The Trouble with Blog Influence Statistics
It may be ironic, but I’m not a big fan of statistics when it comes to blog readership.  Not because I’m not interested, but because I’m not convinced the average person understands exactly what a blog is. Even many of us who think we DO understand what a blog is have a hard time agreeing with one another on definitions. Case in point: Seth Godin. He disabled comments on his blog long ago, yet so

Mainstream Media Still Matters
Caution: This post could be construed as gratuitous self promotion because I work for We Seed’s parent company, PEAK6 Online. I don’t even own a television, but tonight I’ll be camping out in front of someone else’s set to watch We Seed on 20/20. I know a lot of us in social media circles like to focus on the interest and influence of social media in the way information spreads, but the growth patterns differ greatly. Social media is great for long-term growth and facilitation of word of mouth, but mainstream media (especially national mainstream media) still packs a wallop and has the ability

Your Product Cannot Exist in a Vacuum
This is the name of a round table discussion I’m getting ready to lead at this year’s Product Camp Seattle (search on Twitter for #pcs09 to follow the conversation from today). The discussion is set to kick off in about an hour and I’m getting my thoughts ready to go. It’s the second time now that I’ve been the first pe

Becoming a Social Business
Social Business Design by David Armano Social media interaction may have started with marketing and public relations, but as the public facing elements of our businesses started engaging in a dialogue with customers and other community stakeholders, we started to realize something very important: true social media engagement transcends marketing. Enter

Guru Say What?
Don't Call Me a Guru Let’s do an exercise where you fill in the blanks: Social media gurus say ____________, but I think _________________. I see and hear this all the time and I’m going on the record to denounce this as intellectually lazy and even a bit cowardly. Who are You Calling a Guru? Believe it or not, when someone says social media gurus, I don’t know who the hell they’re talking about. I see a lot of diversity of thought and experie