The report came out last week, so it might be old news for publications that are used to being on top of technology trends, like ReadWriteWeb and The Inquisitr. [We discussed it briefly on Friday with Sarah Wurrey and Doug Haslam in the CustomScoop podcast.] Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb stated, "Technorati says blogging is mainstream, we think the numbers indicate otherwise." I'm tempted to air my dissatisfaction with how Technorati is not updating my blog posts on their site despite the frequent pings. Could this be a cause to the reporting of a slow down in posts? Duncan Riley's analysis... Read more →
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« August 2008 | Main | October 2008 »
How The Numerati See Workers, Shoppers, Voters, Bloggers, Patients and Lovers
And why this book kicked the discussion on privacy and the future of data into high gear. Is a technological dashboard becoming a sort of "control panel of our lives"? Stephen Baker, a veteran writer of BusinessWeek - we first met when he linked to one of my posts, The Illusionist - delivers the fruit of his research into this emerging (but not new) class of what he calls math intelligentsia - The Numerati. You probably met Baker on Twitter or maybe at the blog he co-authors for BusinessWeek. Now you can also find him on the book blog. If... Read more →
Thriving on Chaos? Only When You Have Trust
When the news of the U.S. financial meltdown hit the wires, I was in Europe. In the past I would have probably had to rely on European television, radio and print news, with potentially the possibility of getting an international newspaper in large cities. With my laptop on hand, I had an instant connection to the crisis as it developed. The headlines are still pouring in - WaMu Fails, is Sold off to JP Morgan (WSJ, subscription required) with Bailout Negotiations Still in Disarray. As I said in my contribution to Roundtable, CustomScoop podcast (34 minutes) I did with Doug... Read more →
The Role of Twitter in Brand Management
By Tony Hung At the most recent BlogExpo Twitter was a huge topic, and with good reason. Although it started more than a year ago with fairly geeky roots, it continues to grow at a breakneck pace. Has it crossed over to the mainstream, yet? I think we're on the cusp. I certainly think that when anchors on CNN start using Twitter to monitor conversations on live television -- it's probably time. Like a few others, I happen to be quite bullish on the topic of Twitter, not just as a singular web application, but as a medium, and microblogging... Read more →
When Plan B is Better than Plan A
The flight got canceled, or maybe the conference did because there were not enough attendees enrolled. Perhaps you did not get that promotion on which you were counting. Maybe you missed the train and now have to drive to another station to get to your destination on time. You wanted to get into that ivy league school and was not accepted. You sell to a specific demographic or into a particular niche and the marketplace just would not have it. The brick wall is closer than it appears to be. These are all examples of our normal idea of when... Read more →
It Ain't Easy Being a Green Marketer
By Chris Baskind So is the green marketing bubble getting ready to burst? Depends who you ask. In survey after survey, consumers continue to indicate their desire for more eco-friendly goods and services -- and their willingness to pay a bit more to make it happen. But what consumers say and how they behave aren’t always the same. Boomtown Take the case of Whole Foods, at one time the darling of both organic food enthusiasts and investors. The company averaged a robust annual growth rate of almost 11 percent between 2003 and 2007. This year hasn’t been as kind. While... Read more →
The Difference Between What Hip Looks Like and What Hip Is
By Stephen Denny My son and I walked through Baltimore-Washington International Airport yesterday at the ungodly hour of 5:30AM and were confronted by a marketing Jackalope (definition: the trophy heads of rabbits sporting small racks of horns you see across the great American South, particularly in Texas; also defined as combinations of objects or concepts not found in nature). We wound our way to the TSA security line and entered what looked like the entrance to either a day spa or a ride at Epcot. Light blue warped walls illuminated with water-like textures, new age music softly playing around us... Read more →
How Does an Editor Sort Through Information?
With the advent of "we media" there are way more writers and editors online than anyone has the opportunity to follow these days. Add to that the gynormous amount of information and you know that it is almost physically impossible to keep up. It turns out that semantic search is useful also to editors. Back in March we discussed how search is aligning with data as Yahoo! Search announced its new open search ecosystem. There is a technology from Inform that is at the initial stages of providing web matches for stories readers might be interested in. It does that... Read more →
What's Old Is New Again and Again and Again ...
By Paul Isakson I recently reread Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage and it reminded me of how it seems we're doomed to repeat ourselves throughout time. Over and over and over again. Earlier this year an article in The Atlantic asked, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Others have reported that text messaging is having the same effect on kids. Seems Socrates had this concern about the alphabet: "The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of... Read more →