Curated Stories Mar. 8, 2010

I had to breathe deeply and compose myself for several minutes before I picked up the receiver and made The Call, but finally summoned the fortitude. Today, after four decades of near-uninterrupted service, I c…

As a web worker, I handle most of my communications online. My first contact with many of my clients is via email or, sometimes, phone. But I still have a big box of business cards sitting on my desk, and I thi…

BackType, the best comments search engine on the Web, which launched in 2008 and has since morphed to act as a “real-time, conversational” search engine, today announced the introduction of BackType Labs, an “i…

Some encouraging words here about Verizon’s expected 4G data rates:
After testing in the Boston and Seattle areas, the provider estimates that a real connection on a populated network should average between 5…

Here’s a statement that might shock some PPC managers:
If it is an appropriate time of the day for your ads to show, you never want them to be shut off because your account has hit its budget. If this is hap…

I’ve been thinking a lot about how organizations extend the use of social networking beyond the marketing department. You’ve probably thought about this too or are even implementing it at your company.

It se…

Jonathan Levy is the founder of Lookbooks.com. He will be part of the core conversation “Extreme Profile: Makover Edition” at SXSW with the editor of this site, Nick O’Neill, and Leora Israel.
Want your…

Making breakfast, lunch or dinner plans for any group that involves more than two people can quickly become a chore. Lunchwalla, which launched earlier today, wants to make this task a bit easier by providing y…

The Real Results series is supported by Gist, an online service that helps you build stronger relationships. By connecting your inbox to the web, you get business-critical information about key people and comp…

For the past couple weeks, the Static FBML application has been one of the fastest growing Facebook applications. The Static FBML application enabled Facebook Page administrators to customize tabs within their…

AFP – US companies will spend more this year on digital and online advertising and marketing than on print for the first time ever, according to a study released on Monday.

Microsoft SharePoint is an accepted enterprise standard for online collaboration, but unfortunately many organizations don’t use it to its fullest potential. If you’re preparing a telework pilot program, it…

Sharlyn Lauby is the president of Internal Talent Management (ITM) which specializes in employee training and human resources consulting. She authors a blog at hrbartender.com.Remember Google Wave? Clearly, G…

Sold At The Top submits:
Friday’s employment situation report showed that the full time unemployment rate increased to 10.5% of the civilian workforce remaining very near the highest rate seen in 41 years.Th…

The Official Google Blog:
Statistics for a changing world: Google Public Data Explorer in Labs — Last year, we released a public data search feature that enables people to quickly find useful statistics…

The local-business directory is combining its extensive ad network with SEO services from OrangeSoda.

When will the institutions return to the public’s good graces?
Adweek, March 8, 2010 — While the banking industry has stepped back from the brink of disaster during the past year, surveys show it has yet t…

[This blog post was cross posted with my new blog on Forresters Interactive Marketing blog: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/03/tripadvisor-and-mass-influencers.html]

In the Forrester report, Tappin…

Rob Griffiths explains why he doesn’t use Google’s online office suite and why maybe you shouldn’t either.

President Obama has appointed Edward Tufte to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, “whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds”. Outstanding.

★

Mac users are missing out on cheap (read: free), social customer relationship management. Windows users have xobni, a simple tool that integrates with Outlook, and Microsoft will also be releasing a solution in…

The iPhone app from Chipotle, the restaurant chain best known for its burritos, is an interesting mix of simple design, e-commerce functionality and location tools. Digging into the app’s development reveals th…

Social media data company Rapleaf recently investigated the profiles of users who “fanned” the iPad on Facebook in order to get a better sense of the type of users who are interested in Apple’s upcoming slate d…

It is not really often that I am actually impressed by the tool (this is because I come across 2-3 new ones weekly so it is not really easy to surprise me already). But today’s one is truly awesome.
AlertRank…

Article submission sites do not have as much authority and link value as they used to, but they can still help build your link portfolio and give a temporary boost in rankings.
Certain sites like EzineArticle…

[#2 in the RexBlog series, Content that Works.]
The subject line of this post is a bit misleading. There is no one wiki entry that will teach you every thing you need to know about research content. Fortunat…

Something peculiar happened yesterday.
I was sitting in a coffee shop near work as I often do between sessions when one of the baristas sheepishly approached me. I go in there all the time, so most of them know…

This post is a response to Pankaj Ghemawat’s article “Finding Your Strategy in the New Landscape”

The 2007-2008 global financial crisis has fast-forwarded a long term restructuring of the global economies that…

I wish I had been writing little hash marks each time “story” or “storytelling” was mentioned at last night’s Oscars. So many who spoke cited the importance of storytelling in the movies.

The very f…

Gotta Be Visible Authenticity

The entrepreneurs and brand managers I work with both often start by asking how to use the social web. Their goal is to promote their business or their brand. The worry that…

A Guest post by Heather Allard from The Mogul Mom.
If you’re a regular ProBlogger reader, you know that Darren dishes up heaps of incredible blogging advice 7 days a week, 365 days a year. His archives positi…

This week, I’m in Las Vegas giving the opening presentation of MarTech at the LeadingRe Annual Conference and speaking on two other panels during the general sessions. They’ve prepared an exciting lineup…

Gabe Rivera / Techmeme News:
Mediagazer is to Media as Techmeme is to Tech — Today were launching our first new news vertical in almost four years: Mediagazer, which will focus on the content production…

If ever a field needed a makeover, its medicine. Chaotic, expensive, inefficient, and often ineffective, health care is dying for innovation. Theres no shortage of clever ideas, but, as we will be discussing o…

One of my favorite sites that I read daily is Business Insider, a site which meshes together technology news with business and finance news, combining all of my favorite topics. On occasion we are …

Pickens writes “The Telegraph reports that Apple is developing technology, already being nicknamed the ‘iKey,’ which will allow users to gain access to their office and unlock their car or front door with a sin…

I don’t think you can call a new solution “Social CRM” until you are connecting new social data sources to the sales data of your customers. CRM is about operationalization and efficiency. And ultim…

When I started posting my new series of Facebook data points, one of the most requested graphs was the days of the week (and times of day, which is coming soon) that are best to publish on to get lots of Facebo…

What brands can do to take advantage of video chat – the new big thing – http://bit.ly/cy09pC (via @adage)

Businesses jumping into social media often see Twitter as a “simple” part of the plan: set up an account and start tweeting. Sadly some even get stuck right after the set up part. Here are 10 mistakes…

There are many, many signals in the Database of Intentions, as my readers have pointed out, but the one I feel compelled to add to the chart I created Friday is the Commerce signal. This signal emerged before s…

Tumblr, one of the simplest blogging platforms around, is doing really well. Situated between WordPress, which requires a bit more effort to create and organize content, and Twitter, which requires almost no e…

The first chapter of Style talks about how similar writing and conversation are. I won’t bore you with the comparisons; they’re overly complicated to try to get a simple point across. Instead, I’ll skip t…

Many people have written on what it means to be a leader. Almost everyone identifies influence as the primary characteristic. By definition, this means that leadership and position are two different things. You…

In 1985, almost all PCs sat on desktops, the Internet was a Defense Department research project, and the cell phone revolution had barely gotten underway. It was also the year that Microsoft launched a DOS fron…

This is deceptive.You don’t rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it’s a self-defeating goal. You can’t do it.No, but you might rock five…

Here are my notes for my talk to the TEDxNYed gathering this past weekend. I used the opportunity of a TED event to question the TED format, especially in relation to education, where — as in media — we mus…

Feel like it’s time for your company to put together some social media guidelines but not sure where to start?
Want to see what other companies are doing in this area? Need some tips on wha…

In their minds and get word of mouth for your business.

Trust is fragile. In a recent post about the intangible art of trust at American Express OPEN, Matthew May cited consumer behaviorist Ernest Dich…

The other potential land mine comes with using Facebook or other social media to screen potential hires. Looking up an applicant’s profile could be grounds …

In January this year I put forward my thoughts on the social media marketing ecosystem in which we operate in 2010. It looked like this:

While this relatively complex model is great to help sh…

I was having coffee with a business owner last week and he asked me an interesting question – he asked to to share what I thought were the 3 most common mistakes made by businesses when it co…

Facebook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and search that fundam…

It’s uncommon to see much written about individual personalities on the social web — in fact it’s taboo. However, it’s important to occasionally look at Chris Brogan as a living social media business…

And clearly there must be a need for women to have their own social media organisation. Sexist phallocentric oppresssors like Heather Ann Snodgrass and …

If Apple was in the business of making movies, the iPad would arguably
be its biggest bet yet. So it’s fitting that Apple used Hollywood’s
biggest night to let consumers know that the iPad will be ‘in theatres’…

Parts
of the search engine optimisation work e-commerce sites undertake
require a certain level of technical understanding which is where SEO
consultants can shine. Other parts need some common sense and an eye…

If you haven’t heard or tried the latest social media geo-location platform for yourself, read on. The latest social media craze includes signing up on …

Facebook is making a small but profound change to Facebook Ads: “Keywords” will now be known as “Likes and Interests.” The change will be visible in the Facebook Ads interface starting the week of Marc…