When you see a business magazine story about blogs with the title “Attack of The Blogs!,” you should know what to expect. A cover story in the latest edition of Forbes magazine doesn’t disappoint as this paragraph indicates: […] Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. […]
Category: Business
Podcast interview with Forbes
An interesting follow-up to the Forbes shallow journalism story (my unrepentant description) yesterday which described how the magazine portrayed blogs and bloggers as the source of all evil. In a comment yesterday to Steve Rubel’s critical post, podcaster John Furrier says he’s interviewing Forbes’ proprietor Steve Forbes about the benefits of social media: On Monday […]
TypePad and the art of patience
Probably similar to every TypePad customer, I received an email over the weekend from Six Apart CEO Barak Berkowitz with more commentary on what Six Apart is doing to sort out the service issues arising from TypePad’s growing pains. It’s good communication to customers and does give you a better sense of the scale of […]
Dell’s hell as earnings fall short
ZDNet: Dell announced on Monday that third-quarter revenue will fall well short of expectations due to sluggish consumer sales and a faulty component in its OptiPlex desktop PC. […] The leader in computer manufacturing blames its shortfall partially on sluggish consumer sales in the U.S. and U.K. […] Dell fell into similar territory in [the […]
The alliance is dead… Long live the alliance
While the metaphorical headline to this post might seem a little melodramatic, it’s actually quite apt as it sums up how I see the future following the decision by Guillaume du Gardier, Elizabeth Albrycht and me to dissolve Blogging Planet, the informal alliance we formed together last March. With Guillaume being snapped up by Edelman […]
The characteristics of a great employer
A terrific feature in the Financial Times on what makes a company a consistently great employer uses US companies such as AG Edwards, Goldman Sachs, Nordstrom, SC Johnson, Whole Foods Market, Cisco Systems and Microsoft as their classic examples of such great employers. And what makes a great employer? With frequent reference to Built to […]
A bit of Web 2.0 from Microsoft
I haven’t yet absorbed all the information about Microsoft’s introduction of Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live yesterday, although I have read the press release plus scanned a few tech-focused articles this morning via Memeorandum. A good (ie, easiest for me to understand) news report I read was this one from Dan Farber at ZDNet: […]
Updated list of European corporate blogs
Fredrik Wacka, who writes the popular CorporateBloggingInfo blog, updated his list of European corporate blogs last week. The updated list includes blogs by organizations in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and UK. This is a very useful resource, complementary to the strongly US-focused list […]
Unsettling FT feature on blogs and business
Oh dear. The Financial Times nearly "did a Forbes" with a feature story on Friday about blogs and business. Using the headline Who’s afraid of the big, bad blog?, writer Kevin Allison starts out saying: […] Weblogs, or blogs, are the periodic rants and raves of millions of hobbyists and armchair pundits, who take advantage […]
Email might still be king but RSS is the heir
BBC News: Tesco is bombarding UK consumers with a massive e-mail marketing campaign. Way ahead of its supermarket rivals, it issued 44 separate e-mail campaigns last month, more than Sainsbury, Asda, Waitrose and Somerfield put together. According to e-mail marketing firm Interactive Prospect Targeting Services, Tesco is blitzing the nation with 16-20 million e-mails per […]
TypePad customers get an offer that’s hard to refuse
As many TypePad users know, the hosted blog service has been a literal nightmare to use in recent months. I’ve posted my frustrations about it as have many other TypePad users. There’s even one blogger who started a blog (on Blogger) last week on filing a class action lawsuit against Six Apart. No takers yet […]
Hoodwinking the marketers
Thanks to executive blogs and internet video, the dark ages are back, according to an article in The Independent yesterday. In a rant that displays an embarrassing lack of awareness and understanding of the changes in how relationships with customers and others are emerging, Stefano Hatfield uses GM vice chairman Bob Lutz and the GM […]
The importance of continuity of personal presence
A good friend of mine in the UK has just left the big manufacturing company he’s been with for over 15 years and is now facing the Herculean task of quickly building and establishing his own identity. Two key starting points – a new email address (he had a personal Hotmail account but everyone knows […]
Sony’s rootkit woes tip of the reputation iceberg
Mainstream music publisher Sony BMG is getting hammered left, right and center as fall-out continues over Sony’s rootkit debacle. The rootkit in question was a spyware-like application encoded onto certain copy-protected music CDs that Sony sold in the US and which did some “ET phone home” type of activities from your computer without you knowing […]
Extending RSS far beyond just delivery
Two extremely interesting and related pieces of information about RSS have come out in the past 24 hours. First, “How feeds will change the way content is distributed, valued and consumed,” an 8-page PDF report from FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo. There is quite a bit of technically-focused information in Dick’s report, much of which goes […]
‘Blog Marketing’ is out now
A big package arrived in the post today from McGraw-Hill – a copy of Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright. I’ve talked to Jeremy quite a bit about his book during his preparation of it, and we discussed the book during the For Immediate Release podcast interview I did with Jeremy in August. So I sort […]
Biz-Tech-News: Headlines 23-Nov-05
Amazon Launches Product Wikis Attention Movable Type Developers Blinx delivers legendary university speeches French Interior Minister reads (and comments on) blogs Google Analytics makes site owners illegal Google Base Goes Live GourmetStation: A Case Study of Damage Control in the Blogosphere IKEA Brand Evangelists Take to the Blogosphere Knowledge Work Needs Social Software Les Blogs […]
FIR Book Review: “Naked Conversations”
In this edition of For Immediate Release book reviews, Neville and Shel discuss "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers," the new book on blogging and businesses by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, to be published in January 2006. The Book: "With a foreword by Tom Peters, author of such […]
The evolution of trust as led by Amazon
Daily Telegraph: A record number of Britons, fed up with the crush, bustle and hassle of the high street, will do their Christmas shopping online this month, according to new figures. Internet stores are expected to take at least £5 billion, a rise of 45 per cent on last year. The growth has been fuelled […]
NevOn joins Corante Network
I am delighted to report that NevOn – this blog – is a participant in the Corante Marketing Hub, part of the new Corante Network that launched today: With the launch and development of the Corante Network, Corante has partnered with scores of the blogosphere’s most respected thinkers and writers in specific categories to bring […]