Do you remember which ones were your favorite books in school? Were there any? Kidding aside, were they the ones filled with facts? Was there a particular subject matter that interested you? What was it about it that grabbed - and retained - your attention? Was it the writing? Perhaps the visuals? N...

H+ is a new quarterly magazine available in PDF format, and in digital version. [hat tip to Barry Ritholtz and Chris Grayson] It covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing — and will change — human beings in fundamental ways. The magazine seems to be following up on ...

Wednesday we got together with a group of amazing professionals to breathe new life into the social network that was formerly known as Company of Friends (CoF). Some of you may have seen the tweets about the breakfast invitation. We pulled it together in a few minutes. I sent the note to the group, ...

Does sponsored content suspend credibility in your eyes? Before you answer that, let's take a look at the issues. In the spirit of full disclosure - I received the draft report for review directly from Forrester. Since both Josh Bernoff and Jeremiah Owyang are analysts I read, follow, and quote, I r...

We're now in what I am starting to call the perfect storm for social media. On one side we have lots of very smart and accomplished professionals who are and have been using these tools to network, learn, and some to market themselves successfully to new jobs and careers. On the other we have many c...

Twitter can be a pretty daunting place. Now that it has become somewhat known and a celebrity in its own right, other celebrities want to associate themselves with it. Many companies and brands are now on Twitter as well. Having a Twitter account may be all the rage, however there is something to be...

One of the secrets to becoming successful at anything in life is persistence. We can all work hard for a while. Head down, putting in long hours with an eye to an end goal. Why is the goal important? Because in order for us to visualize getting there, we need to know where we're going. Setting goals...

Who would you select? I was reading this article on CNet News about ex-googlers working on stealth social search [hat tip Charlene Li] and was thinking about all the innovation we have seen in my neck of the woods from ex-DuPont teams.  In the article, Max Ventilla, a former business development ma...

[ Failure: the Secret to success, 8:19"] I'd like to try something different today, maybe it's because I've been spending more time on FriendFeed and Twitter. I'd love it if you did most of the talking here - I know we will all get ideas for follow up projects that way. Many of you reading have been...

There are actually many that work in concert, but two stand out. According to Matt Pace at Compete.com, they are the company's dedication to customer service and its masterful use of consumers’ browsing and purchase data to tailor the site for each visitor. [hat tip to Jeffrey Eisenberg] In fact, ...