Social Media

DMW Vlog: Craig Newmark on What's Next For Craigslist

Authored by Jay Baage on November 4, 2009 - 6:58am.

DMW Vlog - Craigslist's Founder Craig Newmark was featured in a really interesting luncheon keynote interview at DMW's recent Digital Media Conference West. We caught up with him afterwards and talked briefly about what is next for Craigslist, what he sees as the most interesting online phenomena right now and which social networks he uses himself.

Should Social Media Websites Be Banned At Work Computers?

Authored by Jay Baage on October 7, 2009 - 1:35pm.

Analysis: Facebook is NOT a Social Media Company

Authored by Jay Baage on September 20, 2009 - 4:07pm.
Last week I attended the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, Canada. I figured that I would share some notes from there regarding Social Media Marketing in particular, since that is the field of marketing that, in my opinion, is evolving the fastest. First there is the issue of terminology. Everyone, including myself, tend to talk about social media marketing, but I guess one takeaway from the conference is that we're really talking about social marketing. As Louise Clements, Director of Sales, Facebook Canada points out, Facebook is NOT a media company.

Mark Cuban: How Twitter and Facebook Now Compete with Google

Authored by Mark Cuban on May 18, 2009 - 4:32am.

Last year I wrote a blog post entitled “If the news is important it will find me”. The point was that we all live in so many social networks, that someone will send us an update if something in the world happens that we would be interested in.  Back then I was guessing.  A year later I have data. For the 1st time ever, more people are finding my blog from Twitter and Facebook referrals than via Google.  The total number of people coming to my blog is increasing. The percentage of people who find it via Google is declining. Significantly.

Adknowledge Buys MIVA Media Unit for $11.6 Million

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 13, 2009 - 8:06am.
Kansas City, Mo. - Adknowledge, a provider of behavioral online advertising services, announced that it has acquired the media division of online performance ad network MIVA, for about $11.6 million.

Filtrbox Gets $1.4 Million for Web Market Intelligence Tools

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 17, 2009 - 9:24am.
Boulder, Colo. - Filtrbox, a provider of online market intelligence services, has raised $1.4 million in its first round of funding, led by Flywheel Ventures and True Ventures, TechCrunch reported.

Analysis: A Compilation of 2009 Social Media Predictions Worth Reading

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on December 15, 2008 - 11:49am.
It started with a simple email from Peter. An invitation to contribute some thoughts to a collaborative blog post talking about the future. It's a good topic on this 15th day of the last month of the year, a mere two weeks until we welcome 2009. Which may explain why when Peter Kim from Forrester Research sent his email, 13 other highly popular bloggers and (dare I say) social media "personalities" took him up on his offer and each contributed a some thoughts to a single collaborative post.

Analysis: Is Social Media Becoming The New MBA?

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on November 7, 2008 - 8:21am.

The rise of Web2.0 success stories has created an interesting phenomenon in the world of business. Today, far more than 5 years ago, you could easily point to a list of entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses without having a graduate business degree. The same MBA degree that was once considered the "green fees" to success in the business world seems to be rapidly becoming an optional asset on the road to success. The tradition of taking time off of work to complete a degree, for example, is rapidly giving way to more hybrid options such as part-time programs and Executive MBAs (targeted at professionals later in their careers).

Buzz Watch: Unpacking The "Pepsi 25" Social Media Rebranding Campaign

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on November 4, 2008 - 12:48pm.

By now you may have seen some posts from several social media influencers (Peter Shankman, Chris Brogan, PSFK, Jason Falls among others) in the marketing and advertising field about Pepsi's innovative new campaign being dubbed by many the "Pepsi 25" for their choice of 25 bloggers to single out and send three packages over the course of an hour. Since I don't have my camera at work with me today, I'm going to gratuitously grab the image Steve posted on Adrants (another of the 25 chosen blogs) with full credit back to him of course:

Analysis: The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on December 17, 2007 - 9:34am.

We all know marketers love metrics. Flashy award winning campaigns are great and celebrity spokespersons are always appealing, but most of the time we try to base judging the success of a campaign on hard and fast metrics. The only problem is, many times the metrics that marketers use to gauge success are wrong, inaccurate, incomplete or just plain useless. There are two main reasons this happens ... precedent and ignorance.

MSNBC.com Acquires Social Media News Site Newsvine

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 7, 2007 - 2:28pm.
Newsvine LogoNew York – Newsvine, a company that displays news via the contributions of its community, has been acquired by MSNBC.com.

Analysis: MSNBC Skips Social News Trend, Focuses on Visual News

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on June 28, 2007 - 1:47pm.

I2m_msnbc_newsbreaker_3Standing out for your online news offering is rapidly becoming almost impossible for publishers.  After all, as we each get smarter about using RSS feeds to only get the content we want, the old "news portal" sites of several years ago are becoming less and less important. 

Analysis: 6 Useful Social Media Tools and Sites For Women

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on June 26, 2007 - 9:52am.

When it comes to social media tools, most are not gender specific.  That's a good thing, as it means they can be uniformly useful for everyone, but it's a sign of evolution when more specifically targeted sites start to appear.  It happened with websites and now the same seems to be happening with several new interesting social media tools popping up targeted at women. 

What Should Yahoo Do About Social Networking And Search?

Authored by Scott Karp on June 20, 2007 - 9:07am.

The New York Times asks, “Should Yahoo stop trying to beat Google at its own game?” and VC Jim Breyer says, “They should take a hard look at the search business, and it may well be the right time to stop trying to out-Google Google.” Wow, that sounds awfully familiar — probably just a coincidence. In any case, the Times and others are reporting some radical notions that had been floating around Yahoo prior to Semel’s stepping down as CEO — acquiring MySpace from News Corp in exchange for a 25% stake in Yahoo and conceding search to Google.

Analysis: To Beat Google, Yahoo Needs To Change The Game

Authored by Scott Karp on June 19, 2007 - 11:08am.

In all the coverage of Terry Semel’s stepping down as Yahoo CEO to be replaced by founder Jerry Yang, there’s a standard reference to Yahoo’s failure to beat Google — and the implication that perhaps Yahoo can never beat Google. The main reason way Yahoo has lagged Google is that Yahoo has been trying to beat Google at its own game:

Is Social Media Revolution or Evolution?

Authored by Jay Baage on April 25, 2007 - 12:34pm.


It is interesting to see how fast trends shift. This is European fashion and lifestyle marketeer Alain Thys' stylish presentation from a marketing conference in November of last year. Now, 5 months later, bloggers already say that it is outdated and that participation and adoption of Social Media isn't as compelling anymore. Take a look and make up your own mind.

Product (RED): Smart Social Marketing or Meaningless Celebrity?

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on March 2, 2007 - 2:54pm.
I2m_productred_equalszero_1 In a great post over at PSFK - Piers publishes the content of a conversation he had with Julie Cordua, the VP of Marketing for the often talked about Product (RED) social marketing campaign.  In case you're among the few people that hasn't seen the campaign, it created waves last year by introducing a for-profit model where companies could sign on to create products that they would sell for profit that became part of a line of items furthering the Red brand and donate a portion of profits to The Global Fund.

Jaman and The New Global Niche

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on February 21, 2007 - 1:03pm.
I2m_jaman2 Ethnicity has always been an appealing niche for foreign language newspapers and magazines to local cable television programs.  Restaurants, churches and temples are all centers for exploring global cultures in the real world.  Yet on the Internet, the most successful ethnically focused sites seem to be the online dating sites such as Shaadi.com, JDate and Corazones.com - as well as online communities targeting ethnicities for networking.  The problem with this is that most of these sites are not inviting others outside a particular ethnicity to interact and learn about a culture.

10 Secrets of Successful Online Communities

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on February 12, 2007 - 11:23am.

Community Next Conference Program via FlickrThis past weekend I was moderating a panel at CommunityNext, a smart event focused on everything about online communities coordinated by Noah Kagan.  The event was a fun gathering of extremely smart folks from some of the hottest online communities today - and panelists/speakers shared many great thoughts on topics ranging from how to be more awesome, to the genesis behind HotorNot.com.  Through the day, I took several notes and during the flight back to the east coast, started to aggregate the day into some central lessons about online communities gained from listening to many of the speakers, as well as looking at what is making many of the sites from attendees stand out.  Here's my list of 10 lessons that I took away from the event, as well as a few great sites that are worth visiting for further exploration:

Yahoo! Pipes Offers The Next Evolution of Marketing with RSS

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on February 9, 2007 - 4:56pm.
I2m_yahoo_pipes_1 RSS is one of those technologies that has a relatively enigmatic name for a very simple concept.  The idea that you can provide a feed of content that others can subscribe to is the ultimate simplicity.  Yet so far, RSS has been used primarily to push content that is offered by one group to many subscribers.  The power of RSS is mainly in the fact that I can pull multiple feeds from very different content providers into a single location.  My RSS aggregator has news from MarketingVox, the NY Times, my upcoming Netflix movies, and tips from Lifehacker (among lots of others) all on a single page.  That's powerful stuff.  But what if I want to have an even more customized view?  There are plenty of services like Squidoo and Rollyo that have pursued an idea that in the past I have termed "human filtered search."  Whatever you call it, this is the growing trend of people filtering content for other people.  It's the idea behind those sites, as well as the basic concept behind social news sites like Digg or iceRocket.