It was nice to get an email from Friendster today about their relaunch, detailed below. I wouldn't count them out. You never know who can make a comeback today. Just as it's easy for a site to come out of nowhere and dominate, it's equally possible [...]
Jeff Kirvin is open sourcing his novel by turing to Twitter (the hive) to help. I bet this will become even more common going forward...
"But because I was too close to the source material, I couldn’t think of another way to do it. So I asked Twitter.
jeffkirvin
How" [...]
CNBC tonight is running an hour-long special on Google. The show dropped some exclusive news that eWeek picked up on - Google is in the process of developing an augmented reality system called Visual Search for Android phones.
The concept, according to CNBC ... "Imagine you're'" [...]
Google today rolled out a public DNS service that anyone tech savvy can use to make their browsing faster. There's no word yet if the domain name service will be built into other services like the Google Toolbar or Google Chrome as a default setting. Here's my quick [...]
I subscribe to an ego search via Google Web alerts, which is separate from Google News alerts. Normally, I get one or two of these a day - typically after one of my columns go live or when I post here.
However, in the last couple of days [...]
Although it's been years in the making, 2010 is poised to finally be the year that social networking and TV will converge, allowing consumers to connect through their big screens. My latest Forbes.com column addresses what to watch for in the coming year. (Note: [...]
I have a love-hate relationship with writing. Clearly, it's intimately tied to what I do. But sometimes it's also a fear that grips me. I struggle to find the right words, which result in my re-using the same ones over and over again (doh - [...] According to Experian, the majority of US searches (at least those that generate clicks) incorporate more three or more keywords. This is likely being driven keyword suggestions, a feature that's now the default for virtually every search engine and every browser. To get a sense for what this means [...]
Although some are saying that the email age is coming to an end, the data shows the opposite is true - it increases our reliance on mail. With Gmail adding new features all the time and services like Posterous, Twitgether, Evernote, Remail and others [...]
Inc. magazine is out with a new study that tracks the Inc. 500 - the fastest growing private companies in the US:
According to the study, social media usage by companies on the Inc. 500 has grown in the past year, with 91 percent of companies reporting that they [...]
Steve Baker on Bloomberg's takeover of BusinessWeek and what it means for both the blogs and their research departments.
[...]
The Miami Herald on a new study about Twitter psychology...
"The communication and information professors, Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase, found that there tend to be two types of Twitter folks. The majority, or 80 percent, were what they called 'meformers' -- Twitter users who sent out messages that revolved" [...]"My job is really jumping on the social-media bandwagon and strongly encourages employees to use sites like Twitter and Facebook to help broaden our company’s brand and build a presence online. I’m really uncomfortable with combining my personal online life with my professional one, but no one else seems" [...]
To often, it seems, we forget that the people we interact with have their own lives. Their social relationships have far more impact on their behavior than anything you or I might say or do. This is one of the tenets of The Four Agreements. Nowhere is this more [...]
If you're paying any attention to the techosphere today there are two stories dominating the headlines. Both involve non-shipping products.
First, Google showed off the first demo of its Chrome OS. Download Squad does a nice job breaking it down....
"So what exactly is Chrome'" [...]
Earlier this week Oxford University Press declared "unfriend" its word of the year. This got me thinking... now that we are entering an era of media reforestation what common phrases could soon be history? Here's 10 that I came up with. You may disagree but I believe all of these have' [...]
Google Fast Flip appears to be nearing a full integration into Google News. I wasn't able to replicate this in other browsers so right now this appears to just be a cookie test. Stories from Google Fast Flip started appearing at the bottom of my page - even when' [...]
I make heavy use of Google Search options in refining my queries. I was surprised this morning to see that the "reviews" option is now gone. This was one of the more handy features. Anyone have any insight here?
Search Options before (image via Search Engine Land). Note under that [...]
Fact: Information sources are exploding. More information will be created in 2009 than all prior years.
Fact: Attention is finite. We're becoming media agnostic, but when we're interested in something we dig down into our interests. This is why I and others like Robert Scoble are really excited about [...]It never ceases to amaze me just how careless some people are with their passwords. These days we all need to be smart and vigilant. Farhad Manjoo put together a simple way to secure your online accounts. It has only two steps.
"Start with an original but [...]
Satisfied with your Google ranking? It just may change before the day is out. Marissa Mayer on Google's race against spammers...
"We have two, three, five changes every week that are visible to the end-user in the user interface. We don't [publicize] the ranking changes. We are making changes to our" [...]LinkedIn and Twitter announced a status update syncing arrangement yesterday. From LinkedIn...
"The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, [...]I have been spending a fair amount of time on Facebook since they updated the news feed feature, mostly because I can get a quick read on what's new. I like how they show you "trends from friends." In the process, I am discovering that it's becoming a one-stop shop for [...]
Two new studies point to a growing divide in how moms and kids communicate and are influenced...
First up, Nielsen/Pete Blackshaw's Pocket Guide to Social Media and Kids: "In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3'" [...]
MarketingCharts uncovers some fresh data on how PR people feel about press releases. It's ugly.
"(only) 49% of today’s professional communicators say they think press releases are 'as useful as ever,' according to recent poll of corporate communicators conducted by Ragan Communications and PollStream."
And on why we can't kick' [...]
The images above should strike fear in any one who seeks attention - be it a brand, a politician or an individual. They come from Nielsen. The first (87) is the number of domains the average American visits in a month. The second [...]
Five years ago there was media and social media and the two were distinct. You know what was what. It was like there elephants and zebras. You knew the difference.
Today all media is social, all social is media. It's impossible to separate the two. The media [...]
via Posterous powers "storystreaming" at the Pioneer Press
Julio Ojeda-Zapata explainsl how the St. Paul Pioneer Press used Posterous to solicit photos from readers in reporting the Packers-Vikings game over the weekend.
Here are two fresh interviews that might be of interest. The first covers blogging's place in a microblog world. The second captures the essence of my productivity system, how I work and the tools I use
' [...]
Adam Engst on why email rules:
"It all comes down to two simple facts: email is based on open standards, and it's the lowest common denominator for Internet communication. Any communication system that wishes to supplant email will need to offer both openness and ubiquity, and nothing available today" [...]
The following is also my Adage column this weekThe Two Faces of Facebook I spend a lot of time gazing into a crystal ball that I know is going to be cloudy half the time. Lately I have been pondering [...] 
via theawl.com
Fascinating look at newspaper circulation over the last 20 years. Handy for PowerPoints should you need it.
[...]
This morning I logged into YouTube and I noticed that it now helps me find me find videos and channels from friends who have linked their Google contact information to their social profiles. Meanwhile yesterday Google rolled out its social search program (which so far I [...]
On Facebook a lot of my friends are lamenting last week's switch to the new new news feed. (It's now split: the news feed shows trends from friends while the live feed is real-time.) Personally, I like the change. You can pick one. You're not forced.
Still,' [...]Rudd Hein on GeoCities' closure:
"There are, I believe, two reasons why the Geocities model failed in popularity. And I say Geocities but I could also say Blogger or LiveJournal…
One, we don’t want to built web sites, easy page makers or not. Making new pages, figuring out where or'" [...]
I am on a minimalist kick these days as I try to unload some of the more complex stuff I use in favor simple tools that are "good enough." A lot of this involves moving to anything that works with plain text since it works well [...]
Americans overwhelmingly have a lack of interest in cloud-based services, according to a new survey"Asked what they felt about personal data being stored on third-parties’ remote computers, 64% say they don’t want their data kept by a third party, according to the latest installment of 'Unisys Security Index: United States.''"I' [...]
During the first fifteen of years of the Internet's gestation, we searched the web unassisted. In the second era, we'll do so with the curated assistance of our social networks - and be able to spot trends from friends. As we wrote in our search white paper earlier this [...]
I have an Amazon Kindle but I never use it. However, I constantly use the iPhone Kindle reader - and it has me buying a lot more books. The Kindle Reader for the iPhone got a nice update last night (see the bottom of this [...]
The Pew Internet for the American Life Project is out with new data about Twitter ...
"Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December" [...]Macworld breaks down when it's better to use Twitter over email:
When avoiding junk-mail filters is a priorityGiven my mobile lifestyle, slowly but surely my iPhone is becoming my primary computer. I just finished a seven-day, five-city business trip where all I took was my phone. If call goes according to plan I have hopefully taken the last trip where you will see me toting a laptop.
[...]
Technorati is out with their annual report on the state of blogging. As usual it's packed with statistics. Notably this year it shows how some are taking a hub and spoke approach by promoting their blogs on other social networks. I was interviewed for [...] 
Neat visual look at how the world wakes up on Twitter...
Three quick tips from Google on managing your personal reputation online. What's notable here is how integrated PR is in doing so...
"If you can't get the content removed from the original site, you probably won't be able to completely remove it from Google's search results," [...]Interested in Twitter but don't know where to start? There's a guide for that.
via MakeUseOf..."The Complete Guide to Twitter – our next PDF manual, filled to bursting with Twitter-knowhow." ' [...]Jakob Nielsen studies the usability of RSS feeds and social network streams for professionals and finds that ...
"Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on" [...]Data via trends.google.com
Since it was acquired, I have basically abandoned Friendfeed. I love the service, but I am waiting to see how the team integrates it into Facebook.
Unsurprisingly, traffic to the Friendfeed site has plummeted since the acquisition in August. And Posterous now has [...]
I was a history minor in college - and, for awhile, it was my major. I am glad I was because the experience has framed how I view the development of the Internet and specifically online communities. (I have been online since 1988 when all we used were text-based online [...]
Google Operating System posts some obscure Google features. Not to be outdone, Matt Cutts shows us Google Reader's ninja mode.
"That's the paradox of PR peoples' large, personal media footprint -- they can't use their own access to large numbers of people to promote their clients." via Tom Foremesky @ siliconvalleywatcher.com
Tom Foremski notes that some PR professionals have a larger reach online than journalists, which presents both challenges and [...]
I love stories like this one from a small iPhone app developer that acts the way I wish some larger companies would - and in the process become wildly successful through service. This is such a simple formula. Why don't more act this way?
"This is our customer service'" [...]
Deloitte is out with a new study that finds "continued maturation of the enterprise’s use of communities and social media." However, participation levels remain low as most just lurk. Summary follows or can be found here ...
Ann Smarty at ProductiveWise sizes up the various options for tapping into real-time search - Twitter, Facebook, Google and Friendfeed. Personally, I am finding Google's new search options to be outstanding - an addicting.
A Google pilot program unearthed by the Google Operating System blog - a clipboard in the clouds. I have wanted something like this for awhile, but hope that it will sync across computers and devices.
Forbes.com CMO Network invited me to share some more thoughts on Google Wave. Here's my takeaway...
"The basic conclusion I came to is that, for all of its wonders, Wave is a mess. What Google Wave ignores is what Google watcher Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? calls" [...]
You can't spend any time on Twitter without geeks lusting after Google Wave. Here's my quick take...it has as much chance catching on as RSS did.
I have had a Google Wave sandbox account since late July. It's slick to be sure. However, what I keep asking myself is this:' [...]
Lists are coming to Twitter to help users curate...
"The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.
In Atlanta today I ran into Tom Dickson, CEO of Blendtec. This is his business card. If you don't know Blendtec, they are the geniuses behind the wildly successful Will It Blend video series.
We didn't have a lot of time to connect so [...]A solid analysis from William Martino on who should "own" social media agency assignments...
"The reality is, CONSUMERS own social media, not brands and certainly not agencies. Whether we like it or not, we now must market our brands in a landscape where consumers have the tools to make" [...]
Lately I have noticed that many of the people, blogs, news services and more that I want to track are right inside Facebook. I have even filed them under a list called "feeds."
This is very convient since their updates are integrated right into my stream [...]
On average I travel for business about seven to 15 days a month. Sometimes it can get a bit nuts, but I love it - I never get bored. This is one of those weeks. I will literally be in the clouds all week both virtually and [...]
Earlier this week I appeared on Canadian TV (specifically BNN.ca) where I discussed blogging vs. lifestreaming with Lainey Lui of Laineygossip.com and eTalk. During the interview I maintained that it's difficult today to build a profitable blog since many of the big niches are taken. Lainey [...]
I remain fascinated what you can do with search data. You can truly read minds since how we search is becoming a direct reflection our society.
Google has a site called Flu Trends where they use search data to assess how widespread the flu is in [...]
If you want to attract influence online, it's actually quite simple. All you need to do is find or create cool stuff that other people with a shared passion will care about. The bigger that pool, the wider your influence can be - e.g. that's why those who track celebrity [...]
Alan Warms, CEO of Appolicious, stopped by my office today to give me a rundown of his site - a social network for mobile apps. Right now it's just for iPhone apps, but they will be expanding soon to cover Android and Blackberry. For more see this short [...]
The Mint blog has compiled in one place a wealth of data about the decline of the print newspaper. The data points come from the Newspaper Association of America and Bloomberg.
Curiously the data doesn't include aggregate figures from Mint users - which conceivably they can compile by looking at' [...]
As many of you are aware, three months ago I did something that some considered virtual heresy. After five years and 5300 posts I shuttered my blog, Micro Persuasion, in favor of this lifestream. I set out to find a middle ground between a blog and a [...]
Fascinating study by Dan Zarrella that looks at what does/does not get retweeted, based on 40M retweets. Unsurprisingly, words and time of day matter immensely. Surprisingly, begging works! Yet, semicolons don't!
Great article about how tech journalists are often at the bleeding edge of, well, tech-enabled journalism:
"Why, though? Because technology is the second-fastest changing field in news (after fashion). You'd watch what the fashion writers are wearing to find out what's going to be in next season. It's'" [...]
The New York Times fills a void with a new column by Jenna Wortham on digital manners... "Its primary purpose is to help you gracefully navigate the murky waters of a hyper-connected world. Mom won’t stop tagging embarrassing family photos of you on Facebook? Think you’re being stalked on the Web" [...]
One of my frustrations with Twitter is that there's no easy way to track the hot trending topics within your personal stream. So, with that, I went ahead and created a tool that does just that. All you need to do is follow @Tweetertrends or simply [...]
I love charts and graphs. So, here are a bunch of them that crossed my screen today. I found these all fascinating and I thought you would too.
From Digital Inspiration... From The Next Web... From [...]
A dirty little secret about social sites is that sometimes it's the big media franchises that put them on the map. Often they drive adoption by a more mainstream audience once they start to dabble. This starts small at first but it can grow quickly.
This week Mediabistro launched a reader-powered' [...]
ReadWrite Web has discovered a way to make a simple tweak to the URL that Google returns and get back real time results. However, as you can see from the images below, they still have a way to go. For example, a search for NFL surfaced 10 result. Meanwhile [...]
As more of us around the world join the web, a lot content is going to start to be produced in non-English languages. This hasn't been a factor for a lot of us, but I suspect it will as we begin to discover content-rich resources and [...]
As I understand it, Twitter doesn't make more than your last 3000 tweets archived or searchable. But you can go store them going forward using Twistory and Google Calendar.
I had signed up for Twistory way back in late 2007 and added it to Google Calendar. However, I had' [...]
via appadvice.com
One of the big things that Facebook brings to the age of streams is instant messaging and presence indicators - the ability to see who is online right now and active on the service so you can chat in real time. I hope that sites [...]
Two sites. One, Facebook, goes light (in the US and India only for now). The other, Seesmic Web, goes dark. Which one do you like better? It seems like there's a splintering approach to web UI's lately, one light one dark. One simple, another more complex. I just want to skin the [...]
Google has quietly opened up a new resource that aggregates Internet statistics across five vectors: consumer trends, macro economic trends, media consumption, media landscape and technology. The site is hosted on the Google.co.uk domain but the statistics are global.
The data on the site is [...]
Photo credit: iirraa on Flickr The following is also my column in this week's Advertising Age.
For more than 100 years, marketing has largely operated as a push paradigm. We create messages and funnel them through the media to reach stakeholders.
Push remains viable. However, [...]
Mediapost: "According to new data from social media services provider ViTrue, (Tuesday) is the day of the week when click-through rates are highest on content posted on the walls of brand pages on Facebook, at 9.89%."
However...MarketingCharts: "'The Digital Disconnect’ Emerges'" study found that even though 52% percent [...]
Photo credit: slworking2Did you know you can use a GPS-enabled device on an airplane? Well, according to this list on many airlines you can. That was news to me.Now a lot of the utility of in-flight GPS goes, pun intended, out the window if you [...] Short URL services are a key part of the infrastructure that powers the Age of the Stream. Think of them like railroad tracks.
TinyURL was king for awhile. But then Twitter ditched it for Bit.ly back in May. Just how much impact did this switch have? A big one.Traffic stats are [...]
I'm not exactly sure when this was launched, but Google Trends now has a handy mobile version, which you can access here. The site, like it's desktop sibling, features links to the top searches of the hour. However, it also includes historical data from the past [...]
Download now or preview on posterous
2009 NMAS White Paper - Engaging the New Influencers FINAL.pdf (2442 KB)
One of the most remarkable things my employer does is host a world-class summit for academics every year on new media. [...]
via youtube.com
This week we moved into our new offices in New York City. Among the highlights, is a giant wall of headlines. Richard Edelman gives us a tour.
There's something about headlines that still gives me goosebumps. I hope that even in the age of streams, [...]
What is Lifestreaming? Will Lifestreaming kill long form blogs? What does Lifestreaming mean to brands? Lifestreaming aftermath: how to cope with information overload? How to aggregate relevant content from disparate sources? How can you harness the power of the real-time web in a meaningful way? [...]
When it comes to personal information like email, calendars, to- do's and notes, I have super systems that keep all the data up-to-date by leveraging the cloud and keeping local copies on my computers and my iPhone. Evernote, for example, is one great tool that I use to [...]
You're probably sick of me talking about Posterous, but it's been about a year since I have been this excited by a new platform and its potential to change how we publish. I don't know what the future is for the company (and no, they aren't a [...]
During a recent interview with Personal Branding magazine, the writer asked me what I thought about this amusing quote, which is the inverse of Andy Wharhol's more famous one. I am not so sure. The world is filled with extroverts and introverts so maybe there's a balance somewhere. Your view?' [...]
Think RSS is dead? Think it's too slow for the age of streams? Perhaps that's true for news. But have you ever considered using Google Reader as a private database? In this screencast I will show you how I do just that. This is why, for [...]
As I mentioned last night, as more of my friends join Posterous and use it as a hub to populate their I am becoming a huge fan of their built in reader. It's helping me discover all kinds of new, substantive content that is hard to [...]
Lifestreaming started out initially as a model that revolved around importation and aggregation: a place to roll-up all your streams. But that's changing.
Now that Facebook acquired Friendfeed and the noise on Twitter is at near cacophonous levels, I am seeing a new model emerge for lifestreaming. This one centers [...]
I just wrapped up a nine-day swing through California, the majority of which I was in Silicon Valley. Every time I visit the Bay Area (which I truly love to visit) I am always struck by how technology pervades the region much more so than any other. Digerati chatter is [...]
On Sunday I spent the afternoon in Half Moon Bay with Robert Scoble, his lovely family and Francine Hardaway (whom I had never met).
For over five years now I have looked to Robert as a beacon for what's next for social media. He got [...]
You might think Guy Kawasaki lives a sweet life. Well maybe he does, but he still drives a beat-up Toyota Sienna mini van. I took a ride in it today in Palo Alto where we caught up on Alltop and its growth and had a laugh or [...]
