Month: April 2009

Categories: Social Media Posted on

Acquisitions, Culture, and the Social Web

I don’t cover the enterprise space, but my colleague Ray Wang says that the Sun acquisition will be successful for Oracle, check out his blog post to read his highlights.   While I’ll leave the specifics of the product and company integration to him, I want to focus on the cultures, and how it impacts their social programs.  Anyone reading this blog knows this is important as it’s essentially how they’ll communicate with customers and employees. Sun has a long history of being open, through their technology, executives that blog, and the thousands of employees that participate in one way or another in the social web.  On the other hand, Oracle, which I observe to have a culture of top … Continue readingAcquisitions, Culture, and the Social Web

Categories: Social Media Posted on

How Much Should We Share?

There’s a lot of forces that factor into what I do online, from my day job, expectations from the market, personal relationships and client relationships. In fact, I have some specific rules about how I blog, and even how I tweet. This last glorious weekend of sun and surf, I gave up just talking about web strategy, and extended the discussion to my personal life. What’s interesting is that people react differently to me when I share my personal life (I am an individual, despite that I’ve dedicated most of my life to my career and family). I like Rex’s take, who had enough, and was thoughtful enough to say he didn’t want to hear about my personal life on … Continue readingHow Much Should We Share?

Categories: Career, Generations Posted on

A Dialog about the Future for Students and Employers: The Upcoming Social Workforce

To best see what’s coming next, it’s helpful to examine the next generation workforce. Right about now it’s spring break, and that means that some students finally have enough time to shake off the late night party buzz and think about their careers. I know this, as I’m getting more emails from students and college professors that are teaching our young minds about social media, marketing, web marketing and other related topics. More than ever, they need to think their career through as they’ll be competing for entry level positions with more qualified individuals. In my opinion, where they lack in experience they can make up with enthusiasm and perhaps even more relevant. What would that be? Being digital natives, … Continue readingA Dialog about the Future for Students and Employers: The Upcoming Social Workforce

Categories: MicroMedia, Social Media Posted on

What Happens When Twitter Gets Mainstream Attention

Twitter is getting a tremendous amount of buzz from brands, celebrities, media, politicians, and athletes. Despite the hype, it’s still a very small social networking site (likely under 10mm), compared to the social giants like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and MySpace (150-300mm), see my stats page to learn more. I assert that mainstream attention is different than mainstream usage. Even respected analyst firm Gartner suggests that the backlash may start as this microblogging tool gets mainstream attention, although I’ll suggest we haven’t even begun to see the upcoming revolt, as the pivot point is dependent on mainstream usage. Here’s what we should expect to happen over the next few months: Mainstream media and celebrities to flood Twitter The tool, having received … Continue readingWhat Happens When Twitter Gets Mainstream Attention

Categories: Digest, Social Networking Posted on

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 19, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover. I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more. Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts. Web Strategy Summary This is only … Continue readingWeekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 19, 2009

Categories: Conference, MicroMedia, Video Posted on

Video: How To Use Twitter and Connect in the Comments

I’m getting more and more client calls asking about Twitter, although I tend to think most of my readers are the super social elite folks you’d find in Friendfeed. Yet, in reality, many agencies, brands, and executives are just hearing about this microblogging services from the recent media buzz. The above video, created by Lee and Sachi LeFever (I hung out with them in SXSW) of CommonCraft is available here on YouTube, or you can use their license and use for internal education. If you’re seeking to find some of my Forrester colleagues, Alexis Karlin in our web marketing team has an ongoing roster of Forrester employees who happen to be on Twitter. If you happen to be a client, … Continue readingVideo: How To Use Twitter and Connect in the Comments

Categories: Social Media, Web Strategy Posted on

8 Principles for the Modern Blog …at least for 2009

A few years ago, Julio Garcia suggested I redesigned my blog, I should have listened, he was right. Yesterday, I finally took his advice and launched a new blog design, in which I contracted Web Designer and Developer Mitch Canter to complete. We involved the community in the iterations of the design, and frequently asked for feedback. I even used controversial crowdSPRING to crowdsource my banner design, (thanks to Dragos Mirica, see his site)based on Mitch’s wireframe and logo creation. In the end, a majority of it came from my vision, a great deal from Mitch, and the rest from the community. Although this blog redesign process has taken a few months (I’ve been very busy, as has he) I’ve … Continue reading8 Principles for the Modern Blog …at least for 2009

Categories: Collaboration, Social Media Posted on

Guest Post: Designer Mitch Canter on the Web Strategy Redesign

I guess I’ll start with a brief introduction. My name is Mitch Canter, and I’ve been doing graphic design on and off for about 5 years. I started my company, studionashvegas, about a year and three months ago. I bought a domain name and started a twitter account, having very little idea of what twitter even was at the time. A year and three months later, I have spent 0 dollars in advertising money and happily pay the bills for my wife (a professional blogger) and our eight month old (who has more Flickr pictures on his account than I do). For Jeremiah’s blog, we wanted to do a few specific things. Above all, we wanted a fresh design that … Continue readingGuest Post: Designer Mitch Canter on the Web Strategy Redesign

Categories: Digest, Social Networking Posted on

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 12, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover. I used to publish these on Wednesday, but now I’m spending more quiet time on the weekend reflecting on this fast moving space, do you know of any other industries that have this much movement? I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more. Subscribe to this … Continue readingWeekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 12, 2009

Categories: Social Media Posted on

Developer Challenge: Create A Crowd Managed Feed Reader

There’s a business opportunity for whoever wants to innovate. Since I don’t build products myself, I’ll just tell you what I’m looking for as I see a market need. If you build it, kindly leave a comment below, and I’ll amend the post. I have a feeling that it will emerge in a few days, or an existing company will add these features. Pain point Finding people on Twitter, then following them is already a challenge. Sharing your hard earned list takes time. I deal with a lot of executives at companies, that want to quickly scan the topics in their industry, or see what their employees, customers, and competitors are doing. Searching by keyword isn’t sufficient. Carter Lusher has … Continue readingDeveloper Challenge: Create A Crowd Managed Feed Reader