• Six Social Media Trends for 2010 - Conversation Starter - HarvardBusiness.org
  In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? In no particular order:
  (tags: socialmedia trends social socialnetworking media business marketing mobile 2010)

• Top Ten Best Visualization Tools for Social Media, Blogosphere, Internet & News | InventorSpot
  Art, maps,imagery and graphs add context and a visual component to numbers, locations, and information. With as much influx of data we contend with on a daily basis, visualization tools allows our brains to take a rest while perceiving content in a different light. In essence, visualization allows us to stop and smell the pixels, in spite of the fact we might learn a few things along the way.
  (tags: visualization socialmedia tools twitter statistics facebook data)
• Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell
  big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success.
  (tags: facebook games scam socialmedia advertising)
• HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists
  The just-launched Twitter Lists feature is a new way to organize the people you’re following on Twitter, or find new people. In actuality, though, Twitter Lists are Twitter’s long awaited “groups” feature. They offer a way for you to bunch together other users on Twitter into groups so that you can get an overview of what they’re up to. That’s because Lists aren’t just static listings of users, but rather curated Twitter streams of the latest tweets from a specified set of users. In other words, you can create a list that groups together people for whatever reason (the members of your family, for example), and then you can get a snapshot of the things those users are saying by viewing that list’s page, which includes a complete tweet stream for everyone on the list. Lists allow you to organize the people you’re following into groups, and they even allow you to include people you’re not following.
  (tags: twitter howto socialmedia tools twitterlists tutorial lists)

• One in Five Americans Now a Tweeter
  Nearly one in five (19%) online Americans now uses Twitter or a similar service to post and share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others, according to the latest survey data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This figure represents a significant increase over previous surveys that reported on Twitter use. Research in in December 2008 and April 2009 from Pew found that only 11% of internet users preported using a status-update service, while a similar study by Harris Interactive in March/April of 2009 found that number to be even lower, at 5%.
  (tags: twitter socialmedia social media pewinternet)
• A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades | The Awl
  Every six months, the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases data about newspapers and how many people subscribe to them. And then everyone writes a story about how some newspapers declined some amount over the year previous. Well, that's no way to look at data! It's confusing—and it obscures larger trends. So we've taken chunks of data for the major newspapers, going back to 1990, and graphed it, so you can see what's actually happened to newspaper circulation. (We excluded USA Today, because we don't care about it. If you're in a hotel? You're reading it now. That's nice.)
  (tags: newspapers media news journalism circulation business visualization history)
• The world in 2015 according to Google — NevilleHobson.com
  What will the future look like in five years’ time? That’s in 2015, the year of the next-but-one Rugby World Cup (a fact) and the end of the fourth estate (a prediction). It’s also the year of some predicted cool technologies as already experienced by Marty McFly. A little more real-world influenced, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has some down-to-earth predictions for the next five years which he discussed during a 45-minute interview at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 last week.
  (tags: blog google ericschmidt communication trends mooreslaw)
• Scandinavian Airlines 2D code mobile boarding passes - SAS go fully paperless
  The SAS mobile initiatives are a good example of how mobile marketing is more than just 'banners on a different screen.' Mobile should be seen as an enabler and there are great opportunities to harness mobile to improve customer experience. Full mobile check-in is a good example of this - making life easier for passengers and streamlining process for the airline at the airport.
  (tags: sas scandinavian qr 2d quickcode mobile airlines)

• Ruud Hein »  Why Geocities Closes: We Dont Need No Stinking Web Sites
  There are, I believe, two reasons why the Geocities model failed in popularity. And I say Geocities but I could also say Blogger or LiveJournal& One, we dont want to built web sites, easy page makers or not. Making new pages, figuring out where or how to add them to the navigation not cool. Two, audience. Family and friends we proudly told about our site came once. Then the incentive was gone and they didnt come anymore.
  (tags: geocitics social_media socialmedia facebook twitter)

• Americas Food Revolution by Jerry Weinberger, City Journal Summer 2009
  Americas Food Revolution Urban revival, globalization, and some world-class chefs have created one of the worlds great culinary scenes.
  (tags: food culture cooking history trends class usa)
• Copenhagenize.com - Oprah in Copenhagen
  Oprah was in town to try and help Chicago win the 2016 Olympics. Didn't go so well, but she had a programme last night about The World's Happiest People. There are bicycles in it, but it's an interesting portrait of the Copenhageners. "Less space, less things, more life" is what Oprah took away from her visit. Also it should be 'fewer things', but hey. Our relationship to the bicycle is not mentioned, but it applies. Simplicity. Ease of use. Practical. Efficient. The bicycle appeals to the Danish mentality for all these reasons. We like good design that is also functional.
  (tags: copenhagen oprah denmark)
• AT&T Boss Asks Employees to Fake It | Save the Internet
  AT&T has "asked' its employees to fake it in the fight against Net Neutrality. The companys top policy officer sent a memo to workers on Monday urging them to hide their company affiliation before posting anti-Net Neutrality comments to the Federal Communication Commissions Web site.
  (tags: astroturfing ATT cicconi FCC net_neutrality PR publicrelations ethics)

via online.wsj.com

Lovely essay by art historian Bruce Cole about Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech."

Like Cole, I have always admired this painting. Its message, to me, is simple: civic debate can be civil debate. And should be.

Of course, the town meeting illustrated might be unanimous. Perhaps the fellow is simply seconding a motion. I prefer to believe he disagrees with the majority, but that his confidence in the civility of the meeting, his confidence in the civility of his peers, lets him speak honestly, without being shouted down, without fear.

The town meeting may reject his motion. But they will greet him on the street, still come to his diner. The town doctor (he's on the left) will deliver his wife's babies. The grocer (he's on the right) will still let him run up some credit.

They will all still respect the person -- even if they don't accept the views. They respect each other more because they are all at the town hall.

That's my interpretation, anyway.

But in 2009, is that Fantasyland? It would seem so.

We saw many "town hall" meetings on health care reform broken up by organized Tea Baggers who traveled hundreds of miles to cause trouble. We even see appeals to bring guns to town hall meetings to intimidate anyone who dares to have a minority opinion (Google: health care town hall violence guns -- I don't make this up). And we see a Joint Session of Congress violated by an ignorant heckler who happens to be a Congressman.

So much for civility.

In 2009, the painting is Utopia. Palin, Limbaugh, Beck don't want anyone to stand up in a town halll -- unless it is to second the motion.

Posted via web from Allan Jenkins

Posted via web from Allan Jenkins

• marbury: a new all-purpose scapegoat: the future
  A couple of scientists have a theory about why the Hadron Collider is running into so many problems; it's being sabotaged by its own future: A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather. How long before plumbers start using this excuse for their failure to fix the boiler? Or perhaps governments, instead of blaming the country's problems on their predecessor, will start blaming future governments for everything? Endless possibilities. Maybe we've all spent too long blaming the past for shit that goes wrong. Sorry, Past.
  (tags: marbury boson higgs hadron collider bigbang)
• This headline not written for Google
  Discussion of the art of writing headlines for bright people vs. writing them for Google.
  (tags: seo google journalism search headlines writing)
• Bloggers Few in Number; Wield Disproportionate Influence
  Only 3.4% of US adults have written a blog post in the past 30 days and only 10.1% have visited a blog, but bloggers still appear to be wielding a disproportionate amount of influence online, according to new findings from Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI).
  (tags: blogging research blogs online_communities influence statistics ftc)
• The Twitter effect on organization culture NevilleHobson.com
  &] [Twitter] has changed the culture of our company, Roberts said. Comcast has for a while now been using Twitter to scan for complaints and engage with customers. The idea was not his, but rather rose organically when someone in the company realized that a lot of public complaints were being sent over Twitter.
  (tags: twitter corporate culture comcast @comcastcares dell customer_service)
• Hotel Hospitality Training Tips For The Era Of Social Networking. - Tuesday, 20th October 2009 at 4Hoteliers
  If you are embracing consumer generated media, guest reviews, and social networking as marketing and public relation opportunities to get the good news out about your hotel, here are some training tips for your next meeting: * Accept that the key factor in the booking decision of your hotels future guests is going to be hospitality and guest service, as measured not by an inspector from AAA, Mobile, your brand, or the State health inspector, but by online reviews posted by your actual guests. * Make sure your team is aware of what guests are saying about your hotel. For associates who dont have online access, print postings for display in the employee areas. Coach your sales and reservations sales agents on how to respond to questions regarding any negative reviews.
  (tags: socialmedia social_media marketing travel customer_service)

via newsfeed.kosmograd.com

This is St.Petersburg, today. And Leningrad during the Siege. The photograph is two photographs, 2009 and 1943, merged.

As Martin G, on whose blog I found the photo set, puts it: "the exact same location caught at two moments in time. A wormhole opens, we cannot help but fall into it."

Posted via web from Allan Jenkins

• Fees are penalties. Always.: Church of the Customer Blog
  Kevin Krone, Southwest's VP of marketing, said it best : "If we're trying to get people to travel, we should probably let people take their suitcase."
  (tags: airlines branding business customer_service pricing strategy baggagefees)