Curated Stories Feb. 24, 2010

Most of us started using social networking to stay in touch with friends. But in the past year or two, social media has morphed into a powerful tool at work …

This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.As a web developer, you’re probably among the earliest adopters of new browser techn…

In 2010, U.S. consumers will increasingly seek out meaningful, “real” brands, according to Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys
Media Buyer Planner, February 24, 2010 — In terms of ret…

In my last article I showed you some examples of how you can put social media to good use. Although it’s ultimately up to you to find out what works best, …

Many of the things on this list will not be news to the very well-informed social media consultant types who live and breathe this stuff. …

But when it comes to social media, many hospital marketing departments lackadaisically join one social networking site or another, trying different things …

If you buy the party line, social media is going to do everything from astronomically increase the sales of every product under the sun, to breaking the …

TopRank ran a survey of journalists, reporters and editors on their use of search and social media in 2008. We found 91% use search engines like Google to do their job. 64% use social networks. Published in J…

A quarter of social media users are between the ages of 35 and 44. While this may come as a surprise, it really shouldn’t be. …

Good design ideas don’t always show up when you need them. Sometimes even the best designers need a little help. Here are five sites to turn to for ideas and inspiration.

If the DIY community had a universal symbol, it most certainly would be a roll of duct tape. Inexpensive, abundant, strong, and ready to stick to nearly anything, this versatile DIY companion is a must in your…

Looking at blogs and news sites across the web, it’s clear that many have robust communities with eager, intelligent people looking to contribute. But up until recently, the only way most sites (particularly…

Mobile ad network JiWire just released the stats from its latest public Wi-Fi study and found that 56% of connections are from mobile devices like the iPhone, the iPod touch, Android smartphones and Sony’s P…

Tapping into the massive audience on Facebook is a huge opportunity for any company — which is why thousands of businesses have created fan pages.
Read the rest of this story »See Also:How To Build A Customi…

With the Credit Card Act of 2009 in effect, your next statement will likely have some new information and disclosures on it. The Federal Reserve has an interactive tool that explains and illustrates what they m…

Whether they’re found in a garage or inside an established enterprise, startups struggle with decisions about process and infrastructure. The speed at which a startup can learn is its competitive advantage and…

Scribd — the online document-hosting service — is announcing a major play for the mobile device document market today: a new send-to-device feature, pending mobile apps, and fresh e-reader and smartphone A…

Ed. note: When we saw that Wichita-based coder Chad Smith had automated Google Voice phone ringing with GPS, we had to ask for details. With an Android phone, a $10 app, and some web server space, here’s how he…

Now, marketing is the center of American business.
Why? because through social media, customers are praising and criticizing companies in public in a way that requires marketing to triage and respond.
Three yea…

Buzz is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly noisy social media world. Why do I think it’s superior to Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed?
Let’s take the easiest comparison first:
Buzz vs. Friendfeed
Ri…

Banks can expect to achieve revenue gains of up to 10 percent over the long term by catering to the online and social media tastes of …

With all the attention around Apple focused on the growth of the iPhone and handicapping the potential fortunes of the forthcoming iPad, Charles Wolf, analyst at Needham and Co. in New York reminds us that Appl…

The Internet-era has made establishing trust an increasingly complicated issue. Our finely tuned ability to read facial expressions does not apply to e-mail, and emoticons are, at best, an imperfect substitut…

Adding pictures and graphics to your blog posts is an easy way to enhance your message. Using a Creative Commons picture or stock photo is common, but creating a custom graphic is unique. Not only do custom…

The WordPress.com network went down last week. In the wake of the outage, we started looking at what infrastructure WordPress.com uses to serve its 10 million blogs.

WordPress.com is run from data centers in…

Whether reading an article or having a conversation with people (face-to-face) and reading/hearing the phrase “It’s just twitter,” irritates me–especially when it’s drenched in a condescending tone. I…

One Facebook feature which many users are still unaware of is status tagging, which lets you reference your friends within each of your updates.. We get regular emails from people how to accomplish this and wh…

In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande explains that complicated processes like surgery, where human error can lead to tragedy, require checklists (you can listen to HBR’s Katherine Bell interviewing Gawande…

In coming months, there are at least five trends in social media that you should watch. They are: Bing is helping to …

Place, product, price and promotion.
We all learned these basic marketing principles in college and they still stand up today. But the social web is a true shift in the way we communicate and go to market. Fo…

That is Apple’s secret.And Tim Cook confirms it today. When I give my Apple speeches around the world, I spend a lot of time explaining to audiences that the one thing Apple does better than anyone else it th…

Twitter ads are apparently almost here. After what seems like years and years of speculation, Twitter says that a roll-out of an ad-driven business model is “imminent”.
The revelation came during a panel discus…

The scene has been steadily changing — social media is putting control into the hands of the consumer. It’s been long coming, …

Blogs are still extremely important components of the social-media ecosystem for several reasons. First, they have the audience — of Quantcast’s Top 100 …

For some companies, marketing through social networks isn’t enough, they want to create their own social spaces to attract visitors.
Here are ten tips for building social networks and forums…Occasionally, f…

You knew this was coming. In fact, you have known for a long time. For longer than I’ve owned a car with your brand on it. I’m on my third — and last — one. Recent events and discoveries have dismayed me. I…

Since the business world today still clings to the relic of eras past known as the business card, and since tapping in those details can be a bit painful, several apps exist to scan cards in with the iPhone 3G’…

While weak leaders blame their followers for a lack of alignment, strong leaders know that it is their responsibility to create it. Alignment doesn’t just happen. It is created.

Photo courtesy of ©iStockpho…

Passlogix, an enterprise software company focused on simplifying access to company resources, is announcing an authentication product which will allow users to log on to Windows with any type of identification…

One of the things that has made Apple so successful since Steve Jobs returned to the company in the 1990s is its laser-sharp focus. Apple releases fewer new products in a year than some of its competitors laun…

A note from a reader in New Haven, CT, responding to our post on long-term unemployment:
Dear Mr. Blodget,
Read the rest of this story »See Also:Employment-Population Ratio: January 2010I, UNEMPLOYED: Diary Of…

Ed. note: Authors Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler’s Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do) builds on the premise that “dangerous” things we avoid are often eye-opening and educational. One suc…

Like the @harvardbiz article showing 4 ways to look at Twitter (insightful data visualizations) – http://bit.ly/bxhhTj

BB pal Mister Jalopy points us to this Charlie Rose episode, viewable (for folks in the USA, anyway) on Hulu. The episode contains a good fashion roundtable followed by a heartbreaking and inspiring conversat…

A graphic code uncovered by researchers at the University of Victoria suggests that written communication may have started 30,000 years ago. At least 19 of the symbols were used frequently in far-flung caves ov…

Hey, RWW friends and fans! As some of you may have noticed, we’ve been tinkering around with our new team Buzz account today. We’ve decided to do something a little bit different with this network, and we reall…

Online Marketing Summit 2010 in San Diego is host to a smorgasboard of internet marketing topics and this afternoon I am priveledged to participate on a panel about Social Media. Panelists include:
…

Online communities are not neutral. They fundamentally change the nature and way a company does business. All too often, an organization creates a social strategy and thinks nothing will be altered …

In the past, we’ve talked a bit about issues of gender and technology, but today, this blog post brought another important aspect of tech and discrimination to our attention.

We polled some of our friends on G…

According to Sunday’s New York Times, the new CEO at Xerox does her own grocery shopping and most of her own household chores. Ursula Burns flies on the corporate jet, but she parks her car in the p…

I confess my eyes light up when I see a new blog comment or receive a new email, tweet, or Facebook message. I usually click their web link or look them up on LinkedIn to see who they are. I get g…

This is just downright ridiculous. We see all sorts of jaw-dropping legal rulings around here, but I still can’t fathom how Italian law allowed the following case to be decided in this manner. As you may reca…

David Merkel submits: How long to the point of no return? I don’t know. In all of the time that I wrote at RealMoney, I tried to point at directions, but not give timetables. Giving timing is a mug’s game…

This is perhaps the greatest marketing strategy struggle of our time:Should your product or service be very good, meet spec and be beyond reproach or… should it be a remarkable, memorable, over the top…

Earlier this month Amy Sample Ward interviewed ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick about our report on the real-time Web and how real time impacts the world of nonprofit organizations. Sample Ward helps nonprof…

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I’ve been running small experiments on the art of retweeting for a couple of weeks and it’s time for a reflection.

My tweets usually fall into one of several types:
Re…