• Fantastic, Made of Plastic, Videocastic
    Ever wonder what Barbie could teach you about social media? Maybe you haven't, but Barbie got an upgrade lately in the form of a video camera built into her necklace. In her latest incarnation, Barbie Video Girl can give a few clues as to where social media is heading.
  • Five Funny Reasons To Be Thankful For Social Media
    I've known for a while that nothing of real business use would take place here at the Social Media Insider on the day before Thanksgiving, but what I didn't know is how I would express it. In fact, if you'd asked me a few days ago, I might've predicted I would go all squishy (in the head!) with this column, listing five maudlin reasons to be thankful for social media: it keeps me in touch with old friends, it's great for fundraising... whatever.
  • Foursquare Bets Beyond The BCC Set
    One of the most important decisions Foursquare's leadership has made was revealed last week. It's one of those decisions that could determine if Foursquare becomes a footnote or a phenomenon. The only thing more incredible is that its future now will be determined by how consumers use old-fashioned grocery store loyalty cards.
  • Mark Zuckerberg On Facebook's Future: Not Necessarily About Advertising or Email
    I spent the morning waiting for Norton to call and do the final fix on a dumb virus -- well, actually, it may be smart because it may still be here! -- that invaded my computer last night. In the meantime, I streamed Mark Zuckerberg's interview with John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly at this week's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, which reminded me why so many of us want in on this technology thing, despite its lingering problems. If this virus thing is yin, the vision thing -- as outlined in this interview -- is yang.
  • Five Reminders For Social-Media Marketers
    When Facebook announced its new messaging service yesterday, you had to listen closely if you wanted to hear what social network founder Mark Zuckerberg said about brands. He mentioned that 350 million of Facebook's 500 million members use its messaging system (spanning the site's email, instant messaging, and text messaging) and that there are 4 billion messages sent daily. As a footnote, he said that doesn't include messages brands share, such as through status updates and notifications. That was it.
  • Pondering Rockmelt -- Or, How Much Sharing Is Too Much?
    Let's all just stop for a minute and realize something: Everyone doesn't want to share everything. Maybe you're saying right now, "Hey, lady, I already knew that." But stop for a minute, and ask yourself how many social media products and companies are built on the premise that everyone does want to share everything. If you've ever read any of my posts about Foursquare, you know this is an issue I circle back to, a lot. The reason I am covering the topic again this week is Rockmelt, the so-called Facebook browser that lets you merrily traipse across the Internet …
  • How Xbox Puts Connecting Into Kinect
    Throughout Friday, the comments kept piling up on my Facebook photos: Sister: Dave...what is going on over there?? Friend:Huh? And so they continued. It was all in response to my day of testing out Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, the controller-free console gaming system that's designed not just to get players off the couch, but to put their whole bodies in the game. And one of the biggest surprises about Kinect is how well it includes social media as part of the experience.
  • News Corp. Calls MySpace's Losses 'Not Acceptable or Sustainable' -- Can This Portal Be Saved?
    I never would've anticipated that I'd write about MySpace two weeks in a row. But I'm not writing about it so often because there's good news to share. Or because I've started going there. That light at the end of the tunnel, which some may have wanted to see with last week's redesign, is actually looking more like a freight train that may finally run over what once was the preeminent social networking site.
  • Are Mobile And Social Best Practices The Same?
    It's getting clearer by the day that mobile marketers can learn a lot from social marketers. This never struck me as much as it did last week while watching OMMA Mobile's keynote speaker, Andy Graham, who leads mobile strategy at Adidas. On occasion I worry that I embody the adage that when you just have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I am coming from the vantage point of someone responsible for both social media and mobile marketing strategy, so it's natural that some similarities will stand out. With Graham's presentation though, while he was talking entirely about mobile, …
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