I watched the first 2012 presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. I'm undecided over which was most painful to watch: the debate itself or the instant, snarky commentary about the debate on Twitter.

"Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore is a classic book about marketing and selling tech products. Since it was originally published in 1991, the book has sold over 300,000 copies and is often required reading in business school. The thrust of the book is that in order for a tech startup to build a large market, it must transition from selling to early adopters to more pragmatic customers. It sounds simple -- but think of all of the new ventures that get this wrong. Despite tons of funding and lots of marketing, most startups are unable to get much traction …

Question: What do YouTube, Wordpress, and Wix.com have in common? Answer: They all exist to reduce barriers to participation. Each one of them can be described by the Colbin Barrier Reduction Formula: "Thanks to Company X, anyone can Y."

Life is full of frustration, but how you deal with that frustration can be the difference between success and whatever else happens. Nothing gets me more frustrated than when someone tells me I can't do something. It's a very simple concept and one that every innovator in the world has used, whether consciously or not. It's a concept called solution-oriented thinking, or "make it happen" syndrome, which goes like this: Don't tell me we can't. Tell me what we need to do to make it happen!

Facebook advertising budgets for consumer brands in recent years often were guided by goals like "become social," "grow presence," and "acquire fans." As 2013 planning cycles approach, brand marketers and media planners must advance to more accountable goals. Such goals should not only embrace established reach-and-frequency planning models, but maximize messaging against the incredible strengths of the Facebook platform, the world's largest social CRM database.

The best part about building a company is the people that you meet along the way. Finding other people who share your sense of purpose makes all the long hours and hard work worthwhile. My favorite people in business fall into at least six categories. They include:

I cannot begin to tell you the number of bad ideas I have had. When I first started receiving an allowance, at the age of 10 or so, I had grand intentions for my weekly five dollars. Surely, I thought, I can use this to pay rent on an apartment, which I can then use to house and care for homeless animals. E

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about what the next generation of professionals in this business should do to enter into and manage themselves in the workforce. I thought long and hard about that one, and many commented. Well, now it's time to think through the other side of the relationship: what we, the managers, owe to the incoming workforce.

Who said mobile check-ins were just for humans? They also work well for sharks, including great white sharks. Great white sharks?

Last week I was granted access to Mediaocean's new digital pre-buy application, SmartRFP, and was both surprised and impressed by what I saw.