To quote the Cisco “Human Network” commercials that ran here in the states — “in the future people will subscribe to people – not magazines.”  That day is here.  I noticed yesterday that I never …

I am constantly fascinated by the myriad “small” changes the Internet is causing in our lives and how these changes, when writ large across society, are totally transformational.   This is one of the network laws …

The last time I saw Charlene Li was in the speaker’s lounge of the Web 2.0 conference. It was March 2008 and her defining book on social technologies, Groundswell, (co-authored with Josh Bernoff) was just being released. There have been tectonic shifts in our economy (and Charlene has moved from Forrester to found the Altimeter group) since then so I wanted to get her sense of the state of social media today.

Roughly one year ago I was in conversation with the CEO of one of the largest online portals for Human Resources.  My pitch:  Human Resources should be leading the charge in helping businesses understand the …

I spent much of last week on assignment in Las Vegas at the FastForward ’09 conference. FastForward is devoted to Search (more on that in the next post – along with a mindbending, Minority Report style video on the future of search). One of the highlights of the conference was this interview with Clay Shirky. He is one of the most incisive and articulate thinkers regarding the impacts that technology is having on society and business.

As a rule the traditional organization has very few people dedicated to listening (Customer research) and a whole lot of people dedicated to talking (Marketing, Advertisting, PR, the communications dept., Events etc.).  What’s worse, the …

FDR was our radio president, JFK was our TV president and Barack Obama will be our Internet President.
Quietly at noon yesterday, as the world was fixated on the televised inauguration of Barack Obama, some obscure …

Blogging may seem old hat – but it can still be a powerful tool for a company.  Consider the recent Wells Fargo / Wachovia merger blog… A merger blog?  Yes, a blog all about the …

I have made a few changes to my Open beats Closed diagram (thanks to Hastings who commented on the original post ).   Making these changes led me to realize I needed to speak about the …

The average age of the C-Suite in the U.S. is 53.  These leaders first encountered the Internet in their 40s, well along their career path. 85% are male. Their medium was television – childhood diversion …