• Read My Lips: This Chapstick Social Media Controversy Is Really Stupid
    Usually, we here at the Social Media Insider try to be smart about things, but occasionally we must wallow in the eternal dumbness of the modern world, and this is one of those times. I'm talking about Chapstick. Just in case the controversy over the new, revamped, recalculated Klout scores wasn't enough social media controversy for one day, Chapstick yesterday proved to be another social media gift that just kept on giving. But, it's not for the reasons you may have read elsewhere on the Web. It's in some, subtle ways, even sillier than that.
  • The Four Best Questions From Social Week
    Did you miss Social Week? Heaven forbid. It was a whole week dedicated to people talking to each other. Or maybe the name Social Media Week was already taken and Social Week touched on the same theme. Whatever the purpose, I wound up taking part in a panel discussion hosted by the Direct Marketing Association, and it was one of the more thought-provoking sessions I've joined. Here are some highlights.
  • Mary Meeker's Web 2.0 Presentation, or How to Turn the Worst of Times Into the Best of Times
    if advertisers can turn their gaze away from the car crash that is the economy, there's still great opportunity in investing ad budgets in technology, because that's where the money is going, and where the diverging roads of the economy and the tech industry just might come together,
  • The 'S' In 4S Stands For Social
    Even as the world waits for the mythical Facebook phone to surface, there's another social phone that has done pretty well: the iPhone 4S. It may not be exclusively social, but in many ways, the 4S embodies the theme of how mobile devices are inherently designed to connect people with each other.
  • Don't Get Too Excited About Twitter's Integration With iOS 5, You Geek
    As I do nearly every weekday, I spent about 45 minutes this morning trolling my favorite sites to get a bead on what's going on in both the big world, and the smaller social media one. As usual, the most useful site to help me determine what is really on the minds of the social media-erati was a Twitter byproduct called Tweeted Times. Today, the top news of the day was about Twitter's integration into Apple's now available iOS 5. Which is understandable, if social media is your business. But I also think it's an indication of our industry's tendency …
  • Facebook's Little 'M' KOs Three 'Ws'
    Facebook takes its leadership mantle seriously. Instead of merely coming out with a new iPad app, it changed in ways that will long cement its role as the most important suite of mobile sites and applications in the world. Lofty claims? Perhaps. But they're warranted.
  • R.I.P, Steve Jobs, Unheralded Social Media Guru
    Now that Steve Jobs has died, it's odd to think that last afternoon, before I heard the news, I was going to write about how, here in America, we are finally using Twitter and Facebook the way that other countries have: to organize protests. That's important, and has its place. But, still, I keep coming back to Steve Jobs, even though there's a central irony to a column called the Social Media Insider being about him. Apple has sold millions of communications devices, and, yet, it has never been an inherently social company.
  • Your Google+ Strategy Calculator
    When brands are invited to participate in Google+, it's going to get weird. Marketers will face challenges they've never had to deal with before in social media. Without knowing specific details of what Google+ brand pages will look like, enough of the variables are known so that you can create a formula that works for you. Here's a primer.
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