• Users Complain About Facebook's Redesign. Should This Be News?
    I've been wrestling with two potential topics for the column this morning (no, Twitter was not one of them), and decided that my two ideas are, in fact, attached. One topic was going to be my take on the Facebook redesign, and the other was to continue the extremely vibrant discussion that got started around last week's column about how social media is killing the focus group. (Not everyone was ready to put a stake in the focus group's heart, but God knows, I tried.) So how does all this sync up?
  • Listen Up, Marketers: The Focus Group Is Dead
    I assume most Social Media Insider readers would agree with the statement that corporate America needs to do a little work on this listening thing. What I love about all of these examples is that, even if many of you have preached this gospel for some time, there's an increasing body of evidence to support why this is so important. But this column isn't just about not listening. It's about the fact that so often, if companies do, they commit a significant sin of omission, listening to customers who were either not invested in their brand very much or not …
  • Must-See Online TV: Kutiman's Mother of All Mashups
    After seeing mention of it on TechCrunch and Mashable, thought I'd check out this Kutiman guy's new album/video: the one in which every clip and every sample came off of YouTube. It's aptly called "ThruYou" and the Web site on which the seven-track production can be found sports an interface that looks like the YouTube home page -- if it had been left under a bus and run over a few times. Recognizable, but a faded version of the actual product.
  • Hey! Who Stole My Twittles? I Mean, Skittles?
    I come before you today to discuss a matter of grave concern. All week I've been spending my days and nights wondering if Skittles' social media campaign was: a) A rotten idea because people said naughty things on Twitter about Skittles; b) a great idea because people are now talking about Skittles, and the brand now has more than a half million fans on Facebook; c) a rip-off of Modernista, which did a similar thing to its home page way back in '08; or d) a sure sign of the apocalypse. I'm going to have to go with "d" (with …
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