Last week, I got a lot of grief for saying that "The Widget is Dead," so this should be interesting: I am willing to bet it won't be long until Facebook, and other social networking "applications" join widgets in the marketer's "toolkit graveyard." Why? Because using Facebook Connect offers marketers more flexibility to develop more immersive experiences for application developers. Want "canary in the coal mine" proof? Consider that Zynga, the largest and most successful application on Facebook (by nearly all measures), has developed and launched its Facebook Connect powered stand alone site for Farmville, one of its most popular …

I have been thinking lately about our industry's evergreen focus on the most typical ways agencies can find themselves suddenly out in the cold. The usual problems are the most blatant. But, while collaborating with agency client services teams during the past quarter, I've been mulling quieter, gentler crimes. Not that those agencies are guilty of any sins. But I've realized that even within the most professional, capable client services situation, things can still go off the tracks -- passively.

I had breakfast earlier this week with Bug Labs CEO Peter Semmelhack, a friend who is passionate about empowering others to invent. He noted that his recent European travels underscored how apprenticeships remain a bigger part of life there versus the U.S. More important, that contrast highlighted how apprenticeships are gradually declining everywhere. While this trend is not a sudden crisis, it creates a long-term tragedy.

There was quite a stir a few months ago when an internal presentation about how Netflix manages its internal culture was leaked across the Web. Among Netflix's more unusual policies was that it does not limit the number of vacation days that its salaried employees can take. My company has been adding a number of folks lately, so the issue of vacation policy has been top of mind lately. The more we talk about it internally, the more I like the Netflix approach. Here 's why.

I've decided that making predictions in a climate which is so tenuous and conservative could be a futile effort.That being said, I have a sole prediction to make: next year, someone will finally bring a product to market that can prove the effect of online marketing on CPG purchases (awareness, consideration and intent) by measuring customer and/or shopper-card data.

The Internet was around for many years before it got its "2.0" designation. Social media has been with us for a far shorter time, and yet it has already gone through (and is still going through) a major shift that everyone in marketing and advertising must understand; maybe it's even worthy of a "2.0" designation of its own. What marketers need to understand is that the feed killed the widget. Feeds, like Facebook's news feed and Twitters status update, have made the portability of content nearly irrelevant.

When I was a kid, a phone ringing in the middle of the night meant only one thing: breaking news. As the curious, sometimes sleepless daughter of a newspaperman, I adored the nocturnal drama. Dad would rise up, have the conversation -- and, more often than not , get dressed, jump in the car and drive into the city from our little home in Media, Pa. to the Philadelphia Inquirer newsroom.

'm not easy to market to. I'm loyal to few brands. I shun most advertising. I'm a jaded consumer. (I think these qualities make me a more effective marketer.) Which is why I love Costco, the wholesale warehouse club. But the creator of my favorite retail experience may have gone too far this time.

"Web communism" and "ubiquity is the new exclusivity" were among the lines being traded in a lively debate this morning between Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington and Mathias Dopfner, Chairman and CEO of Germany newspaper publisher Axel Springer. The topic: whether or not people will pay for news content online, and if news aggregation was undermining journalism. Their discussion was part of today's opening session at the Monaco Media Forum.

Digital couponing has risen dramatically in the last 12 months because consumers are more concerned with saving money than they were in recent years. According to one study that was cited recently in MediaPost and published by ICOM, one out of three consumers report using more coupons than just one year ago. About half of males 18- to 34-years-old reported comparison shopping, with as much as 38% actively searching for coupons. An economic recession can have that effect.