Ford Fiesta: The Fiestagram Campaign:

"A pretty simple, but smart and well integrated social campaign to promote high-tech car features"

Great example of understanding behavior and ways to make it better. 

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Apple Slashes iAd Pricing Again as Mobile Ad Share Declines:

"Apple is once again slashing the minimum amount it charges advertisers to run a campaign on its iAd mobile ad system and boosting the amount it pays mobile app developers, Ad Age has learned."

Hopefully it's not that bad up there. 

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Google: 62 Percent Of Valentine’s Day Restaurant Searches Were Mobile:

"One more time: 62 percent of all US-based national chain restaurant queries were coming from mobile devices."

Boom!

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6 Principles of Strategy:

"When Mike Tyson said, “everybody’s got plans… until they get hit,” everyone knew intuitively what he meant. Simply having a strategy is no guarantee of success."

6 trains of thought, valuable for any desired outcome. 

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'Angry Birds' slings onto Facebook:

"Rovio's ridiculously addictive mobile game, which has been downloaded more than 500 million times on multiple platforms since debuting on the iPhone in 2009, hit Facebook on Tuesday."

If you've attended the annual CES conference, you know just about everyone wants to end up in Apple. When I read the article above, I couldn't help but recognize the irony when it comes to the gaming industry and their lust for Facebook. 

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Yahoo's New Approach to Content: Ask People What They Want to Read:

"Yesterday, Yahoo released out of beta a website (seen below) that visualizes the traffic to Yahoo properties, letting users customize results based on various demographic categories."

Interestingly unexpected. AOL Exec, "Now, that's just stupid." 

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Myspace gains 1 million users, touts more music than Spotify:

"Myspace, the once dominant social-networking site that faded into obscurity during Facebook's rise to dominance, added 1 million new users over the past month, according to the company."

...However, those 1 million users are now said to have gone somewhere else, accordng to sources other than Myspace. 

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Thinking Out Loud About Voice Search: What's the business model?:

"Siri may be Steve Jobs revenge, for Google copying the iPhone. Or as Jobs complained, 'We didn't enter Search'."

...we just took voice search, gave it a pretty name and made you think it was so, so much better. 

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Google's new 'entertainment device' is coming:

"Nicknamed "Project Tungsten," the device serves as a music hub that connects to speakers or a home stereo. Running Google's Android operating system, the device can play digital music files stored online at Google Music or on assorted devices."

Sigh. Nicknamed "Apple TV," the device serves as a music (or video) hub that connects to speakers or a home stereo. Running Apple's operating system, the device can play digital music files stored online at Apple's iTunes store or on assorted devices."

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The BBC is experimenting with Perceptive Media, and it could transform TV forever:

"While the BBC’s experiments are at an early stage, it’s easy to see how other parts of the media would be attracted to Perceptive Media. Imagine the fun advertisers could have, tailoring ads to your circumstances and tastes."

Fascinating read.  

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Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins:

"Pinterest is monetizing their site while in the early beta stage, which is almost unheard of for a newish social network."

Pinteresting...

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Larry Page's "Tidal Wave Movement"?:

"That seems to be where Google finds itself, at least by its own reckoning. To continue being a great search engine, it needs the identity and relationship data found, for the most part, behind Facebook’s walls."

I wonder what Larry might do with all that money he was planning to pay his employees. Maybe a sponsored story telling everyone how stupid Google+ was?

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Keith Stoeckler on check-in specials: 

"Let's do more of this" 

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Lady Gaga launches social site, 'Little Monsters':

"Little Monster 1: "Lady Gaga sure knows how to rock a bad-ass meat dress."

Little Monster 2: "I think that getup must have smelled horrible."

LittleMonsters.com Administrator: "Lady Gaga always smells like roses!" (squishes Little Monster 2) "Carry on with the idolatry you little monsters!""

Why not?

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Inside Instagram:

"I don't like the idea of Instagram as a photo sharing service, and I don't think it is," says Systrom, "it's very much a communication tool, it's a visual communications tool."

Startup envy. Totally in their corner, of eight.  

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Why Windows 8 Will Put Microsoft Back on Top:

"Take one look at Windows 8 and it quickly becomes clear that it’s a “mobile first” platform."

Until people start actually buying their phones...

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Why Pinterest is 2012's hottest website:

"So will we see a thousand Pinterest clones bloom, or will the site's stellar growth continue despite others jumping on the trend? I'd say success is assured for Pinterest."

They'll ruin the user experience with something like ads in-stream or branded Pins...

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Chris Saad on the danger of the Open Web's demise: 

"...URLs are fading into the background,  native Mobile apps are all the rage and Facebook threatens to engulf the web into a proprietary black hole."

Why Twitter is sitting atop a ridiculous gold mine and the potential to influence the Open Web's future. I seriously hope Twitter doesn't catch Facebook envy. The only parody Dick Costolo should pay close attention to is FB's underhanded (yet ingenious) ability to launch new products and keep users' interest just enough to reiterate on some marginal level. Because when effectively repeated over and over you end up with a valuation just over $100 billion. 

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 Greg Satell's post on better ways to contrive insight: 

"His point was that insight takes discipline. As he said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.”

Excellent post. Objectively speaking.

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