Now do you believe social connections are currency??

It’s actually fun to watch a hot trend move from hype to something that we simply expect. Big data will get there, hopefully soon, and social media is already arriving at that point. How do we know? Creativity. When the hype passes, the paradigm change has taken place in people’s minds and we start to […]

Connection is the new currency

A coworker shared a LinkedIn function a while back that creates a graphical map of your contacts.  I created my own and marveled at the pretty colors and curving lines.  Other than looking like a new and highly personal art form, what did it mean? Truth be told, I’m still not entirely sure.  Yet I keep […]

I post in private groups, where the real work gets done

A little over a year ago, I had a conversation with the tibbr product manager about his use of the social platform he was guiding through a rapid series of improvements. I was very curious to know why I rarely saw his posts on the corporate social media site, considering his role. He said something […]

The micro market crash, brought to you by social media

Just over a week ago, the U.S. stock market plunged in early afternoon trading with the S&P 500 losing $121 billion of its value within minutes. This happened after a fake tweet appeared on the Associated Press’s twitter feed describing a terror attack on the White House.  During the momentary plunge, the Dow fell 145 […]

Boston Marathan bombing shows where lack of privacy is a good thing

The speed with which the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were identified was a remarkable sign that we’re in the age of ubiquitous photos and video of the public square, albeit at a major international event. We’ve written a few times about privacy in the age of Big Data, with a focus on what happens when […]

The next tweet you make may cost you your future job

Once again, the pitfalls of using social media rears it’s head and someone pays the price. This time it’s not an internal department falling asleep at the wheel a la Burger King when it was hacked but something a little more worrying. Paris Brown is Britain’s first youth police and crime commissioner, a position she […]

Social media teams nap during their Oreo moments

This week alone there were two incidents of major brand Twitter accounts being hacked and taken over by a faction of the hacker group, Anonymous. Both Burger King and Jeep were caught out by lax security and governance over their social media accounts and paid the price. For Jeep they wrestled control back fairly quickly […]

Russian meteor strike proves the networks are old news

Early this morning the news broke that a meteor had streaked across the sky near Chelyabinsk, Russia and within minutes it was trending and video footage posted on YouTube (see below) went viral. People immediately followed the reports as fresh updates came in over Twitter and the social websites quickly took hold and posted up […]

Before you spend your first dollar on social media marketing…

A year is a lot of time given the pace with which things are happening on Social Media. Yet, 2013 is likely to be the year when more organizations than ever in the past, got a sense of the great potential Social Media holds – both  in terms of establishing and fanning that powerful relationship […]

Fake accounts and spammers will ruin social media

Pinterest announced that last week it has begun to purge its roles of the fake accounts and spammers that made up 20% of their membership. While 20% may seem high, reports from Facebook and other sites show that to be the norm more than an exception. This is a bigger story than people realize. Social […]

Does social media accelerate cultural change?

Regardless of your stance on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) or California’s Proposition 8, the pace at which culture has changed in the past several years has been startling. What seemed decades away just a few years ago is suddenly front and center and being decided by U.S. Supreme Court. Public opinion polls have changed […]

How should I feel about sentiment analysis?

Sentiment analysis is nothing new but is taking on urgency with the rise of mobile computing and the event enabled enterprise. What is sentiment analysis? Sentiment analysis is all about figuring out the attitude of someone speaking or writing. With so much being expressed through various social media across the Web, knowing the actual attitude […]

Quick, to the social media bunker!

Fascinating to see social media climb from adolescence to the point where major corporations are maintaining Houston Control-like centers to respond to social media. From sports teams to corporations, this is the new reality. A CNN Money story cites Dell’s version: Dell’s social media ground control and command center in Round Rock, Texas, has a total of […]

Harry Potter and the Leap of Faith

I was sitting with my two children watching the latest Harry Potter film and my mind began to wander. Maybe because I had lost track of the plot, the multiple characters or the bizarre twists of the storyline. Or maybe I was just marvelling at the animated effects. And I started to think about Harry […]

You can’t handle the truth

It came as a surprise as I left the Navy officer’s life that so many people thought my former world was so different from the ‘civilian’ world I was entering.  In my first assignment with Perot Systems, I heard comments like, “Life is easy when you can just order someone to do it,” and, “Everything […]

In Social media, brains defeat budget, creativity trumps cash

There’s very good news on the social front for some companies…social media is unlocking the creativity of marketing. There are many great ways to place product, and below is a brilliant example. Coke is teamed up with the latest 007 Bond film, Skyfall.  They realize they need to get the public to be the stars […]