• Me (@cpealet) And Twitter: Not the Same As It Used To Be
    Upon the occasion yesterday of Twitter buying Tweetdeck, it's time to ponder something that has intrigued me for some time: how my Twitter usage has evolved. Not that the Social Media Insider column is always about me, but with all of the myriad Twitter clients out there -- and the evolution of the Twitter-verse itself -- I've been wondering over the last few weeks whether my experience is typical.
  • The Wrong Route To Social Commerce
    Lost in the chaos last week, amidst signs of rapture and fears of a second dot-com bubble, was a positive omen. What once appeared to be one of the four horsemen of social media's apocalypse met an untimely death at the hands of user disinterest. It was a good week.
  • The Cavity In Dr. Wong's Case -- Or, Why Filing Suit Isn't The Best Way To Manage Your Online Reputation
    One social media topic that's held my fascination lately is how to manage one's online reputation. I'm not talking here about how a big corporation does it, but how little guys and gals -- like, say, me -- do it. At which point I happened to read about the resolution of the case of California dentist Yvonne Wong, who, according to this story from MediaPost, has been asked to pay $81,000 in legal fees to Yelp and the couple whom she sued for a negative review. So much for her claim that the review had led her to emotional distress. …
  • The Social Life Of Books
    As a Kindle user since its first model debuted, I've marveled how it has changed my reading habits, and in some ways has changed my life. Some of the most profound changes are the social ones.
  • What Some Statistics Won't Tell You About Twitter
    While we're all busy dumping on Twitter, let's get down on it for something other than its business model, namely that it also isn't as influential a news source as you'd think. At least, that's what I read on the CBS News site, where a headline trumpets: "Twitter fails at spreading hard news -- Step aside Twitter: You aren't as good at breaking news as the media thought you were."
  • I Am Not A Social Publisher
    Recently, I caught up with MyLikes, a vendor in the sponsored conversations genre (e.g., "pay per post") that beckons participations to "like these campaigns to make money." That only works if its users see themselves as "social publishers" -- which is how MyLikes refers to them. It's not how I see myself. I will not "like these campaigns to make money," as the site beckons. I don't think I'm alone. Whether you work with a brand or you're a kindred spirit, this one's for you.
  • The Real Reason We'll Never See a Real Osama Death Photo - or Believe It If We Do
    I know, I know. The first reason the White House cited for not releasing photos of the dead Osama bin Laden was that they might incite violence. That's not a bad point, but we all know the real reason: anyone with a deep enough need to believe conspiracies will find a reason not to believe what they see - and social media is a very able courier when it comes to helping fashion that kind of non-reality.
  • How Did You Hear About Osama's Death?
    Where were you when you heard that Osama was killed, or likely dead, or probably the subject of an upcoming White House address on national security matters? This is one of those moments that serves as a cultural barometer for the state of media today. It may be a fluke depending on what you were doing that night, but collectively the scores can be much more revealing.<
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