• Kneel Before the King of Disinfectant
    I don't even want everyone using Barcode Hero because then my kingdoms will crumble. If it becomes a great recommendation engine, though, I may gracefully let a few of my titles lapse.
  • When Worlds Collide -- Or, Should Facebook Evolve Its Social Graph?
    guess that MG Siegler's column yesterday on TechCrunch, asking whether Facebook should adopt a friend and a follower system, resonated with me because I've been thinking about the nature of my social networking relationships lately as well. I finally got around to decoupling my tweets from my status updates earlier this month -- 15 seconds that I should have found in my schedule at least a year ago.
  • Foursquare, I Can't Quit You
    Hey, Foursquare, a social network with about 250 times as many users as yours just incorporated your core functionality and even co-opted the term "check-in" that you've been trying to trademark. Is it time to move on?
  • Geo-Location Finally Checks In With Facebook, The Biggest Focus Group Ever
    I interrupt the usual stream of tweets, status updates and check-ins to say a thing or two about the brand new geo-location tool Facebook Places, which, if you think about it, actually conflates all three. (Or it could, if I could just get access to it in this, its first morning of existence.
  • Tune In, Check In, Tune Out
    While for many people a single check-in is a check-in too many, I enjoy some of the benefits that check-in services provide. Yet checking in somewhere is different than checking into a TV show or some form of recorded entertainment. Here are several reasons why:
  • Rethinking Last Week's Question: Will Social Media Save the Portal?
    To pick up where last week's column left off, here's one answer to the question "Has Social Media Killed the Portal?" No, but to portals, it sure looks like an excellent life raft. Seems that while I was writing last Wednesday about Facebook's rising advertising fortunes -- and AOL's sinking ones -- the two were actually in talks to create one of those storied strategic alliances.
  • Why WOM Trumps Q&A Ahora
    It was a strange experience working as a social marketing strategist while planning my July vacation to South America. I had especially high hopes for question and answer sites, given how much they've evolved since the days when it was just Yahoo Answers competing with the now-defunct Google Answers. I thought I'd write a column about the recommendations the sites provided, but then I started asking questions and the answers underwhelmed.
  • Has Social Media Killed The Portal?
    Let me conflate three headlines from the last few days into one question, which I'll get to below: 1.What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity 2. Ouch: AOL misses low earnings expectations 3.Facebook Advertisers Boost Spending 10-Fold, Sandberg Says And now for the question: Are portals obsolete?
  • Let's Face It: Social Media Is &%!@Ing Terrifying
    Tell me, when's the last time you were delighted to receive constructive feedback? For most of us, the answer to that question would have to be never; I know that's the answer for me.Given how painful this process can be, it's a wonder we would ever consciously invite it -- and yet, that's exactly what we do with social media. We put ourselves and our companies out there and we invite feedback, good or bad. This is a scary thing to do.
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