September 2010
SECTOR: PUBLIC - A New Site About Technology For...
Last week, during the Mashable / 92Y / UN Foundation “Social Good Summit” in New York, I launched a new website called SECTOR: PUBLIC. The focus of this blog is on leading the conversation about innovative social change via technology’s influence on the public sector, public service, and public good. From my “Letter from the Editor”: Right now, three entities...
August 2010
Education By The Numbers
Really interesting graphic about global education, by the numbers. Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »
In-line annotation on a personal blog as the new...
Fast Company just ran an article about advertising guru Alex Bogusky called, “Alex Bogusky Tells All: He Left the World’s Hottest Agency to Find His Soul.” He disagreed with some parts of it, and had comments to make on others. Why lobby for a correction, or get into a tiff with the writer? Just annotate it yourself. And he did, on his personal blog, in two parts (Part 1,...
Cured Meat: It's What's For Breakfast
What’s the deal with cured meat? It only seems to be available after dark. All these lovely plates of salumi and other delicacies, served with mustard and wine and tiny cornichons… But why can’t I get any for breakfast? When I travel it’s always the same hotel room service for breakfast - bacon, sausage, and ham. And not even fancy versions of these. How about scambling...
July 2010
Best Of: Fake Wikileaks Leaks
Last night I tweeted some fake Wikileaks leaks. Here’s a summary: BREAKING: Wikileaks to leak bad advice during a Public Service Announcement. BREAKING: Wikileaks to leak the truth behind Santa in a special “Children’s Edition.” BREAKING: Wikileaks to leak the end of the infamous “Man from Nantucket” riddle. BREAKING: Wikileaks to leak...
Government 2.0, Phase 3: Stable Solutions
I’ve written before about the three phases of open government, or government 2.0 - Surprises, Experiments, and Solutions. Basically, from about 2007-8, open government had a lot to do with “surprises,” being surprised that blogging was useful, or using Twitter was okay. From about 2009-10, the area moved to a phase of experiments, in which it was okay to experiment with new...
Government 2.0: The Newest Reality of New Media
New media has knocked on the doors of the White House and the rest of the U.S. government twice in the last week or so, but it looks like no one is answering (so to speak). First, a partial two minute 45 second video of USDA political appointee Shirley Sherrod giving an NAACP speech was posted by influential blogger (Who some people in the media still claimed not to know? Please. He’s...
Online Priorities: Blog Traffic vs. Community...
As I get ready to launch a new website, I’ve been thinking about what my priorities are with it, and how to measure if I’m accomplishing what I want to accomplish. And so, one issue I’ve been thinking about is whether measuring things like blog hits or unique visitors or time spent on site is important (regardless of community), or if providing value to a community of people I...
Entrepreneurial Lessons From Investor Michael...
Few people saw the gigantic housing/financial crisis coming, but independent investor Michael Burry did - back in 2005. Terrific author Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker and others) has an excerpt from his new book The Big Short in a recent issue of Vanity Fair, called Betting on the Blind Side (double meaning, gotta read it) which is very interesting in itself. But I took a few lessons from it...
June 2010
It's About Trust: Thoughts on Location-Based...
People in the blogosphere are very interested, and even congratulatory, on location-based service FourSquare’s new round of venture funding, to the tune of $20 million. I’ve used the technology, it’s very interesting. It was even “fun” for a time, which I think is important for building communities. And I’ve seen a lot of new friends and acquaintances checking...
Government 2.0 Movement Seemingly Passes By...
A recent story, titled “Twitter to hire White House liaison to help policymakers ‘tweet more effectively’“ reported that Twitter, Inc. of California plans to hire its first employee outside headquarters - in Washington, DC. Great idea, except that the position seems like something useful from one or two years ago. From the Telegraph UK: The company, which has yet...
May 2010
Blog Comments Are Unnecessary For Influence
Four days ago I published a post for O’Reilly Radar called, What Does Government 2.0 Look Like? Well, it’s not so much a blog post as an abbreviated white paper. I thought it was a really good post, and then I published it and received zero comments. Not one. And my posts on similar topics on the same well-trafficked site often get numerous comments, and sometimes even many. So, I...
Are You Determined To Change?
Seth Godin wrote a blog today called, “You Can See The Determination In His Eyes,” which I’m reprinting below without any permission whatsoever. (I think Seth would want me to share.) [“You can see the determination in his eyes.”] That’s the way a friend described someone she had just met. She was sure (just as I’m sure) that he’s going places. Once...
Top 10 Ways How Not To Socially Engage Me
Here are the Top 10 general rules to follow if you want to socially engage me in a completely unimpressive way: (1) Work for a company I’ve never heard of. Tell me impressive yet non-specific things about it. (2) Make a lunch reservation at an expensive restaurant. Offer to pay. (3) Be sure to have a vague agenda that I cannot prepare for. (4) Email me repeatedly to make sure...
April 2010
Governments and Citizens: You Don't Own Your...
Just finished video blogging about this for GovFresh.com but I felt this warrented a written blog too. Almost a year ago I wrote a blog post about plagarism and microblogging that no one really seemed to take seriously. The point of it was that it wasn’t really clear what “plagarism” means when content is one sentence, or 12 seconds, long. If I retweet you but change one word,...
My Thoughts on Geoff Livingston's "Retirement"...
In a post today on his blog The Buzz Bin, blogger and PR/non-profit communications guru [and buddy] Geoff Livingston announced in a post called Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow that he would retire his contributions, and only guest post on occasion at Mashable.com and some other places, in line with his new passions. I completely understand this. When I used to write journal articles for scientific...
Pre-boarding: A Novel Use of FourSquare
Last week, Robert Scoble wrote a great post about “malleable social graphs” and more broadly about the many different possible uses of location-based services like FourSquare and Gowalla (and more broadly, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and other Web 2.0 sites taking advantage of geo-tagging). This got me thinking about notions of “checking in” to a crime in progress - a...
March 2010
Social Media in Isolation is Useless to...
Umair Haque, the Harvard academic, wrote a post called The Social Media Bubble that advanced the following hypothesis: “Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn’t connecting us as much as we think it is. It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.” This hypothesis is not very original, but it did generate a...
Knowing Your Online Audience (AKA I Don't Need...
Yesterday, I got the following direct message from someone via Twitter: please please don’t use foursquare to update twitter with your location! so annoying to your followers I’m not going to say who it’s from, because I like and respect the person who sent it to me. And clearly we follow each other on Twitter. But what they DM’d me above is 100% wrong. Know your...
No More, No Less: For Business Problems, Social...
Many times, when I hear someone talking about social media, they are merely reciting talking points. Let me say that again, so that the next time you hear someone talking about social media, you hear it differently than you do now. Many times, when I hear someone talking about social media, they are merely reciting talking points. I am forced manytimes to listen to people talk about social...
How Trolls Highlight Your Individual Creativity
Many people like the kinds of things I write and you write and the kind of value that it provides to various online and offline communities. But some people don’t, and that’s fine. Some people disagree with blog posts or the content of people’s talks, and that’s fine too. Some people take it even a step further, sniping in a passive-agressive manner online, in public, or...
Judicious use of @ on Twitter
Lots of people say that Twitter is all about “the conversation.” Well, I think people and organizations can use it in a variety of ways not limited to listening and chatting. However, many people love to be part of conversations, and if that’s what is working for you then keep doing it. Some people, though, converse A LOT. Their entire stream is full of @. @@@. You know the type:...
How Many Social Networks Are You Part Of?
How many social networks are you a part of? It’s an interesting question when you think about it. Did you immediately think of Facebook? Sure, that’s one, and it’s good one. But what about others? Maybe you use Twitter by now and have a network there. Maybe you love LinkedIn for communicating with work-related people. But do you go beyond that? I do. I use (for example)...
Who's Using Government 2.0 Apps?
A recent New York Times story cited a report which revealed that the average iPhone or iPod Touch user only utilizes 5-10 apps on a regular basis. This, despite over 140,000 being available. There is a tremendous app glut. In the Government 2.0 world, it’s popular to develop apps that do something with government data. There have been contests called Apps for Democracy and Apps for America....
DC Will Debut "Digital Capital Week" in June 2010
Today, iStrategyLabs and Shiny Heart Ventures, in partnership with the DC Chief Technology Officer, the DC Office of Planning, and the Washington DC Economic Partnership, announced that they will produce Digital Capital Week in Washington, DC during June 2010. Just like Internet Week NY and similar events, Digital Capital Week will feature a series of distributed events produced and hosted by...
February 2010
Review: Seth Godin's new book "Linchpin"
Read it. Read it this month. Read it before it’s too late to change things. Read it to inspire yourself. Read it under your desk, by flashlight under the covers, in the bathroom, if you need to hide it from the resistance. Read it if you’re in high school, auto school, and grad school. Read it and take notes, don’t take notes, take mental notes. Read it for a new perspective on...
Why "Out Of Office" Email Responses Are Useless
Now that I’m working for a large corporation, I’m reading and sending more emails than ever before. And I’m receiving more auto-responses than ever before, too. Getting an email auto-reponse is sort of like calling someone to let them know you’ll be late. I guess it’s nice to know that you ran into traffic at rush hour, or that you’re having trouble finding...
Should the Federal Government Send Tech...
Last week, the U.S. State Department sent a technology delegation of so-called “dreamboats” to Russia. There’s a good writeup about this at The New York Times. It’s unconventional to have actors and Silicon Valley startup CEOs on a public diplomacy mission, to be sure, but there is some merit in the tactic. Among other reasons, the delegation of non-professional diplomats...
Microstorytelling Overkill and the Conundrum of...
Very recently, the U.S. State Department sent a delegation of staff and tech entrepreneurs (broadly defined) to visit Russia. The delegation included the diversity of State Department maverick Jared Cohen, entertainer and businessman Ashton Kutcher, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and well-respected thought leader Esther Dyson. The delegation seemed important. At one point, Cohen described it as,...
Government 2.0: Roadmaps Are Good, But What...
Not long ago, Google Buzz and the video site ChatRoulette did not exist. Today, they have thrown the social media world into a bit of minor chaos. From criticisms over privacy to excitement over discovery, many people are trying to figure out if they should use them, and if so, how to leverage them to achieve their goals better. Gary Vaynerchuk has a new video about flexibility in business that...
Is Open Government Dangerously Digital?
Yesterday I sat on a great panel about the Open Government Directive and the open government principles of transparency, collaboration, and engagement hosted by Adobe and 1105 Media. I’m particularly interested in how communities are engaged by the government, especially with my new job as a “director of innovative social engagement.” So, as I listened to Robynn Sturm, the...
Must Every Company Employee Engage in...
Last week, a New York Times op-ed criticizing Microsoft’s innovation and creativity sparked discussion on the Web, including a post on Microsoft’s official blog, here. In my view, the big takeaway from the official response was that innovation shouldn’t always be measured merely by speed-to-market (Innovation at Speed), but rather can also be measured by the number of people it...
Why Microsoft? New Video Highlights Philosophical...
Something new is happening at Microsoft. They have something compelling to watch. A new series of messages under the umbrella “Why Microsoft?” is making its way out into the Web. Here’s the first video I’ve seen; it’s three minutes and really interesting. http://www.youtube.com/user/officevideos#p/c/0/rcQs-oS_OrE What I see here, as someone relatively new to...
Social Media Metrics: Count Thank You's, Not...
Many people who work with social media tools, especially managers who have employees working with social media tools, are obsessed with metrics. How will we know if it’s working? How do we measure growth? Measure influence? One of the easiest things to do is count “followers,” “fans,” or some variation on the number of people who click one button and are now...
Posterous Sometimes Spreads Information Too...
I’m a big advocate of the blogging platform Posterous, which I use on a regular basis. It has two really great features that I like a lot. One is that an email platform can be used as the blogging interface; meaning, draft your blog posts with email, and then email them to Posterous and they are posted. Two, your Posterous blog can be automatically tied to other blogs (Tumblr, WordPress,...
Live-Tweeting Events is Dying. What Can Be Done?
Over this past weekend, I watched tweets from the popular Gov 2.0 Camp LA with some interest. I had originally planned on attending in person, but with too much happening on many fronts this month I opted to watch this one from afar (Note: both Microsoft and O’Reilly Media were sponsors of the event), mainly by following the hashtag #Gov20LA on Twitter. I was a bit disappointed in the live...
A Tale of Two Twitters: Why I Started Rocking...
Most people who use Twitter have just one personal account. And that’s fine. But over the almost two years I’ve used Twitter, I have seen some creative uses of more than one personal account. For example, Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post tweets at The Fix and speaks authentically as himself. But when there’s a press conference or something like the State of the Union address, he rapidly...
Why Don't We Have Information.gov Instead of...
The relatively new Federal government website Data.gov has made a lot of waves and gotten many people excited as part of a larger government transparency movement. But who really wants all this data? Primarily, the people I see excited about Data.gov and similar efforts are what I call “tech elites.” Bloggers, evangelists, startup companies, software developers, former CTO’s,...
Does the Public Currently Need to Know What...
Christina Gagnier wrote a post about the Gov 2.0 Camp held in LA this past weekend, focusing on one speaker, Bill Grundfest, the creator of Mad About You. The essence of the post is that Government 2.0 innovators are not using the right language to discuss the topic with their “intended audience, citizens.” He criticizes the amount of jargon used as well. I have two major critiques of...
Is the "Open Government Directive" Engaging...
The initial deadline for Federal agencies to meet the Open Government Directive (OGD) has come and gone, and many of them have checked the necessary boxes to prove that they are more “open” and transparent. They have new websites with new features and some new data that new people can use if they choose. And there’s more new things to come in 2010. But, as I noted in a quote...
People That Want To Meet You But Don't Hustle
Through my online and offline activities, a lot of people have begun to hear about me. Some of them find my blogs useful, maybe they think my tweets are funny, perhaps they were in the audience at an event I spoke at. I really appreciate hearing positive, and even negative, feedback from this audience. One interesting development is that now with me traveling more, with an audience spread all over...
Social Search is an Intelligent Combination of...
There was an article in the New York Times on Friday about a “social” search engine that taps into the social graph to get answers to questions, as opposed to simply pointing you to a website based on keywords. This might be a big part of the future. The social search engine in question is called Aardvark, and it’s really interesting. You have to sign up, like on Facebook or...
January 2010
I Am Not a "Fan" of Your Mundane Life on Facebook
Stop asking me to be a “Fan” of you (who I hardly talk to), your hobbies (which I don’t share with you), or your small business (that I do no business with). I’m not a fan of your mundane life. I’m not even a fan of Vin Diesel, the most popular person on Facebook. Why would I care about your real estate dealings? Not only do I not give a crap about being your...
Microblogging (see: Twitter) Needs to Be...
This morning I woke up to find that Twitter was down. They tell you in a really cute way, with a little “fail whale” - it’s so sweet. But why is this lack of reliability tolerated by governments, large corporations, emergency workers, and other serious people? Mashable.com reports that the best theory for the downtime was a deluge of tweets caused by a second Haiti earthquake. A...
Microblogging (see: Twitter) Needs to Be...
This morning I woke up to find that Twitter was down. They tell you in a really cute way, with a little “fail whale” - it’s so sweet. But why is this lack of reliability tolerated by governments, large corporations, emergency workers, and other serious people? Mashable.com reports that the best theory for the downtime was a deluge of tweets caused by a second Haiti earthquake. A...
How Microsoft Gets Its Cheeky On
Today I’m happy to announce that I’ve taken a full time position as Director of Innovative Social Engagement for Microsoft, in its U.S. Public Sector division that handles federal, state, and local government, education, and healthcare business. I’ll be staying in the DC area (where the division is headquartered) and will still be involved in some other activities, such as...
The "Google Approach" to Open Government at the...
All federal government agencies are currently under pressure to respond on strict timelines to the Open Government Directive (OGD) that recently came down from the Office of Management and Budget. Agencies are directed to take steps to create a more open, transparent, and participatory government. What these steps look like, and the trajectory they take, is still largely open. Recently, I saw one...
Has Social Media Marketing Worked For Kodak?
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Kodak, Jeffrey Hayzlett, is ubiquitous and seemingly knows everyone. Well, on Twitter. He’s always tweeting about where he is and what he’s doing, and he’s become a fixture at something called the “140 Conference,” which celebrates Twitter as a communications method. As somewhat of a joke, I recently commented: “I...
How NBC Can Easily Solve the Jay Leno / Conan...
NBC, in all it’s complete lack of wisdom, moved Jay Leno to 10pm (wrong time), Conan O’Brien into the Tonight Show (wrong fit), and hired Jimmy Fallon (wrong person). Now, its got a problem, namely that Conan is getting beat by David Letterman, and Jay might be out of place where he is slotted, and Jimmy Fallon is about half as funny as an Alec Baldwin voicemail message. So, what to...
Disappointing Disappointment About Vanity Fair's...
Vanity Fair, one of my favorite regular reads, recently published a short article about “America’s Tweethearts” - young women who have a lot of followers on Twitter…and are not coincidentally very attractive. Not that they’re popular only because they’re attractive - they are some talented people (I know about half of them personally, and adore and respect them)...