Social media success is about much more than mastering the platforms and tools. Finding a voice that resonates, developing terrific content, and building an engaged community require a culture of experimentation and continuous learning. Quartz reports how NASA developed a smart social media strategy that fueled its global reach. Instagram has enabled desktop search for users, hashtags, and …
Friday 5 — 7.10.2015
We all see (and rely on) many more visual representations of data these days — charts are everywhere in your social streams. Needless to say, how you set up your chart to reflect the numbers matters. Here’s a handy guide to spotting charts that lie. (Yes, Yankees fans, that chart is deceiving.) Facebook is already a …
Friday 5 — 6.12.15
Cancel all your meetings today and read: “What is code?“ Finished with item number 1? Then turn your attention to the Nieman Lab’s elegant explanation of Apple’s news initiatives announced this week at WWDC. Here’s why we should stop designing for millennials as if they were an entirely homogeneous generation, alien to the ones that preceded it. Instead, …
Here’s why Google indexing tweets matters
This week I was looking for an article about the pressures of media coverage on scientific research to send to a few colleagues. All I could remember was that it was in the New York Times recently, and had the words “perils” and “publishing” in the title. So I searched within Google News for “perils publishing science nytimes” …
Friday 5 — 5.29.2015
It’s worth reading every one of Mary Meeker’s internet trends slides. I’m struck by the relative rapidity and impact of the trends in the American work environment, including what motivates the millennial workforce (hint: not money), the ways connectivity has changed the nature of work, and the rise of online platforms, marketplaces and their impact. The …
The institutional odyssey
Exploring best practices — and unanswered questions — as we navigate social conversation in today’s digital organization Back in the mid-90s, establishing an institutional web presence began with writing a million dollar check to Oracle. As a next step, you hired a fleet of technical employees, one of whom was called a “Webmaster”—schooled in the …
Friday 5 — 5.8.2015
No matter how much time I spend trying to do a respectable job managing my digital assets, I take a look at the state of my photos online and despair. If you feel the same way, these photo management tips are for you. The Instagram engineering blog performed a fascinating machine-learning analysis of the rise of a new …
Friday 5 — 4.24.2015
If you are responsible for a high-volume brand homepage, be sure to read this Nieman Lab take on the Atlantic re-design. I particularly like this framing from Bob Cohn: “In an age of social traffic, a homepage is less about traffic triage — directing lots of direct visitors to the content of their choice — than …
Friday 5 — 4.17.2015
Apps without an interface provide services to users through native mobile capabilities. For example, Magic lets you text a number to order whatever you like without hassle, while Digit monitors your bank account activity and automates your savings. Looking for all the narcissism potential of Facebook with the quick-hit guilty pleasure of Giphy? Try Kong, a social network consisting …
Friday 5 — 4.10.2015
The first round of many Apple Watch reviews are in — here’s my favorite one, although it’s derided capably here. Certainly no one is suggesting it’s a digital must-have, but most agree it packs a few canny features. (For the optimists: Pre-order here.) New Pew research covers teens’ 2015 use of social media and technology. A solid …