
Is social media really a waste of time? Harvard professor gets it wrong
A prominent author tells brands that social media will not help their bottom line. Marketing leaders think differently.

Does it matter if you are popular on LinkedIn?
I am sure that some of us have gotten these really cool e-mails from Linkedin lately helping us put some kind of context around our relative popularity on the internet, or at least on the LinkedIn system. The problem is that being popular on LinkedIn does not matter to me at all. Sure the infographic […]

You Really Don’t Know if Your Market is Too Small For Quite a While
One of the things that causes a lot of anxiety in SaaS is market size. If you’re creating the latest Pinning app, or Social Network, the odds are surely against you. But in consumer internet, often you know if you hit it, however low the odds are, at least the market is huge (or at […]

Facebook gets freakier with Take This Lollypop
Facebook gets freakier with Take This Lollypop If you ever wondered who was looking at your public information, and you were silly enough to post real information rather than plausible dummy information, then “Take This Lollypop” will totally make your day. Facebook indeed presents a danger for oversharing information that can allow a person to […]
4 Good Reasons Not to Start a SaaS Start-Up
There’s been one huge change in “entrepreneurship” IMHO over the past 10 years. >> No, it’s not that it’s cheaper than ever to do a start-up. That’s not even true. In the old days, when software came on a disk, or a CD-ROM, it was even cheaper. You didn’t even need a single server to […]

Professional Social Networking with B2B Social Media
I believe many B2B professionals struggle in their adoption of social media for professional use, because they see it as a marketing platform as opposed to a professional networking tool. However, I think if they really understood the purpose and value of B2B social networking, then they would make the time for it and they would use it well. The is the second post in a series designed to help B2B marketers create better B2B social strategies by thinking in terms of B2B social networking over B2B social media.

Tweets Offer Little Value in Understanding Customer Needs
Social media. A rich source of insight and opportunity for companies. Why, it’s an article of faith that customers are talking…on their terms…where they want. So get out there and learn from them! See what this IBM executive says:

Cooperating with Law Enforcement in Social Networking
Social Networking is facing the prospects of being deputized by the Australian Image via CrunchBase Federal Police, Facebook, and other social networking sites are increasingly becoming one of the most important sources for intelligence about people. Forget neighbors talking to the police, now we are looking at our socially connected world as being involved with […]

Wanted dead or alive: any Facebook user, $ 125 reward
With the upcoming IPO of Facebook this week, I got a little worried. I told a few people “Mark my words, this IPO is going to blow the Social Media bubble once and for all” and even “Wouldn’t be surprised if FB’s IPO is going to start the final leg of this crisis and finish […]

Facebook’s new “Needs Review” feature
I like Facebook a lot, and spend significant social media time there talking to people and otherwise engaging in the usual social media voyeurism. What was very cool today though was the “needs review” tag that is automatically opt-in rather than the usual don’t sweat it you have to manually figure out how to opt-in […]

Completely drop your Klout account in 30 seconds
Well, the day has finally come. Since yesterday, Klout allows you to delete the profile they (or you) created on you. In my case, that means I’ll first have to sign up for klout, as they created my account all by themselves – but I’m happy to go through that little PITA Here’s how to […]

New Klout Scores. No Sir, Many People Do Not Like That.
The whining has been phenomenal today with the changes to how Klout scores your relative influence within social media and networks. While it is an interesting system, and one that I do watch because when I have a Klout score of above 50 people offer me interesting things to do, there are still some things […]

Podio Brings On the Fly App Creation to Mobile
I spent some time recently talking to Ryan Nichols, former VP at Appirio and now heading up the apps division at Podio, a company that set out to allow people to build lightweight social apps for everyday tasks – the sort of long tail type applications that no software vendor is likely to think about. […]

This CEO Isn’t Afraid to Take on Jive Software or Salesforce.com
Yammer thrives. The herd mentality around the enterprise activity stream is driving its competitors to emulate their every move. Jive’s done it. So has Salesforce.com, SocialText, Newsgator, Moxie Software and IBM Connections. From the Fortune 500 to the Fortuneless company of one, the activity stream is supplanting email for many forms of business communication. What’s […]