Curated Stories Apr. 20, 2010

Earlier I posted a story about the motherload of all Apple scoops: Gizmodo purchased a lost, unreleased iPhone and proceeded to document it in copious video and photographic detail. Since then there have been d…

Tomorrow, the California State Senate’s health committee will review a bill that, if passed, will make California the first state in the nation to create a live donor registry for kidney transplants. The bill w…

In order to understand the value of a Facebook ad impression, Nielsen analyzed over six months of responses from 800,000 users to more than 125 Facebook ad campaigns by 70 different brand advertisers.The study…

Useful touch gesture reference guide – pdf included – #UX – http://bit.ly/9AemFP (via @lukewdesign)

We salute women storytellers of the world this week and turn Good Reads, Cool Views over to them.The Burden of ConsciousnessFor years Deborah Eisenberg has been one of our best short story writers – “a mast…

When we published Groundswell, we included a statistical tool called the Social Technographics Profile. This has been one of the most popular elements of the book, since it puts a survey-based framework on peop…

ShareDo You Fascinate?This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing podcast with Sally Hogshead (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes
Why are you captivated…

Fast, good, cheap is the classic triangle of constraints in project management. Say that you’re expected to deliver on all three and you’ve got a problem. You’ll surely fail unless you find a way to negotiate…

Most smart bloggers try to focus on a few, key search terms in their blog content. But the reality is, your blog is probably a lot more broad than you think.Last week, I co-published a white paper with Chris Ba…

WhatApp.org – a Stanford project dedicated to measuring security – recently found that Facebook users had significantly less privacy than Twitter and the iPhone. The site uses experts’ analysis to rate diffe…

Amr Ramadan is general manager of Vimov. Vimov makes Weather HD (iTunes link), currently number 7 on the paid iPad app charts. It was as high as number 3 on the charts.
Much has been said and written about the…

With Twitter’s much-anticipated advertising platform underway, it’ll be interesting to see where this takes their user base and their financial standing. This brings Twitter another step closer to becoming…

In the digital world, expect your clients, new boss, and recruiters to review your online footprint. In fact, a Microsoft study “showed that 70 percent of hiring managers have rejected candidates because of…

I like to snack on cereal. And I buy a different brand every week.
However this personal indulgence comes at a price. When I enter the cereal isle, I’m faced with a wall of boxes vying for my attention, starb…

We use metaphors and similes every day. The web is built on them. The web itself is a metaphor. Well, it began as a metaphor. Given the meanings of web, I suppose it is an actual web. So I guess it isn’t a me…

Recently, Forrester introduced a new way to consider influence in Social Media. We identified a group of social media participants we call Mass Influencers. While just 16% of the US population, Mass Influ…

Keith found an interesting story telling a bit about how Steve Jobs operates. It involves small teams of young engineers willing to work 90-hour weeks in total secrecy, and a complete willingness to throw away…

Updated: Privacy authorities from 10 countries this morning released a joint letter at a conference in Washington, D.C., that takes Google to task over the way it released its social tool, Google Buzz, saying…

We all know that Word of Mouth is important — influencing between 20 and 50% of all decision, depending on whose research youre reading. Probably the easiest way to measure your Word of Mouth campaign is to…

As the baby boomers start to retire en masse, one of the fears is that the US will struggle to continue to fund Social Security. Though originally projected to become cash flow negative by 2016, it looks like…

Do you want to be a successful blogger?
I do. I might be getting a bit obsessed with it, actually.
Post ideas pop into my head unexpectedly. I keep a long running list of ideas for improving my blog.
I also st…

Twitter Infographic
Last week Twitter had its “Chirp” conference for developers. Much of what I watched as it was streamed live was above my understanding, I’m no developer! I did learn a great deal …

This kept happening on my road trip. I would ask about nearby Starbucks so I could get online and my Droid would tell me about locations that were either off my path or where I had come from.
So it’s not just a…

Peppermint, a new Linux-based operating system with a focus on cloud computing and Web applications, is launching into a private beta this week to a limited number of participants, and will open up later next m…

The concept behind Socialwok is a good one: leverage the power of the Google Apps mail, documents, calendar and instant messaging functions to let companies and organizations create interactive discussion tim…

DennisHong from Cracked has accessed the deepest recesses of his comedic mind to examine the psychology behind posting a status update, and he’s summarized the results in a neat little flowchart. In addition…

A Guest Post by Barry Moltz

Customer Service is job number one. We have heard this rallying cry within companies forever. Ironically, few of them have been able to implement it. The level of service that…

Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
10 questions to ask before buying iPad — On Friday night, I bought an iPad nearly three months after giving 12 reasons why I wouldnt. An unexpected reason came up: My wifes MacBo…

MediaPost Publications, April 19, 2010 — Improved customer targeting and conversion via analytics, enhanced digital marketing structures and capabilities, greater alignment between marketing and sales, an…

… joined forces to develop ad effectiveness solutions to determine consumer attitudes, brand perception and purchase intent from social media advertising. …

Educators complain when Apple removes from its App Store an app that is used for teaching in many classrooms.

Kevin Yank sends over an interview he recently did with Derek Powazek who, among other things, developed one of the first truly cool online publications in Fray, and also JPG Magazine, discussing the future of…

John Hanke / The Official Google Blog:
Introducing Google Places — Today the Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. Why? Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real w…

Our great friends over at WordStream have another important update we want to share at SEJ. Today they are launching WordStream Keyword Management for SEO which is a keyword research tool targeted to SEOs (as…

Over the years I’ve had the curse blessing to participate on several ginormous substantial nightmare web projects that have involved several control freaks participants. Inevitably in this chaotic maelstrom…

Recently on the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint* forum, some folks were saying nice things about the space I’d created.
And I have to admit — I love it there. The members are generous and supportive, every…

When people want to transfer money safely and directly to one another in the Europe, they go through their banks. But in the United States, they’re more likely to use PayPal.

This is good news for eBay, which…

In a little under 3 weeks time, we will host our second unconference: the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit. It’s a 1-day event at the lovely Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California.
In preparation for…

Sure, we live in networked times, but the phone still plays a big role. In about a dozen digits, you can reach anyone in the world with a phone. Now there’s also a way to get at much of the metadata that goes…

Buzz.com, ATT’s take on socializing local business listings, has received a considerable amount of press, even though the site has been in private beta. And thanks to sharing a name with Google’s recently…

See a photo of Kim, her bio, Part 1 of this QA.

QA with Kim Pearson, Question 2:

Q: What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came about through a story or storytelling act?

A: A few years…

Blogging with Numbers
Let’s get this out of the way first: all else being equal, a headline with numbers in it will yield more traffic than a headline without. That’s been proven enough times that i…

Blogging is so common these days that it has become a part of daily vocabulary. There are around 2 blogs created every second and an estimated of around 2 million posts are updated each day. Still s…

cartoon by @gapingvoid

OK, so reading this blog, you’ve heard me say time and again that success on the social web is all about starting the conversation. To engage. To dialog. Blah, blah, bl…

Los Angeles, CA – iStoryTime, a publisher of children’s storybooks for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, announced today that it will be giving away select, full featured apps free for Earth Day. The stories…

Craig Newmark is the founder of craigslist. He can be found on Twitter as @craignewmark and blogs at cnewmark.com.People have always used the “social media” of their time to effect change. Without belabor…

ATT is officially opening up its recommendation service, Buzz.com, to the public. We wrote about the project when it was still in beta in January. The service is essentially Yelp meets Yellowpages.com and it s…

Do feel sometimes like your brain is running amok — and that is also reflected in your web browsing habits, with huge numbers of tabs open at once? Do you mire yourself in many open loops of interesting thin…

The EFF reports on another ratcheting back of data privacy control for Facebook users: “Today, Facebook removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain pa…

**This series is supported by the Social Influence System and WE twendz™ pro, presented by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. To learn more visit Waggeneredstrom.com/nozombies.Customer service, recruiting, contests…

If your computer is running Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard earlier than version 10.6.3, you should update to Mac OS X v10.6.3 or later to enable Magic Mouse multi-touch gestures.

Jeffrey Hayzlett is a social media evangelist. As Kodak’s chief marketing officer, he’s led the company into new territory, reaching out to consumers online and changing the company’s structure in response. He’…

For years, there have been attempts by states to get Amazon to collect sales tax on purchases in those states, even if Amazon doesn’t actually have any facilities in those states. Historically, companies haven…

Whatever comes of the reform efforts in Washington, D.C., the focus of the U.S. health care system has already shifted toward a patient-controlled (not just patient-centered) delivery system. WebMD, Destination…

Here’s Tim O’Reilly on the future of Cloud computing and the “Internet of Things,” speaking at the MySQL CE 2010 conference.” As Bruce Sterling sez, “It looks like he’s just telling disconnected alpha-geek an…

If Marketing is doing its job, Marketing should be invisible to the consumer.

That sentence would have never made any semblance of sense in the days when mass media advertising ruled the Marketing landscape. A…

One of the motifs you keep coming across when reading about Foursquare and Gowalla, the mobile location apps, is that they are games, and the games are fun.

The most important thing when it comes to gaming is…

Can social media suck you into believing you know everything? Absolutely.

I call this phenomenon the Social Media Cone of Silence … and it could be deadly for you and your business. …

Need to create a visualization of tweets centered around a certain topic? You needn’t look any further than Revisit, a simple free tool that visualizes the temporal dynamic of a Twitter stream.Revisit collec…

Hoping to help parents navigate those dangerous waters, the Collier County School District hosted a community forum on social media Monday night. …

Critics fear proper English will be replaced by Internet slang because of the increased use of social media, but students and faculty at the University of …

O) are the most social media-savvy in the world. The survey, the first by sales and marketing contact database NetProspex, ranked the top 50 companies based …

Boasting one million users and armed with new marketing deals, the startup aims to break beyond its niche audience

Stories about the outrage over red light cameras have started to go mainstream. And given that some suspect the cameras are rigged in favor of revenue over safety, it’s to be expected that some of the caught d…

Facebook and YouTube are displacing rivals and taking over the social web, according to data we’ve just received from comScore.In addition to showing massive and continued traffic growth throughout 2009 and…

I love to sit on the beach. One of the coolest things about the beach is the number of layers of visual depth. Look at the sand and it’s beautiful, but zoom your eyes in closer and you’ll see a whole layer…

Many readers have submitted the the story about a Kalamazoo towing company who is suing a college student for $750,000 for defamation of character and libel. Justin Kurtz started the “Kalamazoo residents again…

As advertisers continue in their quest to serve more relevant digital ads, companies that can track and target audiences online are able to charge a premium. But one group that has easy access to consumers’ per…

If you had to explain Social Media and the Marketing opportunities available to young entrepreneurs, how would you do it?

Hugh McGuire (Librivox and Bite-Sized Edits) sent me the link to his Slideshare present…

A lot of companies in a lot of places these days have been struggling to cut costs. Most of them are discovering the hard way that they have for too long put up with too much redundant and wasteful activity. Fo…

A woman who claims she does “stealth marketing” for BlackBerry seems to have deflated the whole campaign by blabbing to the New York Daily News about her nightlife related marketing.
26-year-old Brooklynit…

Maria Ogneva is the Director of Social Media at Biz360, a social media monitoring, measurement and engagement platform. You can follow her on Twitter at @themaria or @biz360, or find her musings on the company…