In today’s digital age, the world is fast evolving into a large global attention economy. Whether it’s an individual or a business, the kind of influence you have on others gains paramount importance. So, how do you determine what kind of influence you have on others? While there are services such as Klout which provide a good indication of your level of influence, it is largely based on your social media influence only. Last week, I posted a video about the 3 rules of engagement in the attenti...  show all text

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Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea. More »

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General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook after determining its paid ads had little impact on consumers. The news comes just days ahead of Facebook's IPO.

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Learn why marketers must segment their lists before sending email to have a successful email marketing program.

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I don't think winners beat the competition because they work harder. And it's not even clear that they win because they have more creativity. The secret, I think, is in understanding what matters. It's not obvious, and it changes. It changes by culture, by buyer, by product and even by the day of the week. But those that manage to capture the imagination, make sales and grow are doing it by perfecting the things that matter and ignoring the rest. Both parts are difficult, particularly when you ...  show all text

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Quora co-founders Charlie Cheever & Adam D’Angelo @ Crunchies 2010 Quora, a Palo Alto-based knowledge (read: Q&A) community has raised a whopping $50 million in Series B funding from co-founder Adam D’Angelo along with Facebook early funder Peter Thiel, Northbridge Ventures and Matrix Ventures. D’Angelo, who was chief technology officer of Facebook, has put $20 million of his own money (big props for that) in Quora while others chipped in the rest.  D’Angelo co-founded the company with Charlie ...  show all text

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Starting today, you can discover the best of Twitter in a weekly email digest delivered to your inbox. This summary features the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter. Stories feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, emphasizing who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you. Click any headline to finish reading the story, add your take by tweeting directly from the email, and see rel...  show all text

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An ode to the father of the electric age. View

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More than nine million apps and services use Facebook Connect, the Open Graph developer platform, which gives company powers to predict the future. It can turn on the traffic spigot for some apps such as Socialcam. But it can turn off the spigot, equally fast.

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Need something to put things into perspective on a Monday morning? Our suggestion: The largest single-shot photo of Earth ever taken. Eclipsing NASA’s updated “Blue Marble” shot, which is a composite of many satellite images, this image is a single-shot taken from 22,369 miles away by Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1. The colors on the 121-megapixel photo are quite different from the ones on NASA’s photos of Earth. To capture the image, the satellite combines visible and infrared wavele...  show all text

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Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

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Tweet Using Twitter professionally for the past 3 years, I’ve seen my share of contests that were organized by both the bigger brands and smaller businesses.In fact, if you were to search with the phrase ‘RT to win’ on Twitter, you’ll find many interesting contests being held on a daily basis. A Twitter contest is not only a great way to build buzz and increase brand engagement, but it also generates new followers and grows your brand presence. There are even some who would suggest that Twit...  show all text

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For an author, one of the nicest parts of the traditional book is the dedication page. The dedication is far more than an acknowledgement to someone who helped you write the book, it's a permanent signpost, a capstone to the work of a year or more. Even if the person you've dedicated the book to can't read it, the writer benefits from the knowledge that a connection was made and that a memory was preserved. Here's the thing: you can dedicate just about anything. A project, a meeting, a tweet. Y...  show all text

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Facebook’s founder will soon face the unfamiliar landscape of running a public company, monitored by a merciless stock market.

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All those minutes reading your news feed in bed, messaging friends over lunch, and browsing photos on the bus really add up. Time spent on Facebook’s mobile site and apps per month (441 minutes) has finally surpassed usage of its classic website (391 minutes) — for Americans who use both Facebook interfaces according to the latest report from comScore. And that’s actually a big problem for the social network. Facebook usually shows four to seven ads per page on its website, but only a few ads p...  show all text

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"Over there, by the fire, is that a stick or a snake?" It turns out that humans have been naming things for a long time. If we know that this is a cheetah, or a grapefruit, we can make intelligent decisions on how to deal with it. Lately, though, we've been naming more than things. Now we classify ideas and opportunities as well. Getting smart about naming is at the heart of marketing. Calling every single person a 'customer', for example, is hardly a nuanced way of engaging with the public. Sa...  show all text

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The Floppy Disk Icon means "save" for a whole generation of people who have never seen one. — Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) May 9, 2012 What happens when all the things we based are icons on don't exist anymore? Do they just become, ahem, iconic glyphs whose origins are shrouded in mystery? Floppy Disk - Save Save? Save where? You know, down there. Adding the Arrow to the 3.5" floppy makes me smile. Is it pointing to under my desk? What's a floppy? Why not a USB key? Maybe a cloud icon? That wi...  show all text

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Many have lamented the time wasted on Facebook by a "generation of eye-rollers." But social media is empowering millennials in surprising ways.

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The first step is to stop Googling things like, "how to make money online." Not because you shouldn't want to make money online, but because the stuff you're going to find by doing that is going to help you lose money online. Sort of like asking a casino owner how to make money in Vegas... Don't pay anyone for simple and proven instructions on how to achieve this goal. In particular, don't pay anyone to teach you how to write or sell manuals or ebooks about how to make money online. Get rich sl...  show all text

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We weren’t sure about this one at first, but now we have two independent sources confirming that AOL is exploring the sale of its cornerstone technology sites Engadget and TechCrunch. The two would likely be sold together as AOL Tech, possibly including smaller assets like TUAW and Joystiq. The asking price? A hefty $70 million to $100 million. AOL is hoping to make something off the drama of the past couple of years: $70 million would net the struggling Internet company about $10 million profit  show all text

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Mark Schaefer teaches marketing at Rutgers University, blogs at {grow}, and is the author of the new book, Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring and Influence Marketing. Love it or hate it, Klout and the social-scoring trend are hot. And there’s a lot that’s still unknown about the company that Fast Company just recognized as one of the most innovative in the world. While researching and writing my book on Klout, I had exclusive access to the inner workings of t...  show all text

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I had the great privilege of seeing Yo-Yo Ma perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this weekend at spectacular Symphony Hall. He was, quite simply, phenomenal. When he plays his stunning cello, passion exudes from his entire energy field. You can’t help but be riveted while watching him. And while the applause at the end of his performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B Minor was loud, the most thunderous applause came when he did something else: he ran around the stage giving bear hugs ...  show all text

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Are you annoyed by all those automatic Facebook news apps? Apparently you're not alone. They're falling off a cliff right now. The Washington Post was the first publication to experiment with a "frictionless" social reader app, which launched last year. If you use Facebook you've probably come across it: it manifests as a clustered list of stories that are almost completely unrelated except for the fact that they all come from the same publication. If you decide to click on a link it doesn't ...  show all text

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Have you ever left a comment on a blog? How do you feel when the author replies? As we’re all ushered into this age of social media, each and every one of us is looking for ways to form stronger relationships with our audience, especially with current and potential customers. There are many ways to discuss how to cultivate and build relationships. I want to focus on blog comments—an often poorly understood and very underutilized tactic by individuals and businesses. Focus on your blog comment...  show all text

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The start-up scene is on fire, but a few stand out from the crowd.

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Mallory Kievman is launching a potentially lucrative and widely beneficial company... oh, and applying to high school

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"Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future". - T A Sachs I've always been a firm believer that in order to look to the future, we must look back to and fully grasp the past (and the present). Having had several recent engaging conversations with smart people who I respect, I've picked up a hint of exhaustion around usage of the word "social". Could it be that some who saw the "change" coming years ago are weary of having carried that torch for so many years as we move into the heavy lifting?  show all text

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At the local gym, it's not unusual to see hardcore members contorting themselves to fool the stairmaster machine into giving them good numbers. If you use your arms, you can lift yourself off the machine and trick it into thinking you're working yourself really hard. Of course, you end up with cramped shoulders and a lousy workout, but who cares, the machine said you burned 600 calories... The same thing happens with authors who put themselves and their readers through the wringer to get a spot...  show all text

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