In the silly pop culture department, we may see the beginning of the mainstreaming of Twitter when Oprah brings her omnipresent personal brand to the microblogging service. Does his mean anything? I doubt it. Twitter is not as obviously valuable to the average Jane (or Joe) as Facebook with its social attractions. The more [...]

Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator, an incubator and very early stage investment company has a very interesting take on why cities like ours don’t foster many start-ups. Essentially there are two kinds of start-ups, bio-medical and tech. Bio-medical start-ups are usually focused on commercializing research and we do pretty well with those- to attract them [...]

The problem with our current business models
There is a seismic change going on in the way companies communicate with their customers and prospects. In the traditional model there are three company departments that communicate with their market, typically in a silo-ed manner:

Product Development. Through research, including panels and focus groups, savvy product developers try out [...]

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Twitter, the microblogging platform that enables people to publish whatever they want- as long as those thoughts are not longer than 140 characters. While those of us working in social media marketing are immersed in the wonderful world of Tweets (those Twitter posts) and [...]

Over 12,000 journalists lost their jobs in 2008. 11 papers folded print editions this week. My local paper, the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, supposedly one of the Gannett chain’s most profitable papers, laid off over 40 people recently. Their A section, which is national news and opinion, had a total of six pages yesterday [...]

321, 313, 535
Those are my current Twitter numbers for Following, Followers, Updates. They’re not high and I am not on a mission to attract thousands of followers nor am I auto-following everyone who follows me. I follow people who contributing to my interests in a meaningful way. They generally follow me back, hence those nearly [...]

This guest post on Techcrunch is a perfect follow-up to my previous rant about ad agencies.
Money Quote:
“The internet is the most liberating of all mass media developed to date.  It is participatory, like swapping stories around a campfire or attending a renaissance fair.  It is not meant solely to push content, in one direction, to [...]

Can you imagine a company that was started less than ten years ago and is now worth $104 billion dollars that never spent a cent on advertising? How about an online application that has over 200 million users and never spent a penny on advertising? Or a local bar that was spending $800/month on print [...]