Barack Obama's Victory: Three Lessons for Business
Nov 5, 2008
The Illinois senator built his decisive win on three leadership principles: a clear vision, clean execution, and friends in high places.
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At Issue } essential reading
Making Social Matter
Feb 27, 2013
Instant feedback is confirmation that the program IS listening to their viewers. Viewers matter. Social matters -- and it’s enabling deeper, richer relationships.
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Morgan Stanley Expands Social Marketing on Twitter and LinkedIn
Jun 25, 2012
As Wall Street embraces the inevitable tide of social media, fiduciary responsibility is taking on new parameters. In a different kind of security risk as Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is stepping up its social media reach, granting its 17,000 financial advisers partial access to Twitter and LinkedIn over the next several months. The move expands a year-long experiment with 600 employees to test whether social media would be a helpful tool for its employees.
Social Layers or Networks... Is There Room for More?
Sep 27, 2010
Sometimes, it seems the phenomenal success and user growth seen by Facebook and Twitter in the last few years has boxed in what we accept as a bonafide social network - as we early adopters and tech press absorb potential challengers like chum and digest them quickly, mocking their attempts as feeble, and their traction as futile. For some, Facebook and Twitter, despite their faults, are the end all and be all - and it matters not if other products have more features or innovation, because in the end, he with the numbers wins, and it seems they've got all the numbers.
Web 2.0: A Natural Evolution?
Sep 22, 2010
Could Web 2.0 be grounded in nature? Our new research shows that Web users are increasingly conceptualizing the online world and new technology — social networks, mobile phones, and even whole businesses — as ecosystems.
The Web Is Dead? A Debate
Aug 17, 2010
Wired asked Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle, the creators of the Web 2.0 conferences, to debate the issues raised in our Web RIP cover package. Over a number of days, Tim and John traded emails with Wired magazine editor in chief Chris Anderson, who wrote one half of “The Web Is Dead.” Surprisingly, Tim agreed that the Web is the “adolescent” phase of the Internet’s evolution and that we are seeing a shift toward a more closed phase in the networked age’s cycles. John, however, was having none of it…
Clouds, Big Data, and Smart Assets: Ten Tech-Enabled Business Trends to Watch
Aug 13, 2010
Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment.
GE Connects Its Marketers Across The Globe
Jul 20, 2010
General Electric has launched a private online community for its global network of 5,000 marketers. An intramural social networking platform called MarkNet, the program is designed to connect marketers from different GE divisions who normally wouldn't speak to each other because they belong to different marketing silos.
Everyone is Wrong About Influence
Jul 7, 2010
Sure, trust is part of the relationship, and authority, and all that good stuff. You'll be chasing the popular kids (even those who demur) until the cows come home if you keep thinking that influence is about you. It's not. And you don't need the following of a celebrity to build something of significance. What you need is to identify areas of relevancy among your customers and prospects, build community, and allow others to amplify your influence -- as you meet their needs. Identify, build, allow -- no voodoo or pixie dust here.
Conan O’Brien Goes To TBS…“Very Funny”
Apr 13, 2010
In a headline grabbing move, Conan O’Brien is jumping the network ship and moving to TBS. Beginning in November, his new show will air Monday through Thursday at 11pm, bumping George Lopez to a midnight start, and locking up a solid two hours of comedy for the network whose tagline is “Very Funny."
The Organization Is Alive
Apr 7, 2010
To change an organization from within, it helps to understand four basic circulatory systems, analogous to the channels of communication in a living body.
Trapping Content On The iPad Won't Work, Even If It's Pretty
Mar 19, 2010
Wired is one of the few magazines I read cover to cover. It consistently exposes me to new ideas and topics. For that, I'm grateful (and a longtime subscriber). But when it comes to the iPad, I really don't understand what the Wired crew is doing. Yet, reading over this analysis piece by Reuters' Felix Salmon, I'm dismayed to see a return to the days of silos and closed content. Here's how Salmon puts it.
Streams of Content, Limited Attention
Feb 25, 2010
In his seminal pop-book, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argued that people are happiest when they can reach a state of "flow." He talks about performers and athletes who are in the height of their profession, the experience they feel as time passes by and everything just clicks. People reach a state where attention appears focused and, simultaneously, not in need of focus at the same time. The world is aligned and everything just feels right. Consider what it means to be "in flow" in an information landscape defined by networked media, and you will see where Web 2.0 is taking us. The goal is not to be a passive consumer of information or to simply tune in when the time is right, but rather to live in a world where information is everywhere.
ESPN360.com to Rebrand as ESPN3.com on April 4
Feb 11, 2010
ESPN will rebrand its live sports centric Web property ESPN360.com as ESPN3.com starting on April 4. Executives at the sports media giant said that the name change reflects the way the company increasingly views the site, as a full-fledged third network that complements ESPN and ESPN 2. "We have approached this as a network for years, and as users have become more accustomed to engaging with content across various screens,it made sense to make adjustments that reflect both the product’s and the industry’s evolution,” said Sean Bratches, executive vp, sales and marketing.
Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet
Feb 3, 2010
Sounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression. Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction. To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.
Who is the ME in Social Media?
Jan 29, 2010
Good friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.” Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on the establishment of a distinct ecosystem for cultivating and grooming who we are in public, private, and in secret.
AT&T Boosts Network Investment
Jan 29, 2010
AT&T said Thursday that it will invest an additional $2 billion in its network in 2010 to make sure it keeps up with the growing demand from new smartphones and other 3G data devices, such as the Apple iPad, on its network. During its fourth quarter 2009 conference call, Chief Operating Officer John Stankey said AT&T plans to spend between $18 billion and $19 billion in 2010 upgrading its wireless and backhaul networks to handle the onslaught of new traffic. This is roughly $2 billion more than the company had invested in the previous year. Specifically, Stankey said AT&T will add 2,000 new cell sites and upgrade existing cell sites with three times more fiber links than it had in 2009. This will increase capacity for the backhaul network that connects the cell towers to AT&T's main network. The backhaul portion of the network is a critical component to AT&T's network. With these upgrades in place, Stankey said the company will be able to easily upgrade in the future to 4G wireless technology.
NBC Gears Up to Fix Prime Time
Jan 22, 2010
NBC has mopped up its late-night mess. The network now faces a more challenging task: rebuilding its evening hours after years of cost cuts and creative missteps. NBC executives are saying they plan to spend at least 30% more than last year to develop TV series for the fall, and 20% more to market the shows, although they didn't attach a dollar figure to the estimate. The General Electric Co. network, which has seen its ratings and profit slide since 2005, is working on 18 to 20 pilot episodes for new shows, up from 11 last spring.
NBC’s Slide to Troubled Nightly Punch Line
Jan 17, 2010
At its height, NBC was the very model of what a television network should be. With iconic programming, enviable ratings and spectacular business success, the peacock network delivered plenty of laughs along the way with “The Cosby Show,” “Seinfeld” and “Friends.” Nobody is laughing anymore. Today the network is in shambles, brought down not just by the challenges facing broadcast television — fragmenting audiences, an advertising downturn — but also by a series of executive missteps that have made its prime-time lineup a perennial loser and, most recently, turned its late night programming schedule into a media circus that threatens the lucrative “Tonight Show” franchise.
Google And Open Systems
Dec 23, 2009
Google’s SVP-Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg has published a manifesto explaining Google’s commitment to open systems. The post — otherwise a paean to the virtues of openness — contains a crucial caveat about the proprietary platforms that provide 99% of Google’s revenue.
On Twitter and in the Workplace, It's Power to the Connectors
Nov 18, 2009
In the World According to Twitter, giving away access to information rewards the giver by building followers. The more followers, the more information comes to the giver to distribute, which in turn builds more followers. The process cannot be commanded or controlled; followers opt in and out as they choose. The results are transparent and purely quantitative; network size is all that matters. Networks of this sort are self-organizing and democratic but without any collective interaction.
The Future of Business is in Ecosystems
Nov 11, 2009
Last week, I said that the future of news is entrepreneurial (not institutional). Today, a sequel: The future of business is in ecosystems (not conglomerates or industries). At the Foursquare conference last week, I was struck by the miss-by-a-mile worldviews held by the chiefs of big, old conglomerates and the entrepreneurs starting new, nimble companies. The conference is off the record, so I won’t quote anyone by name. And in truth, these are the same conversations I hear often elsewhere. Having these different tribes conveniently in the same room merely focused the contrast for me.
What Employee Communications Looks Like in the Networked Company
Nov 6, 2009
Awareness is rising of the impact on business of networked employees—those workers who are continuously connected to their social circles and can tap into them at will. The discussion seems to be shifting, ever so slowly, to the characteristics of companies that, rather than inhibiting these traits, want to reap the benefits of a networked workforce. Recent posts by Olivier Blanchard and Valeria Maltoni have speculated on the nature of these companies. Olivier calls them P2P companies; Valeria refers to them as connected companies. They both see the recruiting process changing, for example, to one of inviting people already connected to the company through online and offline social networks to come work for them. The IT department becomes the ET department—Technology Enablement. P2P companies don’t outsource customer service. Collaboration is supported by the use of the best tools available.
Tech Tools May Help Pull People Together
Nov 5, 2009
For years, the premise has been widely accepted as some great truth handed down from the mountain of academia, etched on a silicon tablet: Our modern tools of technology are isolating us from one another. Think: the guy in his basement in boxer shorts hanging out online with other strangers passing in the cybernight. Now, a new study released Wednesday suggests that rather than push us apart, these tech tools may actually help pull us together. The millions of Americans who have embraced social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter might not be surprised by the new findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, showing that Web and cell-phone users tend to have larger and more diverse networks of close confidantes than those who do not use the Web or cell phones.
Lo and Behold: the Internet
Oct 29, 2009
Forty years ago today, Leonard Kleinrock typed the “Lo” of “Login” into a Stanford computer, which promptly crashed before the command could be entered. But because Kleinrock was sending this message from a UCLA machine, he had just taken part in one of the great milestones in communication history. These computers were connected under the auspices of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The agency was created by President Eisenhower as part of the Department of Defense in 1958 as a direct response the Soviet Union’s launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. Its mission: to ensure that the United States never again be caught off guard by technological advances. Now known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency continues to push the envelope in such diverse fields as advanced propulsion, medicine, and robotics, as well as information technology. But it was ARPA—specifically its Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO)—that funded the 1960s research project called ARPANET that became the internet of today.
So What Exactly Might ‘Adaptive Brand Marketing’ Be?
Oct 16, 2009
The imminent publication of Forrester’s new report on the challenges facing clients - “Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in the Digital Age” is a welcome turning of the spotlight toward client organizations. Without question agencies of all sizes, shapes and persuasions need to get their collective acts together and transform into leaner, more agile, more creative, & more technology- and data-fuelled businesses. The best in the business are no doubt all plotting how they can come out of this recession leaner, meaner, quicker, better. But that’s kind of pointless unless clients adapt too.
What Human Business And the Social Web Are About
Oct 12, 2009
I want to share my take on how human business works, and what the social web is all about. When I talk about these things, they might not line up with what you’ve thought about, but that’s okay. We see things differently. To me, this is a large tapestry and we’re weaving the fabric of new stories together a little at a time. It’s okay if you don’t see it this way yet. I just want to share my perspective, if only to give you a fuzzy squint into what I believe is here, and what I think is coming with all this.
Facebook Fan Pages are The Future
Oct 9, 2009
Facebook fan pages are the future for three reasons: They're free, easy to create and build a nearly instantaneous pathway to evangelists, prospects or the curious. When fans interact with a fan page on Facebook, that interaction is sent through the fan's news feed, which goes to all their friends, practically daring a chunk of them to see what the page is about. Compared to Twitter, Facebook fan pages rule. You're not limited by Twitter's 140-character posts, plus it's far easier for fan page members to preview a photo, video or weblink than what Twitter offers. What more could a brand manager want?
ESPN's 'Quiet Triumph of Storytelling' a Bold Celebration
Oct 2, 2009
When it comes to touting music, movies, books or TV shows I really really really like, I tend to cross the line between enthusiastic advocacy and combative over-promotion. I sent so many copies of "American Tabloid" and "I Love You, Beth Cooper" to friends that I found myself on the receiving end of a U.S. Postal Service restraining order. My inability to comprehend the li'l sister's decision not to re-up her HBO subscription for season four of "The Wire" eventually boiled over into a hostage situation. I am capable of great feats of annoyance. Well, the roommate/Missus-To-Be better gird herself for a Larry-generated hype tsunami, because I've latched onto a series that threatens to enthrall me through 2010: ESPN's "30 for 30" sports documentary series, which is as ambitious an undertaking as anything the network has ever attempted. Hell, it might be one of the most ambitious projects in the history of TV.
Journalism Should Look to Collaboration, Not Charity
Jul 27, 2009
Is journalism a charity case? It's beginning to look that way: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism will launch in the UK with a £2m donation from the Potter Foundation, while the Huffington Post has started a nonprofit investigative unit funded by $1.75m in donations. The new Texas Tribune will fund coverage of the state capitol from gifts from a local venture capitalist and friends. The New York Times has even confessed to discussing the idea of seeking funding from foundations for its reporting (though in fairness the company is looking under every possible rock for revenue). And this newspaper is supported by a trust. Will the tin cup be the sole support of journalism? I'm not ready to surrender the hope that news can be a sustainable business.
Websites vs. Content
Jun 2, 2009
I accept that people and brands are going have a use for their own websites (I still do). Given that, the important questions are: What role will your website be playing within the overall context of the internet as a whole? Are you spending and an amount of money, effort, and time that is appropriate to that role? Would you be better off putting that money, effort, and time into developing content?
Why Networks Best Silos in the New Environment
Jun 1, 2009
"How should i change my marketing organization?" That's the most frequently asked question of members of the Association of National Advertisers. These are large, sophisticated companies. They're supposed to know what they are doing. So why are they asking the question?
Why Wont Traditional Media Outlets Innovate?
May 28, 2009
By now, it's no longer news--in fact it's cliché to say it's cliché--that the old ways of doing business in traditional media no longer apply. It's accepted as fact that media companies that resist change are doomed to fail and that legacy models have been overturned by digital technology. Except here's the thing: Having realized the digital pennies they're pulling in won't replace the analog dollars they're losing, traditional media companies are clinging ever more desperately to what they know.
Learning, and Profiting, from Online Friendships
May 24, 2009
Companies are working fast to figure out how to make money from the wealth of data they're beginning to have about our online friendships.
TV Advertisers Are Offered Closer Ties With Content
May 20, 2009
In another sign of how hard television executives are working to attract advertising in tough times, two cable channels plan to significantly expand an initiative that pairs commercials with relevant scenes in the shows they interrupt.
New Mood in Antitrust May Target Google
May 18, 2009
For decades, the nation’s biggest antitrust cases have centered on technology companies. And they have all been efforts by the government to deal with powerful companies with far-reaching influence, like AT&T, the telephone monopoly; I.B.M., the mainframe computer giant; and Microsoft, the powerhouse of personal computer software. Last week, the Obama administration declared a sharp break with the Bush years, vowing to toughen antitrust enforcement, especially for dominant companies. The approach is closer to that of the European Union, where regulators last week fined Intel $1.45 billion for abusing its power in the chip market.
NewBizNews: Hyperlocal
May 8, 2009
For the New Business Models for News Project at CUNY a key model we want to build is hyperlocal. There are, of course, many views of hyperlocal and it will involve many different kinds of players, from sole bloggers to news organizations. The way I’d like to attack this is to try to create one or two optimal models for sustaining coverage in a towns, or collection of small towns, or neighborhoods in a city - the size of critical mass of the ideal minimarket is itself a key question.
The Elements of Digital Conversation
Apr 28, 2009
Although we often use the word in new contexts, the basic definition of conversation hasn't really changed. A conversation is an informal exchange of thoughts or ideas. Most importantly, though, engaging in a conversation means that you don't say everything that there is to say. You expect the other person to make a contribution, and you intentionally leave things unsaid so that the other person has an opportunity to add their part.
Sprint Touts Its Network's Might
Apr 6, 2009
Sprint Nextel is benching its CEO as pitchman in favor of hipper advertising. The Overland Park, Kan., telecom company is kicking off a new campaign Monday that highlights all the mobile Internet and data services that cellphone users can access on its network.
The Value of Passionate Communities
Mar 27, 2009
Treat your community like it’s gold and it will return the favor.
ESPN Turns Tables on ISPs by Demanding They Pay for Content
Feb 9, 2009
Net neutrality has for several years been touted as a sort of desperate stand by the internet's independent content providers to fight telecoms from charging for the right to use bandwidth. Its proponents have warned that if unchecked, telecoms may create fast lanes, essentially destroying smaller sites that cannot pay, and crippling internet entrepreneurship. Now the tables have turned on the ISPs in what may be a growing new trend. ESPN is leading a push for internet content providers to charge ISPs for the right to use their sites.
How Nike's Social Network Sells to Runners
Nov 11, 2008
The Nike+ site is drawing hordes of runners, and its success may hold lessons for brand building on the Web.
