Reviving the Ancient Art of Oratory

January 7, 2010

In ancient times, oratory was an important skill for any educated person who wanted to advance himself. Young men were trained in the art of both delivering prepared speeches, and also extemporaneous speaking. More and more, the art of online oratory is becoming a necessity for anyone who wishes to advance themselves in the modern world.
Speeches [...]

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Tomi I Ahonen is blind–and wrong!

January 4, 2010

Well, this certainly wasn’t what I had planned for my first blog post of the new decade, but…Yesterday, I RTed Mark Jaffe’s post. This post was in keeping with some of the other thinking Mark’s done, and I liked what it had to say.
I was surprised later to see a rude tweet appear in my [...]

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Three Principles that Drive Click-Through, Engagement, and Content Sharing

December 20, 2009

On Friday, Allen Mireles shared a MarketingProfs post titled Email Trumps Social Media for Sharing, enquiring what people thought were the implications. I tweeted the post, as I found the data quite interesting. She prompted me again, tweeting ”What conclusions do you draw?” So, here are my conclusions, Allen.
Given the different platforms, I don’t believe [...]

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Facebook–Eat Your Cake, and Enjoy It

December 17, 2009

[I had blocked out this post. The next day, I saw Patricio Roble's excellent post, making much the same point. I have more to add, though, so read on.]
Facebook’s recent changes to the privacy settings are, by all indications, designed to encourage people to share information publically, and make it harder to keep information private. [...]

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Evolution of Social Networks: Past, Present, and Future

December 8, 2009

Mark Schaefer’s recent post on {grow} (which I subscribe to, by the way, and you should to) got me thinking. I wrote a comment and mid-comment, realized I probably had a blog post there. Mark said the same thing. So, here it is.
Mark talked about obstacles to the growth of the social web for various [...]

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How Trusted Sources will change advertising

November 22, 2009

In my last post, I talked about how Trusted Sources will change Search. If you didn’t read, I suggest you do so. But if you’re unwilling, here’s a quick summary of the post:

What Are Trusted Sources? The people you and others have chosen to trust for information on a given topic.
Why Twitter Lists?They are the [...]

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How the coming of Trust Sources will change Search

November 13, 2009

Twitter Lists have generated a lot of excitement. There are some obvious reasons, but there’s also an undercurrent: a sense that Lists change things dramatically, not just for Twitter, but for social media, in general.
I believe that sense is correct. I believe that Twitter Lists have introduced the first effective use of Trusted Sources, and that [...]

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Will Social Media Make Businesses More Ethical?

November 8, 2009

Have you ever heard or used any of these terms in your daily business life?

Customers
Users
Eyeballs
Readers
Followers
Consumers
Clients

Most of these terms seem innocuous. (Okay, referring to people as “eyeballs” is a little disturbing.) But all of them, as well as other common terms like “hits,” “impressions,” “traffic,” and “page views” have a similar effect: they reduce people to [...]

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Small Biz Fails to Use Twitter Effectively

November 2, 2009

I recently conducted a survey of 78 business users, 72 of them actively using Twitter for their business. The survey was conducted between June and October of this year and users were solicited through request on LinkedIn and Twitter. This post provides the results of the survey.
Summary of Findings

The majority of these respondents were small businesses [...]

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Twitter Lists: Paving the Way for Ads?

October 30, 2009

There’s a lot of excitement around the release of Twitter’s Lists feature. Understandably. As I’ve blogged about, it solves critical usability problems for new users, especially. And it may be key to reigniting Twitter’s growth. Aside from making the stream easier to read, Lists can be used to create a target audience of followers and [...]

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