The following was originally published on CNBC.com.
It seems fitting that the story broke on Leap Day of Facebook launching its Timeline pages for brands and businesses—since I see the offering as a giant leap forward for how brands can embody their Facebook profiles and interact with their fans on this hugely important social media platform. Yes, Twitter can be (and often is) vital to brands, and it seems there’s always a new platform on the block that takes center stage [...]

(This article was originally published on the Huffington Post.)
Does the notion of “me time” almost always mean “we time” in this decidedly social age (even if me plus one or more is virtual)?
I wonder what Greta Garbo (who infamously crafted a reluctant catchphrase in the movie Grand Hotel: “I want to be alone”) would think of alone time circa 2011? Later in life she discounted the plea and said, “I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, [...]

Remember when you had those thoughts that were best kept to yourself? When privacy meant something and was a sacred, heavily guarded, and fortified construct? Well, let me jog your memory a bit, by cutting to your so-called (teenaged) life. How you had that special pen to champion your teenage angst as you wrote your troubles away in your diary? Though it may seem so very analog now, there was a time in the not-so-distant past when we had thoughts [...]

I am on page 60-something of the latest and greatest RFP (and no, I can’t tell you from where—it’s confidential, even in this age of radical transparency), and you might surmise that it’s because I ramble and can’t get to the point. While I admit that editing myself is a challenge, my bigger beef is with the lack of convergence between the world of new business and the age of social media. (In case you were thinking it, I realize [...]

Originally published on Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s Thinking Campaigns blog.
We already know the world has gone hyperlocal—from rooftop gardens to online deals for everything from facials near your home to ceviche dinners close to your office on LivingSocial, Groupon and Dealtificate. The media industry is no exception, and right now I’m watching the Patch.com model as a symbolic nod to where the future of media is most certainly headed.
I saw this firsthand a few weeks ago, as the final results [...]

By now, you are probably more than familiar with the events unfolding before our eyes across North Africa, specifically in Libya. In a matter of days, the situation has escalated to a humanitarian crisis of mass scale, and as we continue to see the fallout from social media revolutions in the Middle East, the situation in Libya is top of mind.
Already, more than 170,000 people—suffering extreme distress, violent acts and loss of home—have fled Libya. As I watch the situation [...]

Whether or not, like Woody Allen, you’ve experienced sex as the most fun you’ve ever had without laughing, some days I can’t help but think that the online erogenous zone deserves another one of the comic’s lines: “When it comes to sex, there are certain things that should always be left unknown, and with my luck, they probably will be.”
I’ve been looking this week at how e-seekers of romance, love and eroticism feel about the new possibilities of the Internet [...]

Around Valentine’s Day 2011, our thoughts immediately turn to…social media. Well, why not? Social media is linking people in more ways than we can imagine and changing every day. It’s driving trends across all kinds of sectors and all parts of real life. But what are the new norms of love online today? Are there any universally accepted virtual behaviors that are contributing now to a cultural e-dating code?
Euro RSCG Worldwide, the parent company of [...]

There’s a certain set of consumers who don’t just passively consume goods and services; they proactively seek them out, help to produce them and help to propagate them. Alvin Toffler coined the term Prosumers in his 1980 book The Third Wave to label people similar to the leading-edge consumers we were studying at Euro RSCG Worldwide, the parent company of the PR agency I head up. When we started using the term later, it [...]

It’s Valentine’s Day once again, when lonely hearts turn to thoughts of love, Cupid’s lets his bow fly, and e-dating across the U.S. and the EU approaches a whopping $1.6 billion market.
But even as cyber-matchmakers here grow e-dating conferences and invent netiquette for the ethics of finding romance or dissuading cyberstalkers, this engine of moving parts raises a lot of questions. It’s a 21st-century McLuhan-esque stage, and the medium might still be the message, but [...]