Twitter finally announced its business model, with a major innovation: the “promoted tweet.” Tweets can be purchased by a brand and then appear on search pages as sponsored. This will no doubt change the way brands use Twitter. I believe it’s as revolutionary as the Google AdWords launch. Speaking of Google, its platforms, such as YouTube and Google Maps, can be used in some pretty creative interactive ways, as you’ll see if you click on the second link below.
But what [...]

“Why Brands Are Becoming Media” on Mashable

“Media’s Evolving Spheres of Discovery” on BuzzMachine

“8 Types of People That Belong on Twitter” on Inc.com

“Social Gaming Integral to Social Networking” on MarketingProfs

“Super Mario Trend” on YouTube (press the pause button at each black screen to read the trend being illustrated)

Originally posted on huffingtonpost.com.
The inaugural One Young World summit that concluded on Wednesday in London wasn’t just a gathering of hundreds of tomorrow’s world leaders. Don’t get me wrong: The energy of the more than 600 delegates from 100-plus countries, the passion of their debates and the progress that their resolutions made toward finding solutions to problems such as economic injustice, climate change and excessive corporate power were all substantial and meaningful.
But the leadership summit wasn’t just about the delegates [...]

Originally posted on huffingtonpost.com.
Every generation assumes it has been handed the world’s problems because the one that preceded it didn’t quite master the agenda. In the rebellious 1960s, the baby boomers demonstrated noisily against established powers and ideas. But in the case of today’s energetic and engaged 20-somethings—the Real-Time Generation—I think assuming responsibility isn’t as much about disappointment in prior leadership (although there’s certainly cause for that) as it is about the power of the new tools. Thanks to the [...]

Social media have helped corporations, retailers and small brands make a name for themselves and maintain sales during one of the toughest economic times ever. But it’s also had a significant impact on the entertainment industry, making unlikely stars and also highlighting flaws in some seemingly perfect icons.
YouTube is probably the best case study of how social media can create and deflate celebrity. Lonely Girl 15 was a realistic but fictional video docu-series that had everyone believing Lonely Girl’s life [...]

In the PR business, we’re all constantly thinking about social marketing, social networks, the social Web and social media. But we don’t think as often as we should about what those terms actually mean. Where does one end and another begin?
As Trebor Scholz, assistant professor in the Department of Media Study at the New School, lays out in an info-packed online slide show, the roots of our collective digital society are long and tangled: from an e-mail progenitor in 1965, [...]

As I was pulling together a white paper about social media I came across an article that Adweek published about me in 1996, when my role as head of TBWA’s Department of the Future took me to Amsterdam. Having already been central in setting up the agency’s efforts to use new media tools for market research, I moved to the Netherlands to develop interactive research capabilities for the agency’s European offices.
Around the same time, I worked on a campaign strategy [...]