Curated Stories May 9, 2010

Mitch Joel gave a keynote talk at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum. B2B companies need to focus on the present, not the future. How are companies connecting with customers and growing their business. Hernan Cortes…

Since their announcements at F8 about Open Graph Protocol (OGP), I’ve been following Facebook far more closely that I normally do. Why? From the moment I watched the videos about what OGP does, I kne…

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of building a solid Advisory Board. An Advisory Board ensures that as your startup grows, you have a trusted set of mentors you can turn to for advice on shaping y…

By: Greg Chapman There is no such thing as guaranteed success in any business. But there are things that you can do that will guarantee failure. Here are the seven of them. 1. Inexplicitness Success in business…

If you read tech blogs and tech news, it seems every idea by a big, established company is really a bid to kill an existing upstart app or product.
Today’s assassination attempt comes via Facebook, aimed a…

Although before his inauguration U.S. President Barack Obama was rarely seen without his BlackBerry, he has criticized the current crop of popular consumer gadgets for helping to make information a “distract…

When I wrote about Google’s redesign a few days ago, a couple of commenters grumbled that they didn’t like it. Over at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan says that there doesn’t seem to be a critical mass…

Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer. – John Oapos;Hara #writing #writechat #writetip

Twitter Blackbird Pie Plugin for Windows Live Writer http://bit.ly/c0Fobsless than a minute ago via APIsteve claytonstevecla Scott Lovegrove really is a damn fine chap and he churns out the best plugins for…

“Influence is not something done by
certain people to other people. It’s the result of those people we call
The Influenced doing something in response to those we call Influential.” [Mark Earls]Influence…

Marketers are a pretty quirky bunch. We love reading about what we could be doing better. We love reading about others who are doing interesting things, and yet there’s not a huge interest in actually following…

A couple weeks back I provided you with some tips on ‘manually’ measuring / benchmarking your Twitter engagement goals. Today, we’re going to look at how engagement can be increased / improved, …

A StoryFix Contest
As a Big Finish to this series, I’m inviting you to submit your thoughts in the form of a blog post about your Shutter Island deconstruction experience… as well as comments on the book…

Not everyone has the time or inclination to build and maintain a full-fledged web site. If you’re just looking for a simple way to unify all your online profil…

It’s been a little while since I wrote about one of my favorite storytelling topics, storytelling in the job search.

Storytelling especially lends itself to responding to questions in behavioral interviews,…

I’ll say straight out that non-writers are frequently not sure what to make of the writing life. Why would someone put so much time, research, and energy into something that pays so little? Why would someo…

The online nature of Twitter means that it’s highly unlikely you know the physical addresses of many of the people you follow, which if you want to send them something in the real world, could be problematic…

Do you often find ideas that change everything in a windowless conference room, with bottled water on the side table and a circle of critics and skeptics wearing suits looking at you as the clock ticks down to…

I was recently invited by Stowe Boyd to get out from behind the blog and participate in my first public speaking engagement. (ahhhh!) He organized a conference here in NYC, Social Business Edge, which brough…

For those who thought they could avoid joining the more than 400 million residents of Planet Facebook, abandon all hope.

What will the Web become? How big can the Internet get? What are we going to do with all of this information?

Following is a fascinating documentary (about 14 minutes long) created by Kate Ray (a soon-to-be-re…

So you’re getting ready to start your own business; have you thought about your marketing plan?
Your marketing plan doesn’t need to be 100 pages of graphs and charts; it can be as simple as a one-page snap…

The photo sharing social network Radar.net is shutting down and, thankfully, they have all undertaken all the key steps to do that sensitively and graciously. Remember, customers believe that s…

Members of the under 30 tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud.

I conducted the first of four Webinars on the ideas around “Open Leadership” and am making available the slides as well as a video recording. This Webinar laid out the reasons why open leadership is inevita…

[Originally posted at altimetergroup.com]
Thanks to everyone who attended the webinar we held today on “Understanding Your Customers’ Social Behaviors“. Many people wanted to attend the webinar but weren’t…

[Original posted at altimetergroup.com]
I just received an interesting email promotion for an upcoming conference. At the top of the email, in big bold letters was this:
“It’s time to take back control!”…

No matter how carefully you build your founding team, questions will come up as you start your business that will make you want to turn elsewhere for advice. And so it’s good to have a carefully selected group…

Editor’s note: Should media sites become group buying sites as well? Guest author Dave Chase thinks so. He was a marketing executive and general manager at Microsoft in the 90’s including starting Micro…

The name of your business is all important especially in this day and age of the Internet. Whether it be on business cards, the sign over your door, or on your vehicles you have to be sure that they translate…

Facebook, myspace and other social media sites do have serious privacy implications. Users should view these sites as large bulletin boards displaying …

Even serious crossword puzzle enthusiasts get stuck now and then—and if youve got nowhere else to go, free web tool Word Finder will help you figure out that…

richi writes “Security guru and BT CTO Bruce Schneier discusses terrorist attacks. In fact, Bruce seems to be saying that 9/11 actually made us safer from terrorists, which seems like a curious argument. While…

I just spent 10 days straight writing 1000 words a day for a little project I thought up.
No one told me to do it. I just started because I realized it was important.
The most important things you’ll work on…

Filed under: iPadSo, now that both versions of the iPad are out and available, it’s probably time to ask the question: does a device like this replace another computer, or is it an entirely new category? Back d…

This guest post was written by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net. Box.net was founded in 2005 with the goal of helping people and businesses easily access and share information from anywhere. He ha…

Raleigh native Rachel Wharton won the nations highest honor in food journalism, a James Beard Foundation award.

Erin Gifford writes at Coupon Cravings where she shares coupons, daily deals, and of course, freebies. You can find Coupon Cravings on Facebook or follow along on Twitter at @eringifford.I love it when I can g…

Filed under: iPad

It was the newest of technologies, it was the oldest of technologies. A while back I wrote an opinion piece on my lament over Penguin Books’ John Makinson trying to reinvent books on the iPad…

I did two back-to-back tests. Week 1 with my iPad, I tried using it as my sole computer on the road. Week 2, I left it home. Far from a good scientific test, what I proved was this: I really missed my iPad. (I…

In this post Mark Hayward shares some search engine optimization tips for small business blogs.

When it comes to your small business blog, do you care about search engine optimization?
I…

Something I think gets lost in the debate over DRM: Big Content doesn’t want DRM because they want to usher in an era of totalitarian control technologies; they don’t want copyright filters because they want to…

It’s pretty outrageous to watch Facebook defend something which is obviously unethical. I’m talking about the company’s “Instant Personalization” program which the company forces users into, whether…

Creative people start out with a model in their heads of how they will be creative. It’s a template of how their creativity will manifest itself. One of the most important steps they make in their development…

The anecdotal and analytical data is everywhere. The rise of social media, blogging, search engine optimization, and the way people shop and do research online has changed the fundamentals of t…

By unusual coincidence, this week I had a number of different folks ask me to sign NDAs about the new projects they’re working on. It’s great that we’re in such a fertile phase for the tech industry that lots o…

Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:
Apple developing Flash alternative named Gianduia — As Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight duke it out over their plugin-based, HTML-alternative web platforms, Apple…

Here’s a new friend I made in Memphis on Beale Street. We talked and took care of his needs, and then I asked him to give a quick word or two to my friend Mark and his project, InvisiblePeople.tv. Sometimes,…

The Internet is a big place, and there are a lot of opportunities for me to find places to spend time. But I am increasingly spending my time in Google Buzz. Google Buzz made sense to me from the first day it w…

Scott Berinato / Harvard Business Review:
On Twitter, Followers Don’t Equal Influence — It could be that Twitter research is popular because Twitter data is free and so accessible. Thats okay. Gift h…

There are many, many things about Apple which I dislike. Yes, even if you ignore how the abhorrent environmental consequences that inevitably come with manufacturing millions of electronic devices every quarter…

I got my love of playing games from my mother, Fern. When I was growing up, we watched all the TV game shows that our manually-adjusted outdoor antenna (with TV watchers inside the house shouting outside to t…

“In a small Southern town during the Jim Crow era, a black man is accused of raping a white woman. During his stormy trial there are threats of lynching, as well as intimations that the white woman had been the…

Gigaputt, a new app for the iPhone, is an augmented reality golfing game that overlays a virtual golf course on a map of wherever you are.
You swing your iPhone like a club, and travel around the real world tra…

Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed….

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The serie…

AdAge:
Facebook to Add Location This Month, Integrate Brands Later — Marketers Line Up to Try New Updates That Allow Users to Share Their Whereabouts — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Facebook will start…

Online advertising has long been measured by clicks. But as advertisers try to make a case for display and branded advertising online, its become fashionable to discount the importance of the last click-through…

The Wall Street Journal may have a long way to go before its new New York section becomes a must-read, but it’s making some headway with social media.
When the newspaper launched its new section last month, it…

We all have our favorite browser, many of us switch between a few, especially for specific tasks. This Applescript will open any link you click in whichever br…

Early last week a blog post titled Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook starting making the rounds. The article has been followed by a dogpile of evidence supporting any decision to quit the site. The EFF p…

The FCC recently announced plans to overhaul the way it regulates broadband.
It’s an important issue, but explaining it in a way that doesn’t bore people can be tricky. Fortunately, GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham…

Todd Shields / Bloomberg:
U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy — The film industry can block outputs on home television equipment so studios can offer first-run movies while prev…

This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.Facebook officially unveiled its new Open Graph API and tools a few weeks ago, making…

It’s that time of year again where people act like they’re insulted by some privacy change at Facebook, and threaten to quit the social networking service FOREVER. Some have even gotten as far as finding the li…

I need an example of the use of data to prove a point to do something. The more counter-intuitive the data is, the better. Ideally, it would a brand’s experience. For example, XYZ Coffee Shops thought that no…

If you use Foursquare, it’s kind of hard to justify what you’re doing as you inevitably explain for yourself to non-playing companions that you’re not being rude and texting, you’re part of a larger, l…

Web-based communication systems for companies and groups seem to be all the rage these days. From what I can tell, such systems fall into two groups: the ones that are built around projects, tickets and the li…