• Facebook and MySpace: Beware Of The Mommy Bloggers
    I was reading the write-ups of last week's BlogHer conference in Chicago secretly jealous that even though I'm a mommy and a blogger, this junket was simply not in the cards for me. But it wasn't just jealousy that drove my interest, it was how the mommy bloggers inadvertently, perhaps, uncovered a central truth about social media marketing: it isn't at all about carefully targeted display ads, or search ads, but about relationship-building.
  • The J-Files: Jewdar Theories
    Everyone seems to have a theory on Jewdar. Last week, I chronicled a resurgence in the mysterious religious ad targeting on Facebook. A number of readers shared their Jewdar theories on MediaPost's site, other blogs, or via email, and most have given permission for me to cite them by name. Most give Facebook too much credit, assuming the targeting options are far more sophisticated than what's really available. Here's a roundup.
  • Amazon Buys Social Media... I Mean, Zappos
    So there I was yesterday afternoon looking for a column idea (as anyone who follows me on Twitter knows), when out of the blue came this: Amazon buying Zappos for $850 million, give or take. While most of the business stories I've read so far have covered this as an online retail story, with Amazon getting its, um, foot in the door of apparel with the acquisition of this renowned online shoe store, to many of us this is a social media story. To a greater extent than almost any previous company, Zappos is the story of a company built …
  • Oy! Facebook's Jewdar Returns
    Why is it that the most egregious ethnic profiling I'm subjected to is on Facebook? Consider the reelection campaign from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. I receive brochures from him in the mail at least weekly, all targeting me as someone likely to be of a certain demographic or interested in a particular issue. Bloomberg's TV ads run constantly, all undoubtedly targeted to TV network, perhaps the content of certain programs, and the geographic area. But only on Facebook have I seen an ad for Mayor Mike with the candidate's first name spelled out in Hebrew. The evidence is …
  • Social Media And The Saga Of The Lug Nuts
    This past week was one in which the epiphanies about what social media can do to harm businesses just kept coming. And I'm not just talking about "United Breaks Guitars," which was the headline-making public relations nightmare of the week. No, I'm talking about my Saga of the Lug Nuts, which underscored how ill-equipped small and medium-sized businesses are in coming to terms with how technology has changed their businesses, and how it can be used for ill or good.
  • The Truck Stops Here
    In the future, will all of our restaurants turn into roving trucks? You may not ask yourself that question every day, but answering it will reveal a few things about the evolution of social media.
  • Coverage Of Memorial Service Shows Just HOW SOCIAL Sites Are Becoming
    Since yesterday was a big day for Internet traffic, I did the geeky thing: I watched Michael Jackson's memorial service on my laptop while keeping one eye on Akamai's tallies of streaming activity and another on the various sites presenting the service live, trying to figure out who was doing the best job and how, in general, we experience our big public events online these days. It boiled down to one word: social. This wasn't surprising, exactly. But when you consider that less than six months ago the social media community was all agog over CNN's partnership with Facebook Connect …
  • The Fastest Way To Lose Money
    Friday night, a friend of mine instant-messaged me on Facebook saying he needed my help. On his profile, there were several messages urging people to contact him right away. I was of course concerned. Soon it became apparent that it wasn't my friend at all. His identity had been hijacked by a scammer who posted the messages to his profile and IMed his friends.
  • Technology Is the New Creativity
    Coming off of yet another Cannes Lions Festival I didn't go to, and another OMMA Social that I did -- events that, for me, were interspersed with dozens of tweets sent and received, blog posts posted and consumed and apps perused -- it's becoming clearer and clearer how far we've left behind the world of tag lines and print ads and big-budget commercials and emerged into a new era, in which technology has become the new creativity.
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