February, 2012 Archive

Google+ today: From sausage fest to ghost town

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Throughout 2011, it was clear that Google+ was mostly a male bastion. Mashable reported that if you were to throw a dart at Google+, it would be more than twice as likely to land on a man’s profile as a woman’s profile. Ensue hue and cry. This week, the Wall Street Journal puts Google+ on ghost …

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Everything is a remix

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We live in an age with daunting problems. We need the best ideas possible, we need them now, we need them to spread fast. The common good is a meme that was overwhelmed by intellectual property. It needs to spread again. If the meme prospers, our laws, our norms, our society, they all transform. That’s …

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Brand democracy is not brand anarchy.

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Just read The Role of Brand in the Nonprofit Sector which pointed to the emerging acceptance of brand as strategic asset that goes beyond tactical fundraising tool. There’s an interesting tension between the rise of individual voices through social media, and a dated perception that messaging hierarchies mandate institutional lockstep. This is definitely a  top  FAQ: “why …

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Welcome to the age of big data

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It’s a revolution,” says Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. “We’re really just getting under way. But the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched. – New York Times on big data

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What new leadership looks like

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Last week I was lucky to hear two fascinating talks: from Bill George, HBS prof and author of True North, and Wael Ghonim, the Google employee and internet activist who energized pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt just over a year ago. The theme that emerged for me was distributed leadership. George spoke about IBM’s collaborative organizational structure and shifting definition of …

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From SOPA to Susan G. Komen to Superbowl

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Hard to believe that in fewer than three weeks, social media has been front and center on three major news headlines: the SOPA defeat, the Susan G. Komen (apparent) reversal on Planned Parenthood, and tonight’s Superbowl. The first two events mark social’s expanding role in leading and shaping public opinion; the Superbowl stands out as the moment …

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Weekend, unplugged

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Only kind of conflict resolution I’m interested in engaging in on a sunny Saturday afternoon…

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