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25 years of the Commercial Internet

Part 5:  The Remix Years 2010-2015
Although this time has yet to pass, it’s clear that the next five years will see a great [...]

The “blog” is well-understood, having become a household word in the Americas and Europe, but in a Monrovia, the capital city of the west African nation of Liberia, you may not even recognize them.
Liberia has suffered two decades of civil war. Here, television and radio have all but been destroyed. The internet is very expensive, [...]

The internet is not a “virtual world”. It is this world and it’s time you wrapped your head around it.
There was a time when you could dismiss the internet as some geeky flight of fancy. Then people started to make billions of dollars and you took notice. Didn’t you? I did.
There was a time when [...]

I’ve been in web development/creative for over 14 years. Until the mid-2000s, you had to be an expert in web technologies to be a publisher … or at least have the money to hire the experts. The game has since changed and now anyone can be a content producer and apparently, anyone can be [...]

According to the book “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)” by Tom Vanderbilt, “Caution: Children Playing” signs have not been shown to reduce speeding or accidents. The evidence is so compelling that most traffic departments don’t plant the signs voluntarily.
Yet these signs are nearly as ubiquitous as, [...]

It’s been 28 months since I started blogging about radical trust and social media. The following is a compilation of hard lessons I learned and attitudes I needed to adjust to understand the potential of this extraordinary media.
28 months later, there’s so much more to learn.
“Social Media is a cultural revolution, not a commerce one.” [...]

In 2004, O’Reilly Media played host to a series of conferences which birthed a notion that forever changed the way we think about the online space. Scribbled on a piece of paper and taped to a door, the topic for [...]

Some of the most popular Fan Pages on Facebook have earned their position because of good strategy combined with outstanding publicity, a strong brand or simply a random spot of luck. Finding that sweet spot within your brand or message could mean the difference between major exposure and undistinguished obscurity. In this series, we’ve already [...]

This, the second of my series on Facebook Fan Page Best Practices, discusses a common issue facing global brands. Should you create a global page or a series of regional ones?
The vibrancy of a Facebook community is connected greatly to the size of the group and to the amount of activity within it. Maintaining one [...]

I can’t imagine how different it is to go to college, university or even high school in this digital era. How much easier is to research your book report now that the combined reference knowledge of human civilization can be found simply by asking the right question to Google?
The educational potential of the internet is [...]

Joe Jaffe got a book cover and many of us got link love, but was the 2k bloggers list really worth it?
In late 2006, a colleague invited me to join a compiled list of over 2000 bloggers. The purpose of this opt-in list was not clear, nor was any sort of strategy beyond gathering a [...]

In marketing, people are called consumers. The marketing definition of a consumer is, “the ultimate user of a product or service”; while the dictionary says that a consumer is, “a heterotrophic organism that ingests other organic matter in a food chain.”
Given these definitions, it’s no wonder marketers are having a hard time seeing consumers as [...]

Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom, also known as VMK, was a free multiplayer online community run by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online. It was created and operated as a virtual representation of both the Disneyland and Magic Kingdom theme parks, containing areas and mini-games which were based on real park scenery and attractions. VMK [...]

Around the time radio started broadcasting, so too began radio advertising. It wasn’t long before entrepreneurs saw strategic opportunities in this highly-engaging new medium. Radio advertising began with basic sponsorship schemes and product placements. Their biggest challenge, however, was to develop a strategy that reached consumers effectively at a time when few consumers had [...]

I was recently invited to speak to third-year Ryerson University students about the influence “radical trust” can have on interior design.
At first I wasn’t sure what I would say, but now, after having completed the journey, I’m sure that the result was worth the effort. If not for them, at least for me.
Radical Trust (the [...]

Attitude has a lot to do with social media. If you want to change the way the world sees your organization, you first have to change the way your organization sees the world.
Gaping Void once wisely scribbled;

Ask yourself:
If a consumer decided to take a swing back at you for saying something stupid, would you win [...]

Nothing replaces passion for a particular subject when determining who should write for your corporate/collective blog. You can recognize a good blogger from a mile away. It may be the gleam in their eye when they talk about their work, it might be their gift to consistently teach something new. Whatever it is, rank in [...]

When developing strategy for a group or corporate blog, don’t forget that “blogger motivation” is a key factor in the formula for overall success. As in any other community, the needs of its members must be considered to ensure each remains active, current and topical. Even with the best technology, design, widgets, etc, the [...]

In it’s simplest form, the SMPR (Social Media Press Release) is not unlike the TMPR (Traditional Media Press Release). Basically, you’re communicating details about a particular product, event or program so that content creators (bloggers, journalists) can disseminate that information across their respective media.
TMPRs tend to be long-winded, often-not very creative and many times they [...]

As marketers continue to strategize around the notion of community-building for their brands, it’s important to consider which tools and concepts foster a ’sense of community’ and keep an online village from becoming a digital ghost town.
A sense of community can be broken down into four main categories:
Membership
Membership may offer boundaries, emotional safety, belonging and [...]

Social media communities are online properties in which members relate common experiences and interests. From micro-stock photo offerings like SnapVillage to colossal social networks like FaceBook to the ever-expanding blogosphere, communities online are as diverse as those found offline.
Just think of metropolitan areas where most neighborhoods are known for offering a different experience. When in [...]

We have a lot to learn from the Swedes. For instance, how do they make a profit serving a meatball lunch for a buck? Or how do they compress an entertainment wall unit down so tight it can fit into a surfboard case? How do they know I’ll love something for exactly one year, [...]

Microstock photography is an offshoot of traditional stock photography – the main difference being that microstock shots are almost exclusively gathered by crowdsourcing via the internet. Typically the photos come from shutterbugs who provide royalty-free shots in exchange for a share in the revenue of their sale, ranging from a few cents to around $50.
The [...]

Curiously, the Dutch have a word for “free of traffic signs” and it’s “verkeersbordvrij”. My ancestors over in the mother-province of Friesland, Netherlands are up to a very interesting traffic-planning experiment and it just may spark a world-wide trend in radical trust.
In order to make the streets safer for everyone, traffic planners have removed all [...]

Most people would agree that social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Flickr are largely about ego. The more ego you stroke in a social media application, the more addictive the platform becomes. A quick look at a Facebook user profile illustrates how many addictive little ego strokes there are, and how they contribute to [...]

Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was famous for being many things. He was an entertainer, an entrepreneur, an author, a debunker, a politician and a reformer. Perhaps at present he’s most notably remembered for his showmanship and fantastical hoaxes.
A man infamous for hoaxes may not be the most credible [...]

How many times have you heard (or thought) “this is too risky. What if they say something bad?” when weighing the merits of social media for your client or product? The fact is, if your product or service fails, disappoints or inconveniences the customer in any way, count on them to say something negative.
Gone are [...]

Understanding the demographics of social media is to understand the demographics of any society. No matter how you slice it, vertical or horizontal, age, wealth or interests, there is a call to action in the empowerment of any demographic.
As marketers, we’ve been profiling consumers for years, categorizing them into demographics for our convenience. It’s a [...]