set myself a challenge – one I adopted from Julien Smith - to read at least 26 books per year. That’s one every two weeks. In 2010 I managed 26 books; last year I managed 32. Stand-out books for me last year included: Fiction: The Hound of the Baskervilles A Game of Thrones Series (4-Book Set) The Book of Lost Things The Last Ringbearer Non-Fiction: Workarounds That Work (here’s my review) Game-Based Marketing Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management (review coming soon) Brand Turnaround: How Brands Gone Bad Returned to Glory and the 7… -
Six important shifts for social media in 2012
31 Dec 2011 | 4:00 amIt’s hard to believe we’re about to tick over to another calendar year. So, as usual, I got to thinking about the shifts I think companies need to make in their social media activities in the next year. These aren’t necessarily trends that are already happening (although I’d like to say they are), but they’re certainly where my head is at and hopefully where others are, too. Here are six shifts I hope to see in social media use by business in 2012. Better objective-setting Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a slow maturation in the way companies…
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Fast Company
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Groupon Reports Surprise Q4 Loss, Google Close To Launching Google Drive, Foxconn Servers Hacked
9 Feb 2012 | 4:27 amBreaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day.Flipkart Acquires LetsBuy. Two of India's biggest web retailers have joined forces. Flipkart, India's biggest ecommerce brand, has acquired LetsBuy.com, a company that's taken the lead in sales of electronics. The deal comes just a week after Amazon.com launched their aggregator site Junglee.com in the subcontinent. --NS--Updated 7:30 a.m. ESTGroupon Reports Surprise Q4 Loss. Groupon reported a net loss for its first Q4 earnings report, blaming it largely on high starter international taxes ($34 million) on the new… -
3 Ways To Deal With A No-Win Situation
8 Feb 2012 | 12:41 pmIf you're a Star Trek aficionado, then not only have you heard of the "Kobayashi Maru Scenario" but you can recount it easily to others. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, the Kobayashi Maru Scenario is a no-win situation cadets encounter at the series' Starfleet Academy. In it, the cadet is in command of the Federation ship, responsible for rescuing another Federation vessel (the Kobayashi Maru) from attacking Klingon Warbirds. If the cadet chooses not to save the ship in distress, it will be destroyed with all hands. However, if he goes to the ship's aid, he will precipitate… -
Amazon Inks Deal With Viacom, Sprint Announces iPhone-led Q4 Highs And Lows, Japan Targets 30% Cut In Rare Earth Use
8 Feb 2012 | 12:41 pmBreaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day.Amazon Inks Deal With Viacom For Video Streaming. Amazon has plumped up its Prime Instant video streaming catalog with a pile new TV shows, courtesy of its new agreement with entertainment hub Viacom. The deal brings up its video count to over 15,000, putting it in a stronger position to compete against the recently formed Redbox/Verizon double act and traditional TV destroyer Netflix. --NS --Updated 9:50 a.m. ESTSprint's Q4 Sees iPhone Led Highs And Lows. Sprint is announcing results coming off its first… -
How To Find Your Next $140 Million
8 Feb 2012 | 11:26 amI recently spent the day with author Andrea Kates, who was challenged to connect the relevance of the working philosophy found in her best-selling book, Find Your Next, with real solutions that can help move businesses forward. Working with the executive team of a national restaurant chain on this particular day, Kates asked herself, "Which single metric could they focus on to yield the most growth for the company?" Her conclusion was that of all the metrics and contributing factors, it all boiled down to a dogged pursuit of increasing guest frequency. She learned that an increase of one… -
New Details On Redbox-Verizon Streaming Service, Netflix Competitor
8 Feb 2012 | 8:33 amYesterday Coinstar, the parent company of Redbox, the 35,400-kiosk-strong movie-rental service, announced a joint venture with Verizon to provide a subscription-based streaming video service, thus positioning the companies in direct competition with Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Coinstar also announced that it would acquire NCR's entertainment business, which includes its former rival Blockbuster Express, adding more than 9,000 kiosks to Redbox's roster around the country. Now new details about the combined companies' plans have emerged. First, it's clear the companies are adamant about bringing…
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VentureBeat
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Nivio pulls in $21M to make cloud computing cheaper and more student-friendly
9 Feb 2012 | 4:00 amCloud computing and desktop virtualization are rapidly growing trends in the tech world, and one company has spent a considerable amount of time developing this technology. Nivio, which started as an idea in 2004, announced today it has received $21 million in its first round of venture capital funding. Nivio lets you store up to 10GB of your documents, music, and movies in the cloud for free with nDrive. Your files sync across all of your devices — tablets, desktops, and laptops. And when you make changes to a document, Nivio saves bandwidth by only sending the changes you made, not… -
Blip chops off its “.tv” branding with a $12M investment sword
8 Feb 2012 | 7:49 pmIndie streaming video startup Blip.tv announced today that it will ditch the “.tv” from its name in the first of many steps to refresh and improve the company. Blip has also secured a $12 million round of funding to help see those improvement efforts through. “Our research actually showed that people didn’t really identify web series as associated with television, so dropping the ‘.tv’ from the brand just made sense,” said Blip COO Steve Brookstein in an interview with VentureBeat. “It also fits in line with what we’re doing with the site… -
Skyrim creator Todd Howard shares secrets of video game design
8 Feb 2012 | 7:37 pmThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim co-creator Todd Howard shared the secrets of video game design at the opening keynote of the annual DICE Summit in Las Vegas this evening. In a speech before hundreds of elite game developers, Howard said that the secret to making games such as Skyrim — which has shipped 10 million units and has been rated one of the best games of 2011 by critics — is to approach it with discipline. Howard heads the Bethesda Game Studios, which is part of ZeniMax, a private equity-funded company that owns other studios such as id Software and publishes games under the… -
Path-ological: In 2010, founder Dave Morin said Path never stored user data
8 Feb 2012 | 6:15 pmDave Morin circa 2010 It’s the privacy snafu that will not die. A day after a developer discovered that mobile social network Path was storing users’ entire address books on its servers, the startup seemed to have defused the incident by apologizing and deleting all the personal data it had stored. But now Gawker’s Ryan Tate has published an email he got from Path CEO Dave Morin back in 2010 in which the CEO acknowledges that his company looks through your contacts in order to suggest connections, but made it explicitly clear that, “Path does not retain or store any… -
Police seize Megaupload founder’s $4.3M home, let pregnant wife stay
8 Feb 2012 | 4:56 pmGovernment officials have Megaupload founder and accused money-launderer Kim Dotcom right where they want him — locked up in New Zealand awaiting an extradition hearing — but that’s not stopping them from kicking the Internet mogul while he’s down. New Zealand authorities seized Dotcom’s $4.3 million Coatesville home today, according to The New Zealand Herald. The property, not previously seized in a January raid that took $16 million in assets, is currently occupied by the alleged crime-ring leader’s pregnant (with twins, no less) wife and three children.
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SmartBrief on Entrepreneurs
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Why strong communities are the backbones of successful businesses
8 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amIt is worth it the effort for business owners to improve the communities in which they operate, Thursday Bram writes. -More- -
Is San Francisco set against startups?
8 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amJuliet Pries said she spent two years navigating San Francisco's web of regulations and permits to get her ice cream parlor o -More- -
How the rise of women is changing the world of leadership
8 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amThe traditional societal model, in which men go to work and women stay home to raise the kids, is dead, John McKee writes. -More- -
Focus on engagement to keep large projects from failing
8 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amOne reason many large projects aren't successful is that business leaders focus exclusively on processes and not on the emoti -More- -
Not all customers are good for business
8 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amOne credit card processing company didn't realize some of its customers weren't adding value to the business -- and in fact w -More-
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Forbes - Entrepreneurs
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How Moshi Monsters Came To Dominate Kids Entertainment
9 Feb 2012 | 4:34 amThis story appears in the February 27, 2012 issue of Forbes Magazine. -
FINRA Fines and Suspends Client Associate For Altering IPO Forms
9 Feb 2012 | 4:20 amFINRA sanctions Wells Fargo Client Associate for altering IPO forms -- but is there more to this practice than meets the eye? -
The Health of the Venture Capital Industry
9 Feb 2012 | 2:36 amHow is the venture capital industry doing? The short answer is not as well as it did 15 to 20 ago. One measure of industry performance - exits as a share of investments made five years earlier - still have not returned to 1990s levels. -
This Week in Maker Business -- Obama and Young Makers
9 Feb 2012 | 1:38 amWhat?s happening for maker-business owners this week. -
BranchOut Reaches 300 Million Profiles And 10 Million Users
8 Feb 2012 | 9:11 pmBranchOut, the professional jobs network that runs on top of Facebook, announced that it has reached 300 million profiles in its network.
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entrepreneurship Resources | ZDNet
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Entrepreneurship is a fundamental human expression whose absence is always a sign of oppression
26 Jan 2012 | 10:35 amEntrepreneurship doesn't need to be taught, it is a natural human quality. It is unleashed by creating the right environment. -
Tumblr not right for biz blogging? Platform targets entrepreneurs
20 Jan 2012 | 5:24 amA new site called inflite.com, currently in beta, is focused on hosting blogs written by small-business owners and professionals and boasts tight links to Twitter, LinkedIN and Facebook. -
5 reasons to be optimistic about technology innovation in the year ahead
23 Dec 2011 | 1:30 pmUnderneath the gloom, technology is paving the way for a highly dynamic and more open economy. -
Breathing your way to success - help for entrepreneurs
29 Nov 2011 | 5:04 pmA 20-minute-a-day practice that could help startups succeed... -
B2B matchmaker helps apparel companies find production resources
10 Nov 2011 | 8:04 amThe AFINGO platform supports a social network of "curated" production resources appropriate for small or midsize companies in the fashion industry.
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OnStartups
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Startup Lessons From 17 Hard-Hitting Quotes In "Moneyball"
2 Feb 2012 | 6:20 amI'm an idiot. Not all of the time, mind you, not even most of the time, but every now and then, I'm an idiot. Like the time my friend and co-founder Brian Halligan asked me to read the book “Moneyball”. This was back when we had first launched our startup, HubSpot. “But, I'm not a baseball guy,” I said. “It's not about baseball. It's about data.” And, I put it on my reading list, and then still failed to read it. I even bought the book, but still failed to read it That was a mistake. I just got done watching the movie “Moneyball”… -
Startup Tribes: Tips on Roles and Recruiting
27 Jan 2012 | 8:22 amThe following is a guest post from John Greathouse. John is an entrepreneur and investor. He currently blogs at Infochachkie where he provides practical startup advice. You may not realize it, but your adVenture's Core Team, the senior executives who make the key decisions which drive the company's strategic direction, is akin to a primitive tribe. Primitive tribes and your startup both entail a small number of people banded together to battle an uncaring, hostile world. Like the tribe, your company's survival is always in question and never guaranteed. Success depends upon everyone… -
Startup Branding: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs
20 Jan 2012 | 9:40 amThe following is a guest post by Mike Troiano. Mike is a former New York ad man turned venture-funded entrepreneur, now a Principal at Boston-based Holland-Mark. You can follow him on Twitter at @miketrap, and connect with him elsewhere through About Me 1. What does startup branding really mean for an early-stage company? Is it just picking a name and a logo? "Brand" is one of those words everybody uses and nobody really understands, so I'll start with a definition. It's important for entrepreneurs to understand that their "Brand" is the collective emotional response to their product or… -
7 Lessons On Startup Funding From a Research Scientist
16 Jan 2012 | 9:43 amThe following is a guest post by Ty Danco. Ty is an angel investor and startup mentor. Read more of his thoughts at tydanco.com My wife isn't in business, but she is wise in the way of funding. Just as I have experience on both sides of the funding table (as an entrepreneur and as an angel), so does she. As a research scientist, she gets her own grants and also reviews grants from others. While she doesn't talk in startup lingo (pivots, minimum viable product, etc.), she has taught me that many of the issues we face as entrepreneurs have a corollary in science. Here's what I've learned from… -
The Big List: The Best and Worst Startup Stuff In 2011
2 Jan 2012 | 8:17 amThe following is a guest post by Ty Danco. Ty is an angel investor and startup mentor. Read more of his thoughts at tydanco.com. Or, check out his recent article "What To Do If You Don't Have An Idea" It's time to review the past year, so without apology for personal taste, here's my list of the best (and a few of the worst) of 2011. Best Startup Book of 2011: Mastering the VC Game by Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital I keep a loaded Kindle copy of this book on my iPad, and I'm constantly showing it to startups raising money. The money chapter: When the Dog Catches the Bus:…
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The Next Web
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Domino’s UK launches Windows Phone app, says 13% of orders are now mobile
9 Feb 2012 | 4:29 amPopular worldwide pizza chain Domino’s has released a new smartphone app for Windows Phone users, adding to its wide portfolio of mobile applications including Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platform and becoming its seventh mobile sales channel. As we have reported before, mobile has been a hugely successful market for Domino’s. In October, the company announced its biggest day ever for online sales, taking over £1 million in orders, with 13% of them made via mobile devices. eConsultancy reports that the one day sales statistic continued the present day, meaning… -
Can man live on social media alone? These 2 travellers swap cities to find out.
9 Feb 2012 | 4:18 amCan man live on social media alone? A tough question, and one that we sought to answer last year with our fictional character Jack, a true social media geek. But now a cross-city social experiment is seeking to answer this question for real. Constituting part of Social Media Week, Can Man Live on Social Media Alone? will try to discover whether two intrepid travelers can depend on nothing but the goodwill of locals, a smartphone and social media, to survive in a foreign city for one week. From 9–15 February 2012, Daphne and Martin will trade cities, power up their social media channels and,… -
Ofcom outlines plans to remove the hassle of switching broadband providers in the UK
9 Feb 2012 | 3:59 amOne of the biggest headaches in moving house is the inherent lag-time between moving in and waiting for that broadband connection to get up and running. It’s perhaps a sad state-of-affairs, but I’d sooner do without a fridge for that first week in a new pad than be without the Internet, and I’m sure I’m not alone. But what if you’re not moving house – what if you’re perfectly happy where you live and you just want a new broadband provider? It’s the same problem – there’s often a period in the middle of changing that means… -
Google is planning its first ever retail store
9 Feb 2012 | 3:27 amGoogle is considering opening a retail store in Dublin, a planning application noted by Bloomberg reveals. The store, located on its campus in the Irish capital, would be open to the public and sell unspecified “Google merchandise,” the application says. This would be Google’s first public retail store. Last year it opened a presence in a London branch of Currys and PC World, with a branded section of the store dedicated to Chromebooks. Google sells a wider array of merchandise online via the Google Store, and a Google Doodle store powered by Zazzle. It’s unknown… -
Google closes in on Google Drive launch, its long awaited Dropbox competitor
9 Feb 2012 | 1:37 amGoogle is reportedly close to launching its long awaited cloud storage service Drive, delivering a personal file-synchronisation platform that will allow users to store and copy files between computers and mobile devices. The Wall Street Journal cites sources familiar with the matter, which state that Drive will facilitate the storing of photos, documents and videos on Google’s servers, allowing them to instantly share them with other people. Google Drive is tipped to launch in the ‘coming weeks or months’ and is expected to be free for most users and businesses. As with…
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VentureBeat
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Nivio pulls in $21M to make cloud computing cheaper and more student-friendly
9 Feb 2012 | 4:00 amCloud computing and desktop virtualization are rapidly growing trends in the tech world, and one company has spent a considerable amount of time developing this technology. Nivio, which started as an idea in 2004, announced today it has received $21 million in its first round of venture capital funding. Nivio lets you store up to 10GB of your documents, music, and movies in the cloud for free with nDrive. Your files sync across all of your devices — tablets, desktops, and laptops. And when you make changes to a document, Nivio saves bandwidth by only sending the changes you made, not… -
Blip chops off its “.tv” branding with a $12M investment sword
8 Feb 2012 | 7:49 pmIndie streaming video startup Blip.tv announced today that it will ditch the “.tv” from its name in the first of many steps to refresh and improve the company. Blip has also secured a $12 million round of funding to help see those improvement efforts through. “Our research actually showed that people didn’t really identify web series as associated with television, so dropping the ‘.tv’ from the brand just made sense,” said Blip COO Steve Brookstein in an interview with VentureBeat. “It also fits in line with what we’re doing with the site… -
Skyrim creator Todd Howard shares secrets of video game design
8 Feb 2012 | 7:37 pmThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim co-creator Todd Howard shared the secrets of video game design at the opening keynote of the annual DICE Summit in Las Vegas this evening. In a speech before hundreds of elite game developers, Howard said that the secret to making games such as Skyrim — which has shipped 10 million units and has been rated one of the best games of 2011 by critics — is to approach it with discipline. Howard heads the Bethesda Game Studios, which is part of ZeniMax, a private equity-funded company that owns other studios such as id Software and publishes games under the… -
Path-ological: In 2010, founder Dave Morin said Path never stored user data
8 Feb 2012 | 6:15 pmDave Morin circa 2010 It’s the privacy snafu that will not die. A day after a developer discovered that mobile social network Path was storing users’ entire address books on its servers, the startup seemed to have defused the incident by apologizing and deleting all the personal data it had stored. But now Gawker’s Ryan Tate has published an email he got from Path CEO Dave Morin back in 2010 in which the CEO acknowledges that his company looks through your contacts in order to suggest connections, but made it explicitly clear that, “Path does not retain or store any… -
Police seize Megaupload founder’s $4.3M home, let pregnant wife stay
8 Feb 2012 | 4:56 pmGovernment officials have Megaupload founder and accused money-launderer Kim Dotcom right where they want him — locked up in New Zealand awaiting an extradition hearing — but that’s not stopping them from kicking the Internet mogul while he’s down. New Zealand authorities seized Dotcom’s $4.3 million Coatesville home today, according to The New Zealand Herald. The property, not previously seized in a January raid that took $16 million in assets, is currently occupied by the alleged crime-ring leader’s pregnant (with twins, no less) wife and three children.
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A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
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Payments Day
8 Feb 2012 | 3:24 amYesterday was payments day at USV. Two pretty big things that our firm has been involved in for a while now were coincidentally announced on the same day. First, our newest portfolio company Dwolla announced the closing of a round we led on their blog. Dwolla is building a large network of engaged users via a radically lower cost payment system. How much lower? Zero for transactions below $10 and a $0.25 flat fee for transactions over $10. If you move $10,000 over the Dwolla network, you or the recipient (your choice) will be charged $0.25. That's it. Dwolla does this by avoiding credit… -
Building The Ecosystem
7 Feb 2012 | 2:58 amI've always seen the work that my colleauges and I do as more than venture capital investing. That is our main job and we need to do it very well. But we also need to work to make sure the macro environment for our investing activities remains attractive. There are two primary activities that Union Square Ventures focuses on in addition to our core venture capital activities of backing and then working closely with entrepreneurs and their teams. They are policy advocacy around protecting the freedom to innovate and efforts to build the ecosystem for startups and entrepreneurship. Longtime… -
The Academy For Software Engineering
13 Jan 2012 | 2:39 amA number of years ago, I wrote a blog post talking about the need to teach middle school and high school students how to write software. In the comments (where the good stuff happens), a Google engineer told me to go down to Stuyvesant High School and meet a teacher named Mike Zamansky who had taught him to write code in high school. So I did that and thus begun my education into the world of computer science education in the NYC public high school system. What I learned was that other than Mike's program at Stuyvesant and a few other small programs, there wasn't much. So began… -
Shapeways and 3D Printing
11 Jan 2012 | 3:03 amLast week, in the thread on Herky Jerky Investing, the AVC community forked into an incredible discussion about 3D printing and our portfolio company Shapeways. If you click on this link, you'll see that the conversation just goes on and on and on. Clearly 3D printing is something that has captured the imagination of many members of the AVC community. We are huge believers in the power of technology to feed creativity and new kinds of businesses. 3D printing in general and Shapeways in particular is exactly that kind of transformative technology. It is still not on the radar of most… -
Fredsquare
7 Jan 2012 | 4:29 amOur very own Kid Mercury has built a learning community (and game) called Fredsquare. The following is a guest post he has written to introduce all of you to it. I hope you'll visit Fredsquare, play the game, and learn a bit about startups too. I am sure the Kid will love to get your feedback on Fredsquare in the comments too. FredSquare is an application I’ve hacked together for the AVC community. Its mission statement is to help startups learn. Here’s how it works: Articles and videos from around the web that help startups learn are imported the site. Comments on AVC tagged #fs are also…
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Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel
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Are You Using The Right Words For Your Brand?
8 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amAre you using the right words to build your personal brand in your resume, marketing materials, and social media updates? Often, there’s a disconnect, or gap, between the words used in resumes, marketing materials, & day-to-day social marketing, and the personal brand an individual is trying to build. Personal brand building is impossible if you’re not using the right words! To make sure that you’re using the right words, I’d like to share a free online tool you can use to visually display the contents of your resume, marketing materials, and social media marketing… -
Interview Rejection To Selection
8 Feb 2012 | 2:30 amPeople unfamiliar with sales techniques usually become depressed by interview rejection and then lose momentum for continuing in their search for employment. From a typical salesperson’s perspective, rejections are not necessarily bad particularly when used as valuable learning lessons. BUT the seasoned sales professional, with a smile on her face, will mentally say, NEXT! Early in my sales career, I learned that it was necessary to make 100 sales calls in order to make 10 sales. It was not motivating to learn I only had a 10% chance for making a sale. We were then told, the more… -
3 Ways To Implement Your Personal Brand Offline
7 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amFor most professionals, personal branding thrives online. Through juggling social media profiles, managing reputation, creating content, and securing our sites, we may forget that personal branding can also be done in person – and can be just as effective, if not more so. Attending an industry event, association meeting, or even a professional cocktail hour in your city can be a great and easy way to transition the brand you’ve created online into the real world. Consider below three ways to implement your brand in person once you’re there: Keep The Conversation Going. Since you’re… -
20 Questions Smart Employees Ask Themselves
7 Feb 2012 | 2:30 amThese 20 questions cover five key areas that are critical to your accurately evaluating how well you’re doing at work. Your answers (or score) predict whether you’re likely to be promoted, fired or kept simmering in the same spot for years to come. Score each question on a scale of 1-10 (10 = AWESOME). Add up your total score in each category. If you are totally awesome, you’ll have a total of 200 points. If you score below 30 points in any category, it’s time to take remedial action. Job mastery How well do I? 1. Exhibit expertise of the particular knowledge and skills that make me a… -
How To Really Impress During A Job Interview
6 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmNext to a root canal appointment, few things in life are as nerve inducing as the job interview. In this day and age, the face-to-face interview is typically the first time a prospective employee will speak to an actual person. This “actual” person literally has your career in the palm of their hand. They will determine, based on this portion of the hiring process, whether or not the process will continue or come to a screeching halt. Wow! No wonder you’re nervous. Right? Below are a few ideas that will go a long way toward taking some of the pressure off of you and making the most of…
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Chris Garrett on New Media
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When Should You Start Selling from Your Blog?
31 Jan 2012 | 3:18 pmHow do you know when your audience is ready to buy from you? Should you wait to “monetize”? How big does your audience need to be? These are common questions and the answers have been debated over the years. I am going to share an answer I gave George from the Man Up Blog during his blog critique. George spent some time in the dating world, sometimes called the “pick up artist” niche. This is shy dudes learning to pick up the ladies mostly, but obviously the market caters to all genders and tastes. It’s pretty obvious what people want from dating advice, but… -
Why You Shouldn’t Drive Traffic
16 Jan 2012 | 7:58 pmIn the first 7 days of this blogs life, 20,000 visitors checked it out. Sounds like a pretty nice result doesn’t it? I was super happy, but a little disappointed in one specific respect. Only 500 people subscribed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved and nurtured those 500 subscribers and 500 subscribers in any time frame is not to be sniffed at! My problem was, how can you have 20,000 visitors check out my blog and only 500 of them want to stick around? The cause? I was “Driving” traffic … Big Lessons Learned I had been involved with a couple of successful blogs at… -
How to know what your audience really wants
23 Dec 2011 | 11:53 amYour audience does not want your content. Your audience probably does not want to hear from you at all. If you think that because your website looks great that people will want to visit it … think again. What do they really want? Your audience and potential customers know who they are and probably have a very good idea of their goals. At the very least they know their immediate needs. They are looking for answers to questions, advice, and resources that help people like them get the stuff people like them want. When someone seeks out and clicks on your content it is only as a means to… -
Finding and Communicating Your Value
5 Dec 2011 | 11:06 amMany bloggers don’t have a value problem. They have a great deal to share. I am sure you do – I have never met someone who doesn’t. Why then do people struggle to find an audience. Never mind an audience who knows, likes and trusts them – ANY audience? It’s weird but a lot of the time it is because you have SO much to offer, it’s hard to know who you are for and what specific benefit you provide. A lot of my coaching clients have this problem and, thankfully, there is a solution. The solution is simple, but it isn’t always easy. Check out Ryan… -
How to REALLY make money from a website
23 Nov 2011 | 3:08 pmAs much as I tell people to seriously reconsider buying too much into the hardcore “Make Money Online” hype, I can not argue against its allure and the fact that, well, people DO make money online. The problem is, there are the usual caveats: It’s not fast. It’s not easy. You WILL encounter problems and tough challenges. You might not always enjoy it. These are challenges facing Roman who asked me for a blog critique. He has been building a site all about his experience of creating a website that makes money called “How this website makes money” (how meta).
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Connection Agent
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Passion Matters
7 Feb 2012 | 4:30 amWhen I think of Angela Maiers, I think of one word. Passion. She’s a passionate educator. A passionate blogger. And, this Tuesday night (Feb 7th) on LeadershipChat, Angela will be talking about a core passion of hers. #YouMatter. Simply put, YouMatter is Angela’s summary of a conviction deep in her DNA – that a sense of significance is central to our well-being and growth. Since it’s really not possible to replicate Angela’s passion in a second-hand blog post, I’d urge you to watch this video – or if you can’t afford the 20 minutes to watch,… -
Caribbean Connections
6 Feb 2012 | 7:21 amEver heard of Digicel? Yeah, me neither – until a few weeks ago. When my eyeballs were saturated with their branding. Upon landing in Haiti, I was surrounded, not only by a sea of people, but by an ocean of red Digicel signs. They are a company run by an Irish entrepreneur, who targeted Jamaica and other Caribbean islands (and has now expanded outward). You will look in vain to find much reference to AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint in Haiti. But you can hardly look anywhere without seeing Digicel branding. Day or night. Digicel painted on walls. Digicel T-shirts. Digicel sun-umbrellas… -
Out of my Comfort Zone: Haiti
3 Feb 2012 | 3:47 amAs many of you know, I recently went on a mission trip to Haiti (small team from my local church). My role was to help one of my long-time friends with a building project – topping off the walls of a partially-constructed church building and putting up a roof on it. The trip was an amazing privilege, and the whole adventure was WAY outside my comfort zone! Nonetheless, it was a fulfilling and eye-opening experience. I thought I’d share some of the pictures I took of the country, its people, and the project. Here is the photo set on Flickr. If you scroll through, you’ll see… -
Are You Getting Ahead?
30 Jan 2012 | 5:14 pmThis week on LeadershipChat (on Twitter, 8 pm ET Tuesday nights), we welcome Joel Garfinkle, author of the recent book Getting Ahead: three steps to take your career to the next level (Amazon link). This book introduces Joel’s PVI-model of advancing your career; (1) Actively promote yourself as an asset and valuable person inside the organization (perception), (2) Increase your visibility to gain others’ recognition and appreciation for your efforts and (3) Become a person of influence who makes key decisions inside the organization. Our focus during Tuesday’s chat will be on… -
Search My World with Google – so what?
13 Jan 2012 | 4:39 amSo, Google has now introduced a new feature in search, whereby you not only search the public web, but can view results from your Google+ network. Good on ‘em. I hope they keep experimenting, keep evolving. Some stuff Google has tried has failed; other approaches have taken off. Google’s DNA has this feature: no status quo. Push forward. This new feature will stick if it provides long-term value. If not, they can just turn it off (and you do have a show/hide switch to toggle if you wish). People may be tempted to moan that Google is monkeying with their main “search”…
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Copyblogger
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How to Recover From a Social Media Hangover
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am“Hello. My name is Cori and I’m a social media addict. “Today is day 1 of my commitment to give myself a regular break from technology and the foggy, uncreative haze it can unwittingly lead to.” I was reading a post the other day by blogger Michael Brenner at B2B Marketing Insider, talking about getting your social media game on. Of course, being the skimmer that I am, the first thing that caught my attention and made me go back and read the whole thing was his mention of having a Social Media Hangover. His hangover was induced by sometimes (as we all do) forgetting to… -
The “New” SEO Secret Weapon
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf you have a web site, you may have noticed one of two things about the traffic you get from search engines. Your search traffic may have dried up overnight, with once-healthy streams turning into a sad little trickle. Or you may have noticed a nice, steady improvement as you’ve climbed higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), while other sites that used to outrank you suddenly evaporated. There’s a super-secret new ingredient in SEO. It was always a factor, but it’s become even more important recently, as the Google team relentlessly declares war on what they see… -
8 Quick Tips for Writing Bullet Points People Actually Want to Read
7 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIt’s a Twitterized world, we’re just living in it. Blog posts, Tweets, quick videos, Google+, the Facebook Timeline, and tens of thousands of images pinned to digital boards are flying past us faster than we can read them. Faster than we can even scan them, depending on the time of day. What does this mean for writers trying to cut through it all? At least two things that I can think of: You’d better know how to write a compelling headline You’d better know how to write bullet points that grab (and keep) your reader We’re not telling you to keep your copy short. -
7 Crucial Tactics for Writing a Wildly Successful Guest Post
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amWe all know that guest posts grow blogs. But not many people realize that tactical guest posting grows careers. Most bloggers I see pump out these articles while reciting the mantra “quantity over quality”; there’s no real strategy and there are no real long-term benefits. In this post I am going to show you the seven crucial tactics for writing a radically successful guest post. Done right, these strategies will get you more email subscribers, coveted Google ranking positions, and a big head-start on your content marketing goals. Who am I to teach you about guest blogging? -
7 Smashing Social Media Marketing Links
4 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amThis week on The Lede … What really works on Twitter One thing social media copywriters should never do 9 productive social media hacks A reminder of the power of the original social media If you just can’t wait for The Lede every Saturday, and you want even more practical, useable links than the seven we highlight here every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter. It’s painless. Really. // 9 Social Media Hacks You Need to Embrace Now Mr. Baer makes a good case that though social media is inexpensive in monetary terms, it can get good and costly when it comes to spending your…
