LinkedIn on Thursday announced it has 150 million members in its network, a 20 million increase over November. The figure was disclosed in a press release the company issued Thursday announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results. The company posted revenues of $167.7 million, beating the analysts’ consensus of $160 million for Q4. Earnings were $0.06 cents per share, which was on target. LinkedIn’s stock was up more than 5% in after-hours trading. The Q4 revenue figure was a 105% jump over the same period in 2010. Revenues for full-year 2011 was $522.2 million, a 115%…
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Most Topular Stories
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LinkedIn Hits 150 Million Members
Mashable!9 Feb 2012 | 1:26 pm -
Click And Mortar: Zynga Signs Deal With Hasbro For Real-World Toys and Games
TechCrunch9 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pmMobile app developer Rovio has famously turned its Angry Birds game into a popular toy franchise, but most other new-fangled gaming companies haven’t spent much energy going this route. But now social gaming leader Zynga is, per a big licensing deal with Hasbro. The long-time toy and board game maker is paying Zynga to turn games like FarmVille, CityVille, and its other hit titles into real world products. Details on what this will look like are scant in the press release, so I’m left guessing what this is going to mean. Fluffy pink FarmVille tractors? Lego-style CityVille… -
Hangout With the Scientists Looking for the God Particle
ReadWriteWeb9 Feb 2012 | 11:57 amWant to hang out with the people who run the CMS? No, not the content management system. The Compact Muon Solenoid. It's one of the two big detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world. CERN physicist Dr. Albert De Roeck is hosting a Google+ Hangout tomorrow from inside the cavern where the experiment takes place, about 100 meters underneath Cessy, France. He'll explain the CMS experiment and take questions about the crazy frontiers of particle physics. Sponsor The CMS is one of the two general-purpose LHC experiments searching… -
10 Tips for Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Business
Social Media Examiner9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amPolicy. It can be a dirty word, especially in social media communities.Why? Poorly written social media policies restrict, deter and deaden social media engagement–the exact opposite of what businesses want.However, great social media policies support, protect and empower high-quality engagement. It is about empowerment and trust.As Beth Kanter writes, “Trust is cheaper than control.”This article will explain how social media policies differ from other policies and give you 10 tips to help create an effective social media policy.Why Social Media Policies?Social media… -
Understanding the role of micro-copy in a brand's content strategy
SmartBrief on Social Media9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 amWhen it comes to planning your brand's content strategy, pay special attention to the micro-copy -- wording on a website's in -More-
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Mashable!
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LinkedIn Hits 150 Million Members
9 Feb 2012 | 1:26 pmLinkedIn on Thursday announced it has 150 million members in its network, a 20 million increase over November. The figure was disclosed in a press release the company issued Thursday announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results. The company posted revenues of $167.7 million, beating the analysts’ consensus of $160 million for Q4. Earnings were $0.06 cents per share, which was on target. LinkedIn’s stock was up more than 5% in after-hours trading. The Q4 revenue figure was a 105% jump over the same period in 2010. Revenues for full-year 2011 was $522.2 million, a 115%… -
FarmVille Toys Are Coming: Zynga and Hasbro Sign Licensing Deal
9 Feb 2012 | 1:14 pmIf Angry Birds and Cut the Rope can have toys, why can’t FarmVille? Social gaming juggernaut Zynga is teaming up with toy maker Hasbro to create a “wide range of toys and gaming experiences” based on Zynga properties and brands, a release read. The first products are expected to hit the market in Fall 2012. The agreement gives Hasbro license to develop and distribute an array of products in various toy and game categories for Zynga’s various properties. The companies will also be able to co-brand merchandise, which could potentially lead to digital product tie-ins. The… -
Hipstamatic Releases Lens for New York Fashion Week
9 Feb 2012 | 1:02 pmIn conjunction with New York Fashion Week, iPhone photography app Hipstamatic has released a cool-toned lens (i.e., filter) designed to capture the aesthetic of classic American beauty. The lens was developed in partnership with fashion photographer Chiun-Kai Shih, whose work has appeared in GQ, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, among other well-recognized publications. This is the second lens Hipstamatic has developed with Shih to commemorate NYFW. Last year, the pair released a lens called “Chunky,” which gives images a highly saturated, hazy glow. A spokesperson for Hipstamatic… -
Apple Hit With 250,000 Signatures Protesting Labor Conditions in China
9 Feb 2012 | 12:46 pmFair-labor organizers delivered 250,000 signatures to Apple stores in six cities around the world on Thursday in protest of the company’s working conditions in China. Apple’s main factory, Foxconn, has faced numerous accusations of providing an inhumane work environment to Chinese workers. “It’s hard to hear tales of people jumping off buildings and using their hands until they can’t anymore,” said senior organizer of Change.org William Winters, who delivered a stack of petitions to the San Francisco Apple store on Stockton Street. The rest of the 250,000… -
Live LOLz: Cheezburger Plans Grammy Awards Memes in Real Time
9 Feb 2012 | 12:35 pmI Can Has Cheezburger plans to turn the 54th Grammy Awards into a laughing matter by giving viewers an outlet to write funny captions for red carpet and ceremony photos. The “Live LOLing” event starts Sunday at 4 p.m. PT when Cheezburger’s ROFLrazzi site, Twitter profile and Facebook page will begin publishing Grammy images with humorous captions — in lolcat meme format. People can click “Recaption This” to plop their own witty text on the photos. Participants can then share their creations on their social networks. Cheezburger editor in chief Emily Huh…
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TechCrunch
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Click And Mortar: Zynga Signs Deal With Hasbro For Real-World Toys and Games
9 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pmMobile app developer Rovio has famously turned its Angry Birds game into a popular toy franchise, but most other new-fangled gaming companies haven’t spent much energy going this route. But now social gaming leader Zynga is, per a big licensing deal with Hasbro. The long-time toy and board game maker is paying Zynga to turn games like FarmVille, CityVille, and its other hit titles into real world products. Details on what this will look like are scant in the press release, so I’m left guessing what this is going to mean. Fluffy pink FarmVille tractors? Lego-style CityVille… -
Music Labels’ Joint Venture, VEVO, Shows Pirated NFL Game At Sundance
9 Feb 2012 | 12:04 pmOver the last decade the major music labels — and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America — have established a repeated pattern of attacking consumers in the name of squelching illegal file-sharing. Piracy, they claim, has been the industry’s undoing, accounting for an over 50% drop in sales since 1999 (the industry likes to discount the impact of legal per-song music downloads via services like iTunes, and the myriad other changes facilitated by the rise of high-speed Internet connections). Their efforts to combat piracy are often draconian: threatening… -
You Can Buy Me Love, But Please Don’t Buy Me Gadgets
9 Feb 2012 | 11:52 amValentine’s Day is just around the corner, and the majority of us are likely scrambling to find that special gift. (The rest of us, meanwhile, are cursing couples.) A Valentine’s Day gift is usually more important than others because it’s a one-on-one situation, unlike Christmas or birthdays. Just one gift, to just one person — and it better be good. With that in mind, I’d like to address an article out of AllThingsD this morning that sourced information from PriceGrabber’s Valentine’s Day Dashboard Report. The report took information from February 4… -
The Google+ Platform Roadmap From Director Of Engineering David Glazer
9 Feb 2012 | 11:49 amIt won’t stop with Google Search Plus Your World. When asked if we should expect more integrations of Google+ into Google products, G+ director of engineering David Glazer said at today’s Inside Social Apps 2012 conference, ”Yes, where it’s good for the user. I think there’s more places to make people happy by showing them content they care about.” At the first major speaking engagement about its social network, Glazer also discussed user acquisition, monetization, and support for brands. Regarding Google+ expanding into more Google properties,… -
AT&T, Google Among The Biggest Online Advertisers — comScore
9 Feb 2012 | 11:47 amAs part of its 2012 US Digital Future in Focus whitepaper, comScore looked at the online ad landscape and found a mix of old and new names. The report includes a list of the top 10 display advertisers in the United States (all of this data is US-only), as measured by impressions. AT&T topped the list, as it has in previous years, but there’s a newcomer — Google, which delivered 40.4 billion ads for products like Chrome, Google Offers, and Google+. Large brand advertising on the Internet is growing in general, comScore says. To quantify that, it measured the number of advertisers…
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ReadWriteWeb
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Hangout With the Scientists Looking for the God Particle
9 Feb 2012 | 11:57 amWant to hang out with the people who run the CMS? No, not the content management system. The Compact Muon Solenoid. It's one of the two big detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world. CERN physicist Dr. Albert De Roeck is hosting a Google+ Hangout tomorrow from inside the cavern where the experiment takes place, about 100 meters underneath Cessy, France. He'll explain the CMS experiment and take questions about the crazy frontiers of particle physics. Sponsor The CMS is one of the two general-purpose LHC experiments searching… -
Fabled Google Drive Won't Be Another Dropbox
9 Feb 2012 | 11:00 amThe Wall Street Journal has revived rumors about Google launching a cloud storage service called Drive. The comparison everybody wants to make is to Dropbox. The thinking is that Google will challenge everyone's favorite start-up by releasing a native desktop and mobile Drive app with the same syncing features Dropbox users know and love. Google Drive rumors have been around for many years, and they've always conformed to the understanding of "The Cloud" that has prevailed at the time. If it's not like Apple's iCloud, which is integrated into Apple's devices, then it must be like Dropbox,… -
[STUDY] 61% of Social Media Users Feel So Close To You
9 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amSometimes little things like a sweet comment on Facebook or a Twitter friend calling your tweet a "favorite" can really make a social networker bee's day. A new study from Pew finds that for the most part, adults are kind to each other on social media sites. In fact, 85% of adults say that most of the people they come across on social media are rather kind; only 5% say that people are "mostly unkind," which would imply rude or mean. An additional 5% say that it's all situational. On the whole, adults have positive experiences on social networking sites. A total 68% of SNS users had an… -
[Infographic] Mapping the Tools in the Mobile Development Ecosystem
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amThe mobile development ecosystem is a large, complicated space. There are innovative startups making tools for native and mobile Web apps along with large enterprise-grade companies that offer solutions from cloud support to frameworks and developer environments. For a mobile developer, it can be confusing to know where to turn and what to use to make the best app possible. Mobile "backend-as-a-service" startup Kinvey created a map for ReadWriteMobile to help developers understand the ecosystem. Kinvey brackets the mobile ecosystem between two primary pillars: the service providers and the… -
Harry Reid Wants a Bigger, Badder Version of SOPA/PIPA
9 Feb 2012 | 9:30 amSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., still licking wounds from last week's defeat of the Protect IP Act and its House counterpart the Stop Online Piracy Act, is reportedly working on an even more sinister, Internet-regulating bill. Few details have been publicly disclosed about the latest push by legislative Democrats to expand executive-branch authority over the Internet, but the Daily Caller has pieced together publicly-available clues suggesting that Reid's newest bill is even broader than President Barack Obama's cybersecurity proposal. Sponsor Released last May, Obama's proposal…
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Social Media Examiner
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10 Tips for Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Business
9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amPolicy. It can be a dirty word, especially in social media communities.Why? Poorly written social media policies restrict, deter and deaden social media engagement–the exact opposite of what businesses want.However, great social media policies support, protect and empower high-quality engagement. It is about empowerment and trust.As Beth Kanter writes, “Trust is cheaper than control.”This article will explain how social media policies differ from other policies and give you 10 tips to help create an effective social media policy.Why Social Media Policies?Social media… -
8 Brands That Benefit From Guest Blogging
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amGuest blogging is one of the most efficient, yet misunderstood, social media marketing tactics.It’s not new. In fact, it’s almost as old as blogging itself. It started becoming a standout tactic just a few years ago.This post answers one of the most frequently asked questions: Is guest blogging good for “big guys?”By the way, “guest blogging, the time waster” is one of the myths I busted in my previous post for Social Media Examiner. Today’s article is one more argument in favor of guest blogging.Guest blogging is about placing your content for free… -
4 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Page Visibility
7 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amHave you noticed less interaction on your Facebook page in the last few months?Getting your updates to appear in the coveted news feed is more challenging than ever.I don’t have answers as to how the elusive Facebook algorithm works.What I do have are some suggestions on how to ensure that your page posts are being seen by your fans to give your page the maximum visibility.#1: Train Your Audience to Watch for Your ContentYou want to make sure you are delivering good content so that your audience won’t want to miss a thing. The best way to do this is to work toward building super… -
How AutoCAD Retooled Its Marketing With Facebook
6 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amChris Hession has been a product and marketing manager for nearly 15 years. But recently, his job completely changed.“Just in the last year and a half, social media has become not just a component of our product marketing plan, but really the core component,” said Hession, currently senior manager of Autodesk’s AutoCAD product marketing.“Pretty much for everything we do, we’re looking at, ‘How can we make this work for social?’”Millions of people worldwide use AutoCAD software to design everything from sunglasses to skyscrapers. If there’s… -
Will You Purchase Facebook Stock? This Week in Social Media
4 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amWelcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.What’s New This Week?Facebook Seeks to Raise $5 Billion in IPO: “Social networking titan Facebook filed to go public, seeking to raise $5 billion in the largest flotation ever by an Internet company on Wall Street.” Facebook shares are not expected to begin trading for several months. Experts expect this initial public offering to be much larger than Google was when it went public. Do you plan on…
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SmartBrief on Social Media
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Understanding the role of micro-copy in a brand's content strategy
9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 amWhen it comes to planning your brand's content strategy, pay special attention to the micro-copy -- wording on a website's in -More- -
Pinterest is found to be secretly cashing in on user links
9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 amPinterest is quietly adding affiliate tracking codes to the links shared by its users, allowing the social network to generat -More- -
Foursquare is getting more rewarding, CEO says
9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 amFoursquare is more than just a check-in service, says co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley. -More- -
Facebook's IPO? There goes the neighborhood
9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 amFacebook's planned public offering is good news for Silicon Valley Realtors, who say they're expecting a surge in house sales -More- Social Media Content Manager LM&O Advertising -
Facebook seeks to attract investors from social media startups
9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 amFacebook is cozying up to social media startup investors with a program called fbStart. -More-
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@ProBlogger
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Is Perfectionism Stalling Your Productivity?
9 Feb 2012 | 12:04 pmWe’ve all been there … You sit down to write a post. You get the opening line down, but half-way through the second sentence, you go back to tweak the first. A bit further on, you decide to chop up the paragraphs you’ve done so far and rearrange them … but on second thought, is that really the better option? In two minds, you “finish” the post, then spend a half-hour writing and rewriting the “ideal” headline. Finally, happy(ish!) your cursor hovers over the Publish button … but you just can’t press it. You decide to give it some… -
6 Powerful Guest Post Tactics that No One’s Talking About
9 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amThis guest post is by Tom Ewer of Leaving Work Behind. Guest posting is a hot topic amongst startup bloggers. It is one of the most widely-adopted blog promotion strategies in existence, and has been made perhaps even more popular by the success of “serial” guest posters such as Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing. His “blitzkrieg” strategy may come across to some as a triumph of quantity over strategy, but nothing could be further from the truth. He understands the key concepts that we will be exploring in this post, and executes them in a highly effective manner. Whilst… -
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…
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SocialMouths
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The Rise Of Content Marketing [Infographic]
8 Feb 2012 | 2:05 pmTweet According to the Content Marketing Institute, Content is one of the fastest growing segments in Marketing and an increasing number of marketers are relying more and more on their strategies to achieve success online. Is this a surprise to you? Because if it is, you have probably been living under a rock for the last couple of years. With the amount of content that goes left and right in front of you, on your screen, there are content creators, curators, users that share and consume on a minute to minute basis. Now, that doesn’t mean all that content is successful in reaching its… -
LinkedIn Or Facebook For Better B2B Marketing Results? [Includes Infographic]
6 Feb 2012 | 9:41 amTweet I know what you’re thinking just by reading the headline of this post: Of course LinkedIn is better for B2B marketing and Facebook for B2C. But wait, that is not necessarily the case. I have to admit I’m not as active on LinkedIn as I am on Facebook, or even Google+. That’s probably because my focus on this blog is to talk to entrepreneurs and small business. But when it comes to approach Corporate America, I automatically think I need to get out of these networks and go to LinkedIn. Some of you probably don’t know I’m also a partner at Plural and Partners,… -
Pinterest: Everything You Need To Know Is In This Massive Post
2 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amTweet Let me guess, you heard about Pinterest. Or more like, you can’t spend 15 minutes online without hearing about it… And now you’re thinking, “should I jump on the wagon too?” or “another social network to keep up with?” and on top of that, everybody is talking about using it for marketing and getting tons of traffic and, you just don’t see it. Alright, I hear you. I’ll give you everything you need to know about Pinterest and a bunch of resources so you can decide if you or your business are ready to join the hottest trend online. -
Social Proof, Shameless Self-Promotion, and Gratitude
1 Feb 2012 | 12:13 pmTweet This week started on a high note. The results for the Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2012 from Social Media Examiner arrived on my iPhone while I was getting my first coffee on Monday. SocialMouths was named #1. The afternoon wasn’t that fun when my server crashed welcoming all the traffic from the post, even though SocialMouths does not live in a shared $5 server at GoDaddy… still crashed. But that’s a whole different story. Then today my friend Jessica Northey pointed out that I was also included in the Top 100 Influencers in Social Media from Social Technology Review… -
How To Increase Clicks On Your Tweets [Infographic]
26 Jan 2012 | 8:40 amTweet If you are an entrepreneur using Twitter as part of the marketing strategy for your business or you are a blogger trying to improve your traffic, one of the most important metrics you look at is how many clicks your tweets are getting, specially when those tweets are containing links to your own site. One thing I’ll tell you right off the bat is that, marketing in general works different for each one of us and it delivers different kinds of results too. Twitter is no different and, while I always say that you should not rely on anybody’s advice but instead run several tests…
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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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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
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5 Social Media Marketing Lessons Learned from People’s Chatting Nicknames
9 Feb 2012 | 11:07 amA Guest Post by Rahil Muzafar Social Media Marketing is easy for those who understand the nitty-gritty of sociology and human’s need to share anything substantial, with their loved ones. Everybody likes to share, even the people who appear to be a little unsociable have this underlying desire to let somebody in on what’s going around in their lives. Any social media marketing campaign that manages to trigger this desire is sure to make it big. Sharing is made extremely easy by all those social networks out there, all you need to know is exactly why, when, and what people want to share… -
Be a Good Newbie!
9 Feb 2012 | 5:40 amA Guest Post by Rosemary O’Neill Last week, I wrote about how to be an upstanding citizen of the Twitter and LinkedIn worlds. But what if you’re venturing farther into untested waters? What if you’re pointing your canoe toward some of the newer and less-traveled areas of the web? When a new social tool arrives on your map, it is even more important to mind your manners, especially if there are natives who have been there for a while already. Pinterest, Google+, Quora, Tumblr, EmpireAvenue and others were populated with early adopters and beta testers long before the rest of the… -
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,…
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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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Social Media Explorer
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Boosting the Content Quality on Your Blog or Website
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amEditor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Samantha Peters, an avid blogger who writes about social media, digital marketing, and online communications. When we talk about blogs and websites these days we often use phrases like “SEO,” “page rank,” and “web statistics.” We pay close attention to our click-throughs, our inbound links, and the way we incorporate advertisers. In short, we approach our sites from a marketing angle and take every opportunity we can to increase and maximize our exposure. Amidst all this positioning, many bloggers and site managers overlook the… -
In Social Media, The Fine Line Between Nimble And Fickle
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amA study by The Center For Marketing Research declared, “blogging declines as new media rules.” Based on results of a survey sent to the Inc 500, the article states, “there is clearly a shift in how these nimble companies are communicating.” If it is true that blogging is on the decline, then I’d say these companies are more fickle than nimble. Throwing over — or not starting a blog because it’s easier to use Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest is short-sighted and risky. A blog may be an “old” form of social media but it has five benefits that the newer platforms can’t touch. -
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…
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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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Dan Zarrella
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[Infographic] How to Get More Clicks on Twitter
24 Jan 2012 | 9:18 pmI’ve often said that the best use of Twitter is as a broadcast medium. You should be creating a ton of interesting content and sharing it with your followers. To that end I’ve done a bunch of research on how to optimize the clickthrough rate (CTR) of the links you’re tweeting. For the purposes of this data, I’ve calculated CTR as the number of clicks on a tweeted link divided by the number of followers the account had when it tweeted that link. Below is an infographic presenting some of my past findings as well as some entirely new data I’ve found about… -
[Infographic] What are the Best Times to Blog?
22 Jan 2012 | 10:54 pmOne of the most popular webinars I’ve ever worked on, The Science of Timing was also one of my favorite. If you haven’t seen it, go check out the on-demand recording now. In it, I present data I’ve collected over three years about the effect timing has on a variety of online marketing activities, including blogging. Below is an infographic that represents a collection of the three most important stats I have about when to publish blog posts. In the webinar, I also make the point that my results are based on huge aggregates of thousands, millions, or even in some cases,… -
[Infographic] The 2012 Republican Candidates by the Twitter Numbers
17 Jan 2012 | 9:59 pmI’ve studied the relationship between Twitter success and politics before, and since this year is a big year in elections, I figured I’d do it again. This time I looked at how the 4 front-running republican presidential candidates are doing on Twitter. I analyzed the obvious numbers, followers, retweets and mentions, but I also looked at a few of my favorite, deeper metrics: retweets-per-follower, link-percentage and reply-percentage. I also looked at Twitter “penetration” in two upcoming primary states: South Carolina and Florida. Notice anything that surprises you in… -
[Infographic] How To Use Contra-Competitive Timing for More ReTweets, Likes, Comments and Clicks
16 Jan 2012 | 11:44 pmOne of the most interesting patterns I’ve found while studying social media and marketing data is what I call in my book “contra-competitive timing.” I’ve found in numerous cases that the most successful times and days to publish new content are off-peak times. It’s like when you’re at a noisy party and it’s hard to hear the person talking to you 2 feet away, but suddenly you say something awkward and the room quiets down. Now everyone can hear you. The same is true with the internet. When there is less other noise to compete with (ie fewer Tweets,… -
[New Data] What Percentage of your Tweets Should be Links or Replies
10 Jan 2012 | 9:25 pmIf you like myth busting social media data like this, be sure to buy my newest book, Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness. One of the social media questions I’m most interested in is about whether Twitter is best suited for conversation or broadcasting. To many people’s surprise, I generally find myself on the broadcast side, and most of the data I’ve analyzed seems to back me up. Just yesterday, I started a little informal Twitter poll and found that respondents were pretty evenly split between broadcasting and conversation. This time, I looked at more than 100k…
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Social Media Dudes
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13 Great Ways To Repurpose Your Content!
17 Jan 2012 | 4:59 amI think you would agree that valuable content on your website or that was authored by you and hosted on other sites is critical to your success to drive traffic and ultimately make sales. At the end of the day, it separates a good blog from a great blog! So creating great content is job [...] Related posts: Best Ways to Drive Traffic To Your Blog! The following article was written by Dorothy J Bellisario who... Content Marketing Principles: 3 Highly Effective Things to Incorporate Into Your Blog Posts! One of the things that I learned from my attendance... Related posts brought to you by… -
3 FREE Ways to Increase Your FaceBook Fans – Often Overlooked
11 Jan 2012 | 5:40 am3 FREE Ways to Increase Your FaceBook Fans – Often Overlooked In my opinion more fans are better than fewer fans. You can talk about “quality” all you want but you will not change my mind on this one. The more fans you have the more likely you will develop new business or even create [...] Related posts: 5 Ways Our Family Uses Social Media 5 Ways Our Family Uses Social Media Much is made... Get Better Engagement From Your Facebook Page! Dennis and I have had several people come up to... 20 Helpful Facebook Fan Page Tips! Strategy 1. Life is short! So have some fun from... -
Why Your Blog Didn’t Take Off in 2011 and How You Fix It for 2012!
7 Jan 2012 | 5:36 amFair warning! This blog post is not for the meek or the faint hearted! About this time last year, you were like a lot of folks who decided that they were going to follow Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice and “Crush It” (no slam on Gary…if you do what he says, you are going to be farther [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. -
LinkedIn Profile Essentials – Part 2
5 Jan 2012 | 5:02 amThis is part 2 of a 2 part series written by Janet Slack. See Part 1 by clicking here. Today we are looking at strategies that will make your LinkedIn (LI) profile a true asset for your business. You want it to be a great place for people to learn more about you and we [...] Related posts: LinkedIn Profile Essentials – Part 1 You need a great LinkedIn profile. It really is no... Getting Setup On LinkedIn! Social media is gaining massive popularity these days due to... 10 Ways To Promote Your Business With LinkedIn! LinkedIn in many regards is the forgotten member of what... Related… -
What is “The Cloud” and should I be using it?
15 Dec 2011 | 10:45 amWhat is “The Cloud” and should I be using it? So what is this cloud thing I keep hearing about? It sounds kind of scary to have my data and information stored somewhere other than my computer. Couldn’t someone get it? Isn’t it more at risk? Think of the cloud as water. You turn on [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
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SocialTimes.com
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A Fully Baked Idea: Foodie, the Social Network for Food Lovers
9 Feb 2012 | 7:50 amFoodie, just recently launched by Glam Media, is sometimes called a food social network. But unless my Mahi-Mahi is looking to post pictures of its trip to the coral reef online, a network dedicated to food won’t take off. Foodie is actually a social network dedicated to food lovers, and I took a look at it over the last few days to see whether it’s fully baked. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media. -
How Schools Are Using Social Media [Infographic]
9 Feb 2012 | 6:57 am84% of colleges and universities now use Twitter to reach out to their students — that’s up from 0% in 2008-2009. With LinkedIn, it went from 0% to 47% in the last two years. There’s no doubt that social media is affecting the way schools reach out to students, and you can bet that students today have a different relationship with their institution than they had just a few years ago. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media. -
Social Games and Gamification: What’s the Difference?
9 Feb 2012 | 5:37 amhis is a guest post by Keith Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of BigDoor Often the terms “social games” and “gamification” are used interchangeably, but in actuality they’re very different animals. While it’s true that gamification borrows its game mechanics from social gaming, there are many real-world situations where it makes more sense to apply gamification instead of building an entire game. First, let’s take a look at a definition of each concept: Social games are built on a social media platform like Facebook or Google+. Casual in nature, they can be picked up or dropped at a… -
Blip Raises $12M For Indie Online Video
9 Feb 2012 | 4:55 amOriginal web series destination site Blip has just closed a $12 million financing round, raising $6 million from existing partners including Canaan Partners and Bain Capital Ventures, along with $6 million of debt from Silicon Valley Bank. According to MediaPost, “Blip now plans to develop new tools and services for independent online producers; invest further in advertising and distribution platforms; and foster more syndication relationships.” continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media. -
“OMG I Have To Tweet This” & Other Sh** A Social Media Manager Says
9 Feb 2012 | 2:51 amOver the past couple months a brand new meme has taken over YouTube (and the world!)—the hilarious ‘Sh** Girls Say’ web series has spawned a deluge of copycats, from ‘Sh** Gay Guys Say’ to ‘Sh** White Girls Say…To Black Girls’, ‘Shit Single Girls Say’ and more. And in recent weeks the tech savvy have gotten in on the fun with ‘Sh** VCs Say’, ‘Sh** Silicon Valley Says’ and now, ‘Sh** a Social Media Community Manager Says.’ continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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Web Strategy by Jeremiah
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Google+ Has a Perception Problem
9 Feb 2012 | 5:36 amRemember that smart kid who sat in the front of the class, but was ignored by the cool kids? That’s a good metaphor for what Google+ is going through. I’ve heard from corporate social strategists I should be cautious about how much time and how frequently I discuss this nascent social newtork, and I spoke to media from a Tier 1 this week who said “does anyone even go there anymore? It seems like a wasteland”. Furthermore take this damning image which has been viewed 11k times suggests Google+ is filled with Google employees –and that’s about it. In fact, in our data on Super bowl… -
Altimeter Webinar Recording: State of Social Media Management Industry
8 Feb 2012 | 10:08 amThis week, Altimeter (myself and Andrew Jones, researcher) hosted a webinar stemming from the the recent report on Social Media Proliferation, which you can download the full report on this blog post. In the embedded slides and video below, you’ll be able to get additional insights on how we perceive how this market will change in the coming years: We’ll see a vendor shakeout, although expect pure play vendors of each of the five uses cases to remain Consolidation will occur from market forces of email marketing, web analytics, CMS, marketing automation, brand monitoring, support… -
Hey Retailers! Refine That Mobile Marketing Strategy (Altimeter Report)
7 Feb 2012 | 10:01 amThis latest Altimeter Report, by my colleague Industry Analyst Chris Silva, focuses on how companies must develop a mobile marketing strategy. It sources research from 26 ecosystem contributors including brands, agencies, and technology providers. To learn more about this report, please register for the webinar in which Chris will provide deeper knowledge from the report. This report is powerful in a few ways, it indicates the growth the in space, referencing that 45% of all mobile phone users are carrying a smart phone, and the growth rate for tablets is 23% annually. The report also… -
Five Trends: How Brands Integrated Social, Mobile, and Web into 2012 Super Bowl Advertisements
6 Feb 2012 | 8:39 amBy Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis, and Zak Kirchner Findings: Five Trends Indicate Cross Channel Integration a Mainstay. Super Bowl ads, while only representing the nation’s largest consumer facing ads are a bellwether for advertising trends for the remainder of the year. To best understand these trends, Altimeter Group’s research team analyzed each Ad in real time, and conducted analysis to best understand the advertising trends for 2012. Using Chicago as a middle ground, we reviewed all ads from kickoff till the game clock expired and found that trends out of 87… -
P&G Layoffs Signal Focus on Digital Industry
4 Feb 2012 | 10:49 amLast week was a tremendous change, giant marketer P&G announces 1600 layoffs as they reduce jobs in various roles, and instead shifting budget to digital marketing. The CEO, when pressed, indicates a strong focus on digital marketing, citing: “In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that return on investment of the advertising when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient” -Bob McDonald, Chairman-CEO, P&G Yet this is a trend, as P&G had previously cut advertising spend on soap operas on traditional TV,…
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Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Insights - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image
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The Death Of The Unconference
9 Feb 2012 | 8:23 amDoes anyone remember the unconference? There was hope for collaboration and self-organizing groups, but it seems to have gone the way of the corporate spin machine. I was a massive proponent of the unconference movement (I still am!), but that word has been used so poorly by so many groups that it seems to have all but disappeared. In short: calling your conference an "unconference" just to sound young, hip and with it, actually makes you sound old, out-of-touch and stupid. This past month, I've seen a handful of events that are billing themselves as unconferences when, in reality,… -
How To Get Started As A Business Leader
7 Feb 2012 | 1:04 pmYour life and your success is not obvious. It's not a given. It's not a direct path. I often say that the best careers in marketing (specifically the ones that have a digital/new media slant) are very squiggly. They involve everything from stumbling through university and very crappy jobs to bad choices and decisions that were driven by financial debt instead of personal opportunity. Every year, I do my best to attend the TED conference. A couple of years ago, the name Chris Sacca was bandied around as someone who everyone wanted to not only meet, but hang out with. He was (and still is) a… -
Digital Tumbleweeds And Virtual Crickets
7 Feb 2012 | 6:51 amIf you publish online get ready for a lesson in humility. Brands quit publishing content for the exact same reason that many individuals stop publishing content: the brutal reality that nobody cares. As someone who creates and publishes a lot of content online (roughly six Blog posts and one audio Podcast every week), there is both a certain humility and instant humiliation that comes along with the process. The cream rises to the top. Even in a world where two hundred billion videos get viewed every month, the cream still does rise to the top (as the saying goes). It's just that we seem to… -
CTRL AT DEL - The Business Book
5 Feb 2012 | 11:30 amCTRL ALT DEL is the title of my second business book. It will be published in Spring 2013. Following is the official press release and some media mention of the pending project... BUSINESS PLUS To Publish CTRL ALT DEL by Mitch Joel Author of the best-selling business book, Six Pixels of Separation, and President of award-winning Digital Marketing agency, Twist Image, signs with Business Plus for the release of his sophomore book. NEW YORK, February 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - Business Plus, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group USA), has announced it will publish CTRL ALT… -
Madison Avenue And Mountain View Collide For The Future Of Marketing
5 Feb 2012 | 10:41 amEpisode #291 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. This is also episode #20.20 of Across The Sound. Joseph Jaffe is widely regarded as one of the top Marketing Bloggers (Jaffe Juice) and Podcasters (both Jaffe Juice in audio and Jaffe Juice TV in video). He is the author of three excellent books (Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation and Flip The Funnel). A long-time friend (and one of the main inspirations behind the Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast), we've decided to hold monthly conversations, debates and…
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GigaOM
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Google Drive already referenced in Google Docs code
9 Feb 2012 | 12:45 pmGoogle is close to rolling out its cloud storage product, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, which stated that the offering is “expected to launch in the coming weeks or months.” The actual launch could happen rather sooner than later, judging from some references to the product that have shown up in the HTML code of Google Docs. The code, which can be viewed with any browser, shows a button labeled “Add to My Drive,” but the button itself is currently not visible to end users within Google Docs. Notable about this is the capitalization of “My Drive” — The… -
Cloudscaling wants to make OpenStack webscale
9 Feb 2012 | 12:33 pmCloud computing consultancy Cloudscaling is realigning its business around the open-source OpenStack framework, and it has a message for the world: If you want to use open-source software but operate like Amazon Web Services, we’re your man. The company, which has helped build public clouds for the likes of Korea Telecom and Internap, is putting its consulting muscle behind a new OpenStack-based software platform that is built with webscale in mind. For the uninitiated, OpenStack is a set of open-source cloud-computing building blocks currently being developed and used by a large number… -
SpeakToIt: A personal assistant for older iPhones, iPads
9 Feb 2012 | 12:31 pmSiri may be both the best and the worst feature Apple has rolled out for iOS yet. On the one hand, the beta product is fun and helpful. On the other hand, the software is exclusive to the iPhone 4S; iPads, iPod touches and older iPhones need not apply. The situation provides an opportunity for developers on non-Siri devices, and SpeakToIt Assistant, found in the iTunes App Store, is one of these. What can SpeakToIt Assistant do? I spent some time with SpeakToIt on both an old iPhone 3GS and my iPad 2 earlier today, and while it’s somewhat limited compared to Siri — more on that… -
If 2 GB is excessive, why is AT&T selling 3-GB mobile data plans?
9 Feb 2012 | 12:21 pmWhen AT&T first implemented its throttling policies on unlimited mobile data plans last fall, it justified the move by claiming it had to limit the “extraordinary” consumption of a few greedy smartphone customers. We’re starting now to get a glimpse of what AT&T means by extraordinary. It’s only 2 GB – a full gigabyte less than it sells its newest customers under its most-common data plan. Over the weekend, blogger John Cozen posted a recent e-mail exchange with AT&T about why his smartphone data connection was slowed down after he breached 2.1 GB in his last billing… -
What are Boxee’s upcoming mystery products?
9 Feb 2012 | 11:17 amBoxee’s spat with cable companies over their desire to encrypt basic cable programming got a lot of press this week, but one interesting detail hasn’t been reported yet: A publicly available copy of Boxee’s most recent filing with the FCC (PDF) contains large sections of blacked-out content. An accompanying letter (PDF) describes that this measure was necessary to conceal “confidential commercial information regarding Boxee’s business plan, technology and product pipeline.” The folks at the FCC obviously got the unredacted filing, but the rest of us are left wondering:…
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Posts about Social Media from the Econsultancy blog
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Q&A: XYDO CEO Eric Roach on email automation
9 Feb 2012 | 10:12 amXYDO launched its new curated content email platform this week after testing its service on a range of companies from professional basketball teams to FX brokers.Last month, it sent out over 12 million emails tailored from a pool of content based on what three million people have been sharing on social networks that day. Marketers continue to discuss how to keep a personal touch in marketing automation. Though XYDO send out automated emails, they have seen a five percent increase in open rates across the board. We spoke to Eric Roach, CEO and co-founder XYDO, to find out more about their… -
Start Me Up! A profile of Shoply
9 Feb 2012 | 5:28 amLaunched last year, Shoply is a social shopping site which provides a marketplace for small brands and local business looking to sell online. I've been asking CEO Liad Shababo about Shoply...In one sentence, what is Shoply? Shoply is a social shopping marketplace which brings together small brands and local business with customers looking to discover and support them. What problems does Shoply solve? Shoply makes it quick and easy for small retailers to open an online shop, generate traffic and make sales. Shoply takes away the technical pain and expense of building an e-commerce site,… -
New Cillit Bang product launched exclusively on Facebook
9 Feb 2012 | 4:13 amReckitt Benckiser (RB) has announced plans to sell a new Cillit Bang cleaning product exclusively through its Facebook page. It is likely to be the first of a number of e-commerce trials by RB, as it has said that it plans to invest an extra £100m in brand building across Europe.The launch of Cillit Bang 'All in 1 Dish & Surface Cleaner' is being supported with digital activity across several social media channels, using competitions and games to talk to its target audience. RB is also resurrecting its Barry Scott character, who featured heavily in previous campaigns. RB's UK… -
O2 continues to surprise and delight with Valentine's campaign
9 Feb 2012 | 2:36 amO2 is continuing to roll out plans to ‘surprise and delight’ customers with another personalised social media campaign for Valentine’s Day. The mobile operator has created a “digital Love Nest in the Clouds” to deliver Twitter users’ messages via YouTube videos, personally recorded by non-identical twin “O2 Cupids”. This builds on the success of its #O2Santa stunt over Christmas, in which the company tracked mentions of the hashtag and similarly had a Santa character record people’s requested messages.O2 head of social media Alex Pearmain… -
YouTube adds cars and travel to its channel line-up
9 Feb 2012 | 2:23 amYouTube has launched two new motor channels to add to its ever increasing range of original content. The Motor Trend channel is described as a “never-ending car expo” and will broadcast programming from brands such as Hot Rod, Motorcyclist, Lowrider and FourWheeler.A blog post announcing the new channels said Motor Trend will listen to viewers feedback and tailor the content accordingly. The second new channel, Drive, looks behind the scenes at the culture of cars from “the road to races to factories to studios.” Youtube has also launched a new travel channel called…
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Going Social Now
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Super Bowl Digital Advertising Madness
31 Jan 2012 | 8:11 pmSuper Bowl is upon us as is the advertising madness around. There are a few key themes that will hold true this year for sure and are already surfacing:1. Releasing ads online early is becoming table-stakes. Nearly everyone seems to be doing this and with good reason. It's about building momentum into the Super Bowl typically done with a mixture of paid and organic promotions of the TV ads online.2. The smarter advertisers are constructing narratives around teasers, the TV commercial and what should happen after the ad airs. Some are even focusing on second screen social TV experiences (we… -
Two steps forward, One step back
11 Jan 2012 | 3:36 amWorking with very large brands in large organizations means not knowing whether you're taking two steps forward, one step back or one step forward and two steps back in any given moment. We all like to say that there's light at the end of the tunnel but working within a marketing organization versus in an agency, the tunnel is much longer and sometimes the light can seem much further away. You're thinking about how decisions you'll make today will effect your brand three or four years hence.Yes, we absolutely live in a real-time world and we have to be hyper-quick. But at the same time… -
TV Ads' New Digital Role, HBR Piece
12 Nov 2011 | 1:38 pmTelevision advertising has undergone significant changes in the last 30 years. However, it is arguably on the verge of its greatest changes ever. From where I sit as the Global Head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages, charged with navigating our brand's foray into the digital world, I see three big changes:The value we put on an advertisement will change as we seek to account for engagement metrics in the pricing.The narrative arch will change as we think of the advertisement as a trailer versus the whole story.Location-aware technologies will force a greater degree of engagement on a format… -
Physio-Digital + Cause + Shopper Marketing
27 Oct 2011 | 8:29 pmProbably one of the most exciting parts of working at PepsiCo Beverages is in seeing the physical and digital worlds come together especially as the whole cause marketing space gets more directly integrated with brand marketing. This PepsiCo 7-Eleven program is a perfect example of that and one that I find to be awesome. For every 20 oz. Pepsi product bought from 7-Eleven, we will donate five cents to the good cause. If the person also checks in using Facebook Places, we will double that donation. Feeding America provides emergency food assistance to those who are food insecure. Its network… -
A Love Letter from Brand Marketers to Silicon Valley (republished from Ad Age)
26 Oct 2011 | 6:40 pmFor too long, the digital industry has looked at brands like Pepsi simply as a monetization strategy. What's worse is that sometimes our digital friends view us as being uninformed members of the digital ecosystem - something akin to prey. Not only is that perception misinformed, its going to start impacting the bottom-line of many companies in the digital ecosystem.On the brand side, marketers cannot afford to play that role anymore. We need to show a much stronger return on all our marketing investments just as we recognize that traditional forms of marketing (ie banner ads) aren't as…
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SociableBlog : Social Media Blog
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Facebook: Fake Profiles Vs. Real Users [INFOGRAPHICS]
9 Feb 2012 | 8:45 amBarracuda Labs’ most recent study, Facebook: Fake Profiles vs. Real Users. The study analyzes a random sampling of 2,884 active Facebook accounts to identify key differences between average real user accounts and fake accounts created by attackers and spammers. The results of the study are being presented today at the 2012 Kaspersky Threatpost Security Analyst [...] -
How To Utilized Social Media in Education [INFOGRAPHICS]
9 Feb 2012 | 8:21 amSocial media is growing and not going anywhere. Many schools are now embracing the move. By understanding this movement, schools can make better choices on how to utilized social media in education. In the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s latest Social Media Adoption study, 100% of colleges and universities studied are using some form of social [...] -
Top Social Media Questions For The Coming Year
9 Feb 2012 | 4:46 amSocial media firmly arrived in prime time in 2011, as people and businesses across the world increasingly embraced the platform’s possibilities and popularities. Facebook welcomed its 800 millionth user, Twitter helped organized revolutions across the Arab world, and businesses used social media to integrate their advertising, SEO, and public relations efforts. Whether they sell online [...] -
VoIP and Social Media – Are They Connected?
8 Feb 2012 | 9:50 amIf you look at international business outlook, some industries seem to be making progress by leaps and bounds even in recessionary times. Voice over IP service providers and social media networks are among prominent example of this. Just see, 2 years back, there were only 20 million VoIP subscribers; however, today, there are mover than [...] -
25 Game-Changing iPad Apps for Lawyers & Law Students
8 Feb 2012 | 5:39 amNobody envies law students, paralegals, or lawyers for their reams upon reams of paperwork, save perhaps masochists of certain inclinations. So, to this particular professional demographic, nifty little gadgets such as the iPad and its ilk are touted as a godsend. These digital devices significantly cut back on the amount of time hunched over books [...]
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Seth's Blog
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The Weird interview
9 Feb 2012 | 12:06 pmTo celebrate the launch of Squidoo's new UpMarket magazine, we got permission to post an audio interview I recently did with Darren Hardy of Success. You can find it here. Thanks for listening. -
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…
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Entrepreneur Update
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Main Street Merchants Say They're Not Handcuffed by Regulations
9 Feb 2012 | 12:01 pmAs politicians vilify regulations on the campaign trail, consider the results from a recent survey of small-business owners. It seems regulations aren't as onerous as some think. -
Eight Creative Marketing Ideas to Make Your Business Stand Out
9 Feb 2012 | 8:00 amIf your marketing could use a new twist, consider these new ideas to reach today's customers. -
Four Questions to Ask Before Setting a Price
9 Feb 2012 | 5:03 amBefore you figure out your pricing, figure out your business. -
Three Ways to Extend the Battery Life of Smartphones and Tablets
9 Feb 2012 | 4:00 amConsider these options for extending the battery life of your mobile devices. -
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.
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Lifehacker
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How to Deal with an Asshole Parker [Video]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmYou finally find a spot in a packed parking lot and somebody's parked over the line so you can't fit. Or you've been waiting for someone to leave the lot and somebody pulls in to steal your claimed space. There are plenty of ways to be an asshole parker in this world, but few good ways to deal with them. Here's the best way to handle the situation. More » -
Ask and Answer Questions About Getting Rid of Old Junk [Help Yourself]
9 Feb 2012 | 11:30 am -
Quirky Scribe Is a Lapdesk That Can Carry Your Laptop, Textbooks, and Pens [Stuff We Like]
9 Feb 2012 | 11:00 amMore » -
The Best Virtual Assistant for Android [Video]
9 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amThere are a number of apps for Android that all advertise that they can be your personal assistant. None of them are perfect, and all of them have their quirks, issues, and especially their limitations. Even so, we think that Vlingo is your best bet for a well-rounded personal assistant for Android. More » -
How Can I Talk to My Phone in Public Without Looking Like a Jerk/Creep/Weirdo? [Video]
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am
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Fast Company
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"Words With Friends" Board Game Coming From The Makers Of Scrabble?
9 Feb 2012 | 1:14 pmHasbro and Zynga announced today that they have entered into a global partnership. With this license, Hasbro will be making a variety of toys and board games using Zynga's brands, with the first products expected to be released in the coming Fall. There will also be co-branded merchandise. "It's exciting to partner with Hasbro as we share a common vision for play and a mission to connect the world through games," said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in a statement--funny, since much of Zynga's success has come from Words With Friends, a game that incorporated changes to scoring, a heavy social aspect… -
The Google Wallet Hack Is Not The End Of The World (Or Even NFC) As We Know It [Update: Google Reacts]
9 Feb 2012 | 11:30 amStay calm and carry on, people: It's way too soon to say that NFC should stand for Now Fatally Corrupted. Yes, Google's breakthrough NFC payments app Wallet is being mentioned all over the news thanks to a flaw--it's vulnerable to a hack that gives nefarious types access to your secure PIN number. But don't believe any doomsayers or fearmongering that you may encounter on this matter; it's not as evil as it seems and, believe it or not, it's actually a sign that the future of wireless mobile payments is probably more secure than your current credit card. As reported over at the blog of… -
Ford's Nancy Lee Gioia On Leading Where The Rubber Meets The Road
9 Feb 2012 | 8:05 amIn her 30 years with Ford Motor Company, Nancy Lee Gioia’s learned a thing or two about teamwork, sparking innovation, and being a driving force in what was once considered a man's industry. Nancy Lee Gioia’s been with Ford Motor Company since 1982, when she was hired as a graduate trainee in the electronics division. In the 30 years that followed, she’s held a variety of positions in electronics architecture, manufacturing, and engineering in different divisions.Now, as the company’s director of Global Electrification, Gioia drives strategy and planning for the next generation of… -
Fast Talk: How This Bartender Is Rebooting The Condom
9 Feb 2012 | 7:41 amMeet Richard Pessall, a 20-year-old British entrepreneur who wants to take the condom where no man has gone before (no, not space).Richard Pessall, 20, lives and works as bartender in Shropshire, England. He spent nine years living in the United States, but when he ran out of money to pay for college in North Carolina, he was unable to renew his visa and was forced to return to the U.K. He’s decided to make his fortune before attempting to return stateside. His big idea? Reboot the condom. Forplay, the condom company he's been bootstrapping with his barman’s earnings, has grown to a staff… -
Inside INTERPOL's New Cybercrime Innovation Center
9 Feb 2012 | 7:09 amINTERPOL, the international policing agency, is opening a massive innovation center in Singapore in 2014. At the center, law enforcement will learn all about the latest cybercrimes... and have access to cutting-edge forensics laboratories and research stations.INTERPOL, the international policing organization, is building a law enforcement tech geek heaven in Singapore. The INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation will function as a R&D lab, training facility, and forensics lab for all things cybercrime. Slated to open in 2014, the Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) will be part of the…
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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…
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PadGadget
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Rumors| Possible Sharp-Made iPad 3 Display Emerges
9 Feb 2012 | 10:48 amParts reseller Eye Lab Factory recently posted images of what might be Sharp-made display panels for the third generation iPad. As reported by Japanese-language Mac blog Macotakara, the 9.7 inch display screen uses a flat cable similar to the one used to connect the iPad 2’s display. It also appears to support 2048×1536 resolution, which fits with popular rumors for the upcoming model. Sharp had been rumored to be one of the companies that Apple signed a deal with to make the high-resolution IZGO screens. However, more recent reports claimed that the product did not meet Apple’s… -
newMacgadgets releases PAD-Lock iPad 2 Security Kit
9 Feb 2012 | 9:56 amAs the use of iPads in public (often unsupervised) settings becomes more and more common, especially for display and demonstration purposes (whether you are trying to use them to sell a product, advertise a service, showcase an app or just sell itself), the need for security becomes more and more prevalent. With this in mind, newMacgadgets has released the PAD-Lock iPad 2 Security Kit. Designed to work with the iPad 2, newMacgadgets also claims their device will work with the new iPad 3. With the brackets of the PAD-Lock constructed from aircraft-grade aluminum, the device promises to allow… -
iOS 5.1 to Hit Virtual Store Shelves on March 9?
9 Feb 2012 | 8:44 amAlways playing detective, those of us watching closely have noticed that some operator profiles sent out to the various iPhone carriers (ensuring that iPhone hardware will continue to operate properly after the update) indicate a launch date of March 9 for the iOS 5.1 upgrade. This is exciting of course because iOS 5.1 promises to bring a few much anticipated and desired updates to Apple’s flagship operating mobile system but also because it is expected that this news may coincide the launch of the iPad 3. If Apple does release iOS 5.1 simultaneous to the iPad 3 it likely means there… -
iPad 3 to Launch First Week of March?
9 Feb 2012 | 8:43 amYou can add another rumor to the pile of news surrounding the impending launch of the iPad 3. With the latest fuel coming from the Wall Street Journal, there may be a little more credibility to the suggestion that Apple is preparing for a launch in the first week of March. Despite several suggestions from various sources that Apple may have an event in February to announce the latest version of their tablet, all signs indicate Apple is ramping up for a March event. The event, expected to take place at the at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francsico, has become one of Apple’s… -
New iPad Compatible, Energy-Saving USB Wall Outlets now Available
9 Feb 2012 | 7:28 amIf you own a phone, a computer, an iPad, and other electronic devices, you know how hard it can be to find sufficient plug space for all of the AC adapters. Luckily, many of our devices can be charged through USB, and there are a few great solutions out there that allow you to charge multiple devices at once without taking up a lot of room. CurrentWerks, known for its power storage and charging devices, has just released two new energy-saving USB wall outlets, the Duo and the Quattro, which allow you to charge several USB powered devices at one time. The Duo adds two USB ports with 16W of…
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New York Yankees News
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Yankees extend 27 invitations to spring camp
8 Feb 2012 | 5:18 pmThe Yankees announced the signings of 13 players to Minor League contracts on Wednesday, inviting a total of 27 players to Major League Spring Training. -
Branyan inks Minor League deal with Yankees
8 Feb 2012 | 11:07 amRussell Branyan has already proven that he can show off his power at Yankee Stadium, so it seems appropriate that the Yankees will give him a chance to do so while wearing their uniform. -
Hall signs Minor League deal with Yankees
8 Feb 2012 | 6:40 amBill Hall will have an opportunity to win a job on the Yankees' roster, agreeing Tuesday to a Minor League contract with an invitation to Spring Training. -
Yanks' organization preview, Top 20 Prospects
7 Feb 2012 | 8:00 amThe Yankees don't just have a roster full of talent at the big league level, they have a deep reservoir of prospects in the Minors that could help them remain competitive for years to come. -
Madonna to perform at Yankee Stadium
7 Feb 2012 | 5:28 amFresh off her Super Bowl XLVI performance at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Madonna will perform at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 6, the Yankees announced on Monday.
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Advertising Age - DigitalNext
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Kill the CPM: Why It's Better to Buy Time Than Ad Impressions
9 Feb 2012 | 7:07 amThe CPM model that dominates display motivates publishers to chase impressions that create web page clutter and a poor user experience. -
Time for Brands to Play Moneyball, Too
7 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amThe old ways of finding 'prospects,' such as targeting with demographics, are growing as outmoded as thinking that a team shouldn't draft a player because his girlfriend is ugly. -
Why the 2012 Presidential Race Will Be Defined By Data
6 Feb 2012 | 11:55 amForget the Twitter election; in 2012 the presidential campaigns will break new ground in use of data to target advertising. -
Patriots Lead Chatter, But Giants Have More True Fans In Social Media
3 Feb 2012 | 7:45 amWhich ones have the truest fans of all? With social media we can begin to answer that question. -
Time For Video to Step Out From TV's Shadow
2 Feb 2012 | 6:55 amWe need to stop thinking of video as TV's smaller, harder brother, and start emphasizing its power to deliver brand advertising in ways marketers have never before thought possible.
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Advertising Age - Digital
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Mindshare Opens Mobile Hub in India for Global Clients
9 Feb 2012 | 11:00 amMindshare is the latest agency to set up an international hub in India, broadening the scope of its existing mobile practice in Mumbai to service global clients. -
Apple Stores Get Consumer Petitions Over Worker Treatment in China
9 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amThe petitions' 250,000 signatures comprise perhaps the most tangible showing of consumer outrage over labor conditions in the iPhone and iPad maker's supply chain. -
Microblogs Make or Break Crisis Management in China for Marketers
9 Feb 2012 | 9:23 amCrisis management in China hinges more and more on effective use of microblogs, the vibrant Twitter-like social networks that drive public sentiment, a new report says. -
Super Bowl Spots Keep Piling on Web Views
9 Feb 2012 | 9:20 amOld wisdom: releasing your Super Bowl ad early on the web builds excitement and buzz for your spot and gives it a huge boost online. New wisdom: still true, but it's not necessarily a requirement. -
Nerds Run to Comic-Con for a Good Cause. With Lightsabers.
9 Feb 2012 | 8:00 amSome of the biggest names at Comic-Con have found a way to truly make the geek-fest a "force" for good.
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zenhabits
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The Pause Upon Which All Else Relies
9 Feb 2012 | 7:56 amPost written by Leo Babauta. There is one little habit I’ve learned that has changed everything else in my life. The pause. When we fail, it’s because we act on urges without thinking, without realizing it. We have the urge to eat junk, and we do it. We have the urge to check email instead of writing a chapter of our book, and so we open our inbox. We have an urge to smoke, to drink, to do drugs, to chew our nails, to play a Facebook game, to procrastinate, to skip a workout, to eat more fries, to criticize, to act in jealousy or anger, to be rude … and we act on that urge. -
The Thousand Cuts Fitness Program
6 Feb 2012 | 9:43 amPost written by Leo Babauta. I’ve trained for marathons, triathlons, 10Ks, a 13.5-hour challenge, Ubanathlons, and more. But my favorite fitness program isn’t one where you train for a major event. It’s where you get fit by a thousand little actions. When the actions are tiny, they are easy. You have no excuse. You can do them anywhere, all day long. I fold fitness into my life, like blueberries into batter, and it becomes a part of the recipe, not just a topping. If you haven’t found a way to get fit, try the Thousand Cuts Fitness Program. There is nothing better for… -
The Two-Headed Beast of Successful Habit Change
2 Feb 2012 | 8:20 amEditor’s Note: This is a guest post from Tyler Tervooren of Advanced Riskology. I used to have a lot of bad habits. I still do, but I used to have a lot more. Here’s just a small sampling: I woke up late and went to bed early. I procrastinated on my most important work. I neglected my relationships. I drank too much. I bit my fingernails. I slouched a lot. I picked my nose (no joke). I bought worthless things I didn’t need. I chewed with my mouth open. I dressed like a slob. I ate tons of junk food. I could go on, but none of that’s incredibly important. What’s… -
Create the Habit of Meditation, & the Zen Habits Premium Membership
31 Jan 2012 | 2:03 pmPost written by Leo Babauta. It’s something I should have created a long time ago: the Zen Habits Premium Membership, and a mini-course that’s included with it called Create the Habit of Meditation. The membership is a monthly subscription of $19.99, but really it’s a commitment to changing your life, and the tools needed to do that. If you’ve been looking to simplify, get healthy & fit, become more effective, do work you’re passionate about, eliminate debt, find contentment, declutter, create new habits … this new program is meant to show you how to… -
Creating Silence from Chaos
27 Jan 2012 | 2:20 pmPost written by Leo Babauta. We are often afraid of silence, because its emptiness feels idle, boring, unproductive, and scary. And so we fill our lives with chaos, noise, clutter. But silence can be lovely, and therapeutic, and powerful. It can be the remedy for our stress and the habits that crush us. If we want quiet in our lives, how do we create it? I’ve been exploring this myself. As a father of six kids, I have to admit that I don’t always have silence in my life. That’s not a complaint — I love the messy noise that my family brings — but silence can be a…
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Social Media Today - The world's best thinkers on social media
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CRM Bells, Whistles, Pain, and Agony: From SalesChaosTV
9 Feb 2012 | 1:09 pmMention the word "CRM" and most salespeople flinch. With good reason, says SalesChaosTV co-anchor Todd Schnick. His compadre, Dan Walschmidt, says CRM "just makes us feel ichy." -
When It Comes to Facebook a Like Does Not Equal a Sale
9 Feb 2012 | 10:52 amMarketers should make the mistake of assuming that a Facebook "like" equates to a sale or even a loyal customer. -
Pinterest – More Than Just a Pinboard
9 Feb 2012 | 8:32 amWhat is the potential benefit for brands and their respective digital PR / social media agencies? Brands can achieve benefits from the network without even being on it as an official presence, the primary focus of Pinterest is content first and foremost. -
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Social? Not The Wall Street Journal
9 Feb 2012 | 8:23 amMark Fishkin, Vice President, Digital Sales at the Wall Street Journal, is not the sort of guy who would try to persuade the boardroom that he has that scheme, or that he has been to the mountain top and has the Digitally Received Truth. Mark is the kind of guy who will coolly calculate the real business advantages of a product extension and move forward with a bet hedged here, and one hedged there, until the operant pattern appears. -
Social + Product = Better Products
9 Feb 2012 | 8:08 amSocial techniques can and should be used to change the way we do business. In this post, I look at how creators and designers of product can use social media to make better, more innovative products.
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HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
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Neuroscience Makes Strong Case for Engagement, Personalization in Marketing
9 Feb 2012 | 11:52 amRecently, Facebook sponsored a study run by NeuroFocus -- found via Search Engine Land-- intended to quantitatively determine how people respond to websites and website ads. The results had some interesting findings for marketers who are wondering how their site structure and ad campaigns affect how users react to their website. Let's just dive right in to those results and see what marketers can learn from their experiments. What the Study Looked At NeuroFocus used devices to measure the brainwaves of searchers when visiting websites, and looked to see if any patterns emerged. The test… -
The History of Marketing: An Exhaustive Timeline [INFOGRAPHIC]
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amEver since people have had something to sell, we’ve been marketing. But the effectiveness of those marketing methods have waxed and waned over thousands of years, and as consumers and their technologies advanced at a more and more rapid pace, marketers have had to change their game. At one time, cutting edge technology was limited to just a small segment of the population – and these advancements were slowly rolled out to the masses over decades (and even centuries!). Now, adoption rates are faster than the speed of light and more widespread than ever – and it’s… -
How to Score Your Leads So Sales Works the Hottest Prospects
8 Feb 2012 | 1:47 pmThe good news about inbound marketing is that it can help you attract high volumes of leads. The challenge then becomes, how do you separate the good, quality leads from the people who are just starting to look around? That’s where lead management, and specifically, lead scoring comes in. With lead scoring, you can attach values to each of your leads based on their professional information and the behavior they’ve exhibited on your website. For example, you would likely rank a vice president-level lead who has spent time on both your products and pricing page higher than an… -
A Marketer's Complete Guide to Launching Mobile Apps
8 Feb 2012 | 10:02 amAccording to former CEO of AppVee and AndroidApps Alex Ahlund, the average cost to develop a mobile app is $6,453 -- and the cost can skyrocket to as much as $150,000 depending on the complexity of the app. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, the money and resources you dedicate to conceptualizing and developing a truly great mobile app can all be put to waste if you don't orchestrate a proper mobile app launch. In fact, in December 2011, the 1 millionth mobile app was pushed to market. To give you an idea of just how quickly these mobile apps are being released, at the end of 2010, there… -
How to Attract the RIGHT Social Media Followers for Your Business
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amThe benefits of an extensive social reach are clear, but how do you attract the right followers for your company? As with most inbound marketing, relevancy can make or break the effectiveness of your strategy. So to ensure you have a social media following that helps you advance your marketing objectives, start by identifying a set of core topics that reflect the interests of people who typically become your customers. If you're a HubSpot customer, you can use the Keywords App and the Social Media Prospects App to help with this. For example, we at HubSpot would choose the…
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Simply Zesty » – Simply Zesty
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Instagram Co-Founder’s Girlfriend Creates Spin-Off Valentine Site Lovestagram
9 Feb 2012 | 1:32 pmFor the most part, spin-off sites or apps can be nothing more than to cash in on a success, but the newest spin-off to the popular photo sharing app Instagram has a very sweet story behind it. Kaitlyn Trigger, who had been going out with Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger before and after he launched the app, wanted to create something special for him this year. The result, after a lot of time and teaching herself how to code, was a gift which takes your Instagram photos and arranges them into a special interactive Valentine’s day card. Lovestagram creates a slideshow of all Instagram… -
Need A Morale Boost? Study Finds That Social Media Brings Positive Experiences To Your Life
9 Feb 2012 | 10:15 amWe all use social media to communicate with our friends and loved ones but how about as a morale booster? Turns out a study from Pew Research found that almost seven out of ten adults had experiences that made them feel good about themselves, and an almost similar number saying that they had experienced moments that ultimately made them feel closer to another person. Looking at the social and emotional climate associated with social media, the study found that overall, people’s experiences on social media was positive overall with 85% of users saying that this was the case. On top of… -
Are You Addicted To Social Media? Take The Test And Find Out
9 Feb 2012 | 7:54 amThere is a famous test for alcoholics anonymous that asks you some simple questions to see if you have a problem with the bottle or not. If you say yes to more than three of them, you have a problem and need help. Just for a little bit of fun I thought I would come up with something similar for social media given how much time most of us spend using it. The list is made up of 50 items and if you answer positively to ten or more then you officially have a problem with social media addiction and probably need some sort of help: 1. You post photos of your dinner to social networks. 2. You… -
Giant Touch Screen Recognises 40 Simultaneous Touches & Even Works With Gloves
9 Feb 2012 | 7:10 amAfter being limited in smartphones and tablets, both the market and the size of touch screens appear to be growing, or at least more and more companies are developing large screens with the intent of being used domestically. We’ve seen Samsung’s unveil its touch screen window recently, students creating a similar format for backseat car passengers and now a Swedish start-up called FlatFrog has revealed their first product called the Multitouch 3200. With a 32-inch LED-backlit screen and measuring only 55mm in depth, the screen can either be placed like a table or mounted up on a… -
Competition – Win Discounted Tickets to The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amOur friends over at The Next Web have kindly given us five discounted tickets to their conference in Amsterdam to give away to you lovely people! This is the 7th conference from The Next Web and it’s definitely established itself as one not to miss. This year’s speakers so far include Kevin Rose (founder of Digg, angel investor, entrepeneur), Chad Hurley (founder of Youtube, CEO of Delicious), Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit) and Susan Crawford (professor in New York). There’s also lots of other cool events at the conference, including a startup rally and hack battle.
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Tech in Asia
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Angry Birds Still Flying High in China with Online Tmall Store
9 Feb 2012 | 6:08 amAngry Birds Earmuffs for 98 RMB or about $15 You can’t seem to get away from those Angry Birds here in China. I’ve been to a Starbucks where the moment I was served, the xylophonic trills of Angry Birds played by a nearby gamer was heard. Cakes around town bear the shapes and figures of the Red Bird (not sure if that was a licensed cake or not, though!). So it’s little surprising that Angry Birds is big in China. Rovio has felt the fever in China and has responded with a Mid-Autumn Festival edition of Angry Birds Seasons and a more recent update this Spring Festival (with a… -
Lexulous Launches On Ibibo, Get Ready to Cheat With a Dictionary
9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amIndia’s largest online social gaming site, Ibibo, today has another attraction for its users – the popular word game Lexulous. Since the Scrabble-like social game was created by two Kolkata-based Agarwalla brothers – Rajat and Jayant – this is a homecoming of sorts, after success for the game dev duo with Lexulous apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and more. And so Lexulous is now back in the desktop browser and available to play for free for users of the site, who can challenge up to four friends to a game in the manner of the Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) game Words With… -
Lenovo Rides Strong Performance in China to Dominate Asia Region [CHART]
9 Feb 2012 | 2:30 amWe already knew that things were looking up for Chinese PC maker Lenovo (HKG:0992) this past year when the company surpassed rival Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) for the number two spot in global PC shipments, just behind HP. And now Lenovo is reporting a few new milestones now that its third fiscal quarter results are in. While the company holds its highest ever global market share at 14.0 percent, much of Lenovo’s success can be chalked up to strong performance in its own backyard. The manufacturer claims a dominant market share in China at 35.3 percent. Meanwhile in India, shipments were up 28… -
Sh*t Lei Jun Says (That Startups Should Listen To)
9 Feb 2012 | 1:01 amLei Jun, via Sina Tech Lei Jun, the CEO of Xiaomi, has a big personality. He also has a history of success when it comes to tech startups and investment in China, which means people take what he says pretty seriously. Today, he was profiled in the China Youth Daily, and while the full article is probably worth a read for Lei Jun fans, it’s full of interesting insight into Lei Jun’s mindset and the way he runs his current startup, Xiaomi. On age: “There’s nothing great about starting over at age 40,” Lei Jun says, “but people are great because they have… -
Makehappy Gives Indian E-Commerce a Charitable Twist
8 Feb 2012 | 10:30 pmMakehappy is an experiment in charitable and social e-commerce that was created to make people feel good about shopping online. Launched on February 1st by a multi-national startup team, the site gives money to selected charities and NGOs every time someone uses it to search and buy products on its retail partner online stores. It’s focused on users in India, and current partners include Disney India, MakeMyTrip, TimesDeal, Expedia India, Singapore Airlines, and many more clothing and travel sites. And so when someone goes to Makehappy.in, they can search for items and be directed to a…
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Christopher S. Penn : Awaken Your Superhero
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Get the first cup on the table as fast as possible
9 Feb 2012 | 5:41 amThis morning, John Wall and I were discussing the merits and drawbacks of the diner in which we do Marketing Over Coffee each week. One of the hallmarks of good service at a restaurant is that things initially happen at a rapid pace. You get seated quickly and your first order of drinks or appetizers is taken quickly. If you run a tight shop with great service, you get that first cup of coffee/drink/appetizer on the table as soon as possible. Why? Because up until the point that goods and services are actually delivered, it’s really easy for the customer to walk out. There’s no… -
Twitter favorites power tips
8 Feb 2012 | 3:07 amWhen I first started working with Blue Sky Factory, I noticed something peculiar about the company’s Twitter favorites. It wasn’t actual favorite tweets at all – it was instead a collection of praise the company had received online. This was the brainchild of DJ Waldow, the community manager, and what started effectively as a content management system (because Twitter doesn’t provide search outside of a 2 week window) has become one of my favorite sales and marketing tools. Here’s why this is powerful. In many ways, it’s just like recommendations on… -
Performance Based Social Media at Social Fresh East
7 Feb 2012 | 9:12 amI have the pleasure of speaking to the Social Fresh East crowd today. For those interested, here’s the slides that I’m speaking about. If you enjoyed this, please click here and share it with your network! Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? If so, please subscribe right now! Click here to read my blog on Google Currents on your mobile! Marketing White Belt Basics for Digital Marketers is now on Amazon & B&N Watch me speak: Attend virtually! I recommend: for Twitter audience building. Related posts: Social+Email Integration from Social Fresh Charlotte Social Media… -
Build your base to build your momentum
7 Feb 2012 | 5:29 amOne of the most important lessons I teach to my students in the social media course I teach is that it’s vitally important to build your social base. We have so many platforms on which to market that if we try to be everywhere all the time, we’ll effectively not be anywhere. This is especially true if you are budget or resource constrained and trying to make social media work for you. How do you choose a social base? Look around at all of the social networks and figure out which one you are most comfortable working in. For some people, the way Facebook works is ideal for them. -
When was the last time you were your customer?
6 Feb 2012 | 3:52 amWhen was the last time you were your customer? You say you’ve got social media strategy. You say you’ve got great service. You say you’re customer-focused, customer-centric, and the customer is always right. When was the last time you tested it out? If you manage business for more than a sole proprietorship, then give your business a service test. Set up a list of a few tasks and go test out your sales and service teams. Call them up anonymously or set up a fake email account and try your internal processes out. If you work at a small business where you’d be recognized…
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Conversation Agent
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Being in Control of the Interaction
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amI don't know about you. I wasn't terribly impressed by the Super Bowl ads this year. With the exception of the seducing commercial of the FIAT Abarth, where they are clearly in control of the interaction, most ads seemed to have sacrificed newer creative executions for safer ones. At the per second dollar spend, it was an understandable move. Disappointing because of the high expectations created through social media ahead of the big day. I got many ad preview offeres from the PR Agencies working with brands this year. A few days ahead of the game I saw that FIAT was making the rounds on… -
Collaboration? You Must be Joking!
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amI read this post by Chris Saad the other morning in response to Robert Scoble 's mention in a recent post and I keep thinking about the applicability of its concepts not just for Silicon Valley and the tech community. It applies to marketers and communicators as well. [Posted originally on Google+]<rant>1. lead not just cheerlead - how many times do we copy the same concept over and over, or look at short term payoffs when the opportunities are on the making better promises side of the conversation?2. add to the business DNA - nothing dies, not media companies, not blogging, not… -
What a Difference Five Years Make
7 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amHere I am. Writing from my heart more than my head where all the good ideas are and I get the zinger -- yeah, a personality would be great. Seriously? Kidding. I'm sure it would. And I have one. I can go from Zero to Italian in no time. When appropriate. Why do you care? Because that's just it -- online content should have a style and point of view, to get more personality it needs to have guts, and it needs to have time. Guts don't come from charts and stats, they come from people. Time as in face time, as in skin in the game, as in relationships. Or you're just making the seagull move --… -
How Would You Redesign the Sears Customer Experience?
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amAs a regular at Brand Autopsy, I remember the "would you miss" series of posts about brands John Moore wrote a couple of years back. The brands discussed ranged from Denny's, Costco, Ace Hardware, Dairy Queen, Crate & Barrell, BusinessWeek, UPS, Pizza Hut, to Walgreens, Polaroid Instant Film, Advertising Age, The Cheesecake Factory, Chili's, Wells Fargo, and more. One of the brands was Sears -- if Sears went out of business tomorrow, would any of us care? Does Sears provide such a unique product and customer experience that we would be saddened if it didn’t exist? How did Sears do on… -
... then I Discovered I am Actually Funny
5 Feb 2012 | 4:00 amSo, I've been thinking. What I'm doing here with this blog is not working. It's not you, it's me. Somehow I manage to scare you off to some site with LOL cats whenever you open your feed. I'm not inspiring you. Or maybe I am, and you're not telling me. I've tried a couple of things to justify keeping up with producing researched and useful content. That only makes the scraping and copying and rewriting gremlins happy and me poor. They don't link anymore in the sphere, those bastards. This is a departure from my usual writing style, I know. I've been slaving on figuring out an angle for the…
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Church of the Customer Blog
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Playbooks and visual explanations
6 Feb 2012 | 8:30 amBy the time the New York Giants and the New England Patriots took the field Sunday for their Super Bowl matchup, the players on both teams had read, re-read and rehearsed their respective game playbooks dozens, if not hundreds of times. They'd studied each play via multiple diagrams and photographs, stats and descriptions of assignments for every player on the field. A playbook is an apt metaphor for any business team that needs concise, how-to plans to deal with the complexity of systems, processes and moving variables, especially with social business. Whether it's for one of the world's… -
People trust people
1 Feb 2012 | 12:27 pm[Click on chart to see larger version.] The latest edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer study just came out showing CEO's in the dog house when it comes to being trusted. Who do people trust? Academic and tech experts, sure. But the biggest movers in the study are "a person just like me" and "regular employee." Look at your 2012 marketing plan. Are you providing ways for your customers to get together in-person and online to encourage word of mouth? Are you showcasing your best employees in social media, at conferences, and at private events with customers? Source: 2012 Edelman… -
FedEx's apology: expertly delivered
21 Dec 2011 | 8:29 pmWe've seen this before: 1) company makes an egregious service mistake and is outed by a customer via a YouTube video, 2) video goes viral, 3) mainstream media picks up the story and amplifies it, 4) PR nightmare begins. This week's culprit is FedEx. A California FedEx driver is caught on a security-camera video flinging a package containing a computer monitor over the fence of a gated Southern California house. At no time does the driver attempt to ring the bell for delivery. Just a toss over the fence, and he jumps back into his truck. In two days, the video has over three million views. … -
The simplest definition of word of mouth marketing
28 Nov 2011 | 12:38 pmNice video from WOMMA on the basics of word of mouth marketing. Tweet -
14 new statistics about word of mouth marketing
17 Oct 2011 | 11:45 amThe Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has a neat infographic detailing the latest stats about word or mouth marketing, online and offline. Source: WOMMA Note: the WOMMA Summit is coming up November 16-18 in Las Vegas. It's a great conference to learn the latest WOM marketing techniques from leading brands and agencies. Tweet
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Wired Top Stories
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Built to Last
9 Feb 2012 | 12:56 pmMotorola's newest Droid Razr is just like its predecessor in almost every way -- except for the addition of a positively huge battery. -
R.I.P. 'Laney,' The Dog Who Inspired the Military's Robot Pooches
9 Feb 2012 | 12:53 pmBefore there was the BigDog ? the Pentagon's remarkably lifelike four-legged robot ? there was a German short-haired pointer named Laney. The brown-speckled pooch inspired one of the military's most bizarre and captivating technology projects, its gallops and marches witnessed by millions on YouTube. This week, word spread among the small circle of Defense Department researchers who knew Laney that she had passed away. She was 12 years old. -
A Texas Jury Now Deliberating Who, if Anyone, Owns the Web
9 Feb 2012 | 12:25 pmThe fate of the openness of the interactive web is now in the hands of a jury in Texas, weighing testimony from the Web's early pioneers about the validity of a patent claim on features such as embedded video. A loss means that nearly every major U.S. website could owe thousands to millions of dollars to an obscure patent-licensing company based in a small-town in Texas. -
FCC Teardown Reveals Lytro Camera Secrets
9 Feb 2012 | 12:06 pmThe amazing Lytro camera was recently torn down by the FCC, which revealed its processor, sensor, and other innards. The teardown also sheds light on what sort of features we could expect from Lytro in the future. -
Origami Robots Run Only on Air
9 Feb 2012 | 11:38 amPowered by nothing more than puffs of air, robots molded from paper and silicone rubber can bend, twist, grip and even lift more than 100 times their weight.
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Collaboration
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O2 sends 3,000 staff home to telecommute for a day
9 Feb 2012 | 9:01 amRemote work may be a reality for freelancers with no managers eager to look over their shoulders, at plenty of tech firms that are comfortable with remote collaboration tools and edgy, young companies, but it’s still a long way from wide acceptance at your standard, stodgy corporate headquarters, right? Maybe not. Even big companies without a particular reputation for cutting-edge practices are slowly starting to realize that the real estate savings and employee morale benefits of remote work make it an attractive option. Take UK telecoms giant O2 for example, which closed its… -
Study science and math to get ahead in the future of work, right?
9 Feb 2012 | 6:04 amWhen you read accounts of the fierce competition for science and engineering grads, if you are a humanities or social science type (like me) you could be forgiven for slapping yourself on the forehead for forgoing the chance to earn six-figure salaries and be provided with ping-pong tables and free food for your entire career. But is getting that degree in science, tech, engineering or math (the so-called STEM subjects) really the best bet for long-term career success? If you look at trends in the future of work, then maybe not, argued Daniel Jelski, a professor of chemistry at SUNY New… -
Why we are buying paidContent
8 Feb 2012 | 11:05 amFirst the news: Yes, the rumors are true. We are indeed buying the assets of ContentNext Media from Guardian News & Media Limited. And no, we are not disclosing the terms of the deal, except that we are buying the entire group of properties — paidContent.org, mocoNews.net, contentSutra and paidContent:UK and that a representative of Guardian News & Media will join our board of directors as an observer. A few weeks ago when Paul Walborsky, CEO of GigaOM, came to the board and suggested that we should try and acquire paidContent, my fellow board members — Jon Callaghan (True… -
Microsoft OneNote on Android: nice but late to the party
8 Feb 2012 | 8:04 amMicrosoft added Android support for its OneNote mobile app, enabling smartphones and tablets running on Google’s mobile platform to take notes from their device. The software syncs through Microsoft’s Windows Live SkyDrive and to both OneNote for Microsoft Windows and the OneNote web app. OneNote for Android is free for the first 500 notes, and then costs a one-time fee of $4.99 for unlimited usage. The price is certainly right to try OneNote if you’re an Android user: 500 notes will tell you for sure if the app meets your needs. And for many users, it likely will. I say… -
An unexpected side effect of remote work: Denser communities
8 Feb 2012 | 6:01 amWill the rise of remote work mean we’re more spread out or more densely packed together? Obviously the latter, you could argue, pointing to the fact that logging in to work via the web allows colleagues to be spread from Abu Dhabi to Austin. But there is a case to be made that when the trend towards remote work is far enough along, the result will be denser communities of workers. The Atlantic Cities explained this second point of view recently, noting data that points to a renewed and rising interest in downtown cores and trends towards more urban-style suburbs where residents live…
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Top News
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THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Facebook Has Microsoft As Ally To Take On Google
9 Feb 2012 | 11:39 amThey are attached at the hip in search, social and the cloud. -
STOCK Act Passes: House Votes For Weakened Insider Trading Bill
9 Feb 2012 | 8:38 amWASHINGTON -- A weakened version of the STOCK Act banning insider trading by members of Congress and the administration passed the House Thursday without curbs on "political intelligence" or new clean-government rules. The legislation would make it clear that lawmakers and key staffers are bound by the insider trading laws that affect everyone. -
Kodak ditches digital camera business
9 Feb 2012 | 11:23 amKodak will phase out digital cameras in the first half of 2012, in favor of photo printing and brand-name licensing. -
First Ever Photo of a Shark Eating Another Shark
8 Feb 2012 | 4:26 pmIf you're a shark, what could you possibly have to fear? You're the ultimate predator, the top of the marine food chain. You can swim around without a care in the world... -
Free cellphones cost taxpayers $1.6 billion
9 Feb 2012 | 10:12 amLast year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight.
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NYT > Technology
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Young People Are Watching, but Less Often on TV
9 Feb 2012 | 12:47 pmYoung people still watch many television shows, but they are streaming them on computers and phones to a greater degree. -
Digital Security Bills Bruised by a Lingering Antipiracy Fight
9 Feb 2012 | 12:43 pmLegislation intended to help protect infrastructure from terrorists is hampered by fears of pressure from advocates who scored a victory against antipiracy bills. -
State of the Art: Android Phones Go on a Power Trip - State of the Art
9 Feb 2012 | 12:10 pmIn a world crammed with Android phones, HTC, Samsung and Motorola introduce three new models, each of them Verizon 4Gs. -
Small-Business Guide: Business Owners Adjusting to Patent System Overhaul
9 Feb 2012 | 12:08 pmEntrepreneurs see pros and cons in the America Invents Act, which is being phased in through March 2013. -
Cisco Posts Better-Than-Expected Profit
9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmImproved demand for business products lifted results for the maker of computer networking equipment.
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Engadget
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Biological computer can decode images stored in DNA chips, applications remain unclear
9 Feb 2012 | 11:19 amScientists from the Scripps Research Institute and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have taken biological computing one step further, with a new molecular machine capable of decoding images stored on a DNA chip. Though it's referred to as a "biological computer," the researchers' machine isn't much like a CPU at all -- unless your CPU was manufactured in a test tube filled with a smoothie of DNA molecules, enzymes and ATP. Once they found the right mix, the team proceeded to encrypt images on a DNA chip and used their Turing machine-like creation to decode them, with fluorescent stains… -
G-Form pulls a hat-trick with iPhone case hockey video
9 Feb 2012 | 10:57 amIt wouldn't be a proper G-Form product release without the accompanying outlandish promotional video. So, when the company offered up its new iPhone 4/4S case, it made its way to an empty ice skating rink, grabbed a hockey stick and went to town, showing how the thing holds up to the punishment of an 82 mph slapshot. The case incorporates the company's favorite shock absorbing substance, Poron XRD and comes in two styles: X Protect and Extreme Grid. They'll run you $40 each, when they ship at the end of the month -- the video below, on the other hand, is free.Continue reading G-Form pulls a… -
Microsoft details Windows for ARM at length: desktop Office applications confirmed, first devices expected with Windows 8 release
9 Feb 2012 | 10:35 amWe've been getting some mixed signals about Windows 8 for ARM-based devices as of late, but Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky has now returned with another of his exhaustive Building Windows 8 blog posts and cleared up some of the confusion. The short of it is that Windows for ARM promises to offer the same out of the box experience as the x86 edition of Windows 8. That includes the full Windows desktop (complete with File Explorer and the like), and the same desktop Office applications including Word, Excel and PowerPoint (but only Office applications, it seems). So-called Metro-style apps from… -
IRL: Logic3 PowerSleeve, HP Folio 13 and a trio of Nintendo handhelds
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amWelcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment. This week's IRL is a bit of a mixed bag, with tales of gadgets well-used and those deployed for pure pseudo-science. In two paragraphs, Mat Smith sums up his experience with three generations of Nintendo DS handhelds, while Dan Cooper attempts to explain why he's still using a gadget he obviously hates. And Dana, our resident laptop reviewer, tries leaving the 'ole six-pounder in the office and going home to… -
Nokia Astound owners face a Belle-less future, no update coming
9 Feb 2012 | 9:41 amSo this is where the road ends for the Nokia Astound. After getting a hearty helping of Symbian Anna in November, owners of T-Mobile's first (and only) Symbian^3 device became hopeful that -- despite the fate of the OS being sealed -- the US counterpart to the C7 would remain relevant throughout the course of their contract. Sadly, it was not to be: the phone maker tweeted that the Astound won't receive an update to Symbian Nokia Belle. What of the original C7, you ask? Oh, the latest refresh is already rolling out to users worldwide, but the Astound doesn't appear to be invited to the party.
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Gizmodo
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Watch Every Apple Design Ever in a 30-Second Video [Video]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:50 pmRob Beschizza over at BoingBoing put together this awesome video that runs through more or less every iteration of every design Apple's ever done. It's mesmerizing how even the retro Apple stuff is so obviously ancient but still abides by the same tenets of design as today's stuff. More » -
Watch As Zoo Keepers Struggle To Contain a Deadly Rhino Pinata [Video]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:40 pmEven zoos have to prepare for worst-case-scenarios, like when an animal escapes its enclosure. But I'm not so sure the paper mache rhinoceros used at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo really drives the point home of how dangerous this could be. More » -
Windows on ARM Will Support Desktop Mode, But Won't Emulate Legacy Apps [Windows 8]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:28 pm -
Sigma Sticks Its Huge DSLR Sensor Into Tiny Cameras [Cameras]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:18 pm -
The Enormous Secret Weapons Depot Hidden Underneath Manhattan [Video]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:14 pmManhattan's SoHo neighborhood is mostly filled with bored models and stupid-expensive boutiques. But on one grimy, absolutely ignorable corner is the entrance to a cavern stuffed with guns, rockets, cocaine, and riot shields. This is where Hollywood locks and loads. More »
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GigaOM
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Google Drive already referenced in Google Docs code
9 Feb 2012 | 12:45 pmGoogle is close to rolling out its cloud storage product, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, which stated that the offering is “expected to launch in the coming weeks or months.” The actual launch could happen rather sooner than later, judging from some references to the product that have shown up in the HTML code of Google Docs. The code, which can be viewed with any browser, shows a button labeled “Add to My Drive,” but the button itself is currently not visible to end users within Google Docs. Notable about this is the capitalization of “My Drive” — The… -
Cloudscaling wants to make OpenStack webscale
9 Feb 2012 | 12:33 pmCloud computing consultancy Cloudscaling is realigning its business around the open-source OpenStack framework, and it has a message for the world: If you want to use open-source software but operate like Amazon Web Services, we’re your man. The company, which has helped build public clouds for the likes of Korea Telecom and Internap, is putting its consulting muscle behind a new OpenStack-based software platform that is built with webscale in mind. For the uninitiated, OpenStack is a set of open-source cloud-computing building blocks currently being developed and used by a large number… -
SpeakToIt: A personal assistant for older iPhones, iPads
9 Feb 2012 | 12:31 pmSiri may be both the best and the worst feature Apple has rolled out for iOS yet. On the one hand, the beta product is fun and helpful. On the other hand, the software is exclusive to the iPhone 4S; iPads, iPod touches and older iPhones need not apply. The situation provides an opportunity for developers on non-Siri devices, and SpeakToIt Assistant, found in the iTunes App Store, is one of these. What can SpeakToIt Assistant do? I spent some time with SpeakToIt on both an old iPhone 3GS and my iPad 2 earlier today, and while it’s somewhat limited compared to Siri — more on that… -
If 2 GB is excessive, why is AT&T selling 3-GB mobile data plans?
9 Feb 2012 | 12:21 pmWhen AT&T first implemented its throttling policies on unlimited mobile data plans last fall, it justified the move by claiming it had to limit the “extraordinary” consumption of a few greedy smartphone customers. We’re starting now to get a glimpse of what AT&T means by extraordinary. It’s only 2 GB – a full gigabyte less than it sells its newest customers under its most-common data plan. Over the weekend, blogger John Cozen posted a recent e-mail exchange with AT&T about why his smartphone data connection was slowed down after he breached 2.1 GB in his last billing… -
What are Boxee’s upcoming mystery products?
9 Feb 2012 | 11:17 amBoxee’s spat with cable companies over their desire to encrypt basic cable programming got a lot of press this week, but one interesting detail hasn’t been reported yet: A publicly available copy of Boxee’s most recent filing with the FCC (PDF) contains large sections of blacked-out content. An accompanying letter (PDF) describes that this measure was necessary to conceal “confidential commercial information regarding Boxee’s business plan, technology and product pipeline.” The folks at the FCC obviously got the unredacted filing, but the rest of us are left wondering,…
