Google Kills Wave
Last week, Google quietly announced in its blog that it was killing Google Wave—a product launched in May 2009 with much fanfare. Wave was supposed to be the best of a new breed of collaborative tools, combining e-mail, instant messaging, and document sharing, but users didn’t embrace it. So where did Google go wrong? Host […]
Net Neutrality Is Critical For Innovation
Image via Wikipedia I am glad to see the net neutrality debate raging. As Union Square Ventures and on our personal blogs (AVC, Continuations) we have long been proponents of net neutrality (the USV link is from 2006!). Our own bias here is clear: we are pro-startup and pro-innovation. Both are of course essential to […]
How Wheat Thins Mined Twitter to Surprise Fans
The best path to the heart is still the stomach, and Nabisco apparently knows it. The company recently began mining Twitter to find customers who love its Wheat Thins crackers and give a lucky few of them the surprise of their lives. Here’s how the company and its agency of choice Escape Pod executed the […]
Eight Success Criteria for Facebook Marketing
Facebook marketing seems to be somewhat of an enigma when it comes to businesses wanting to use it to reach out to their customers. Not surprising, there are plenty of pundits out there with blog posts and commentary that focus on how you and your business should execute a Facebook marketing strategy and most social […]
3 Trends That Will Shape CRM Evolution in the Year to Come
Many businesses are reluctant to take the social CRM leap without the ability to measure its impact on their revenues and ROI. This hesitancy is giving the analytics side of the equation a chance to catch up. It doesn’t hurt that some of the significant voices in the space are strongly advocating the development of […]
Influence is Bliss: The Gender Divide of Influence on Twitter
Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet 10 years ago comScore reported that the number of women on the Web in the U.S. had surpassed the number of men. In 2010 comScore still finds that women are the digital mainstream and social networking is central to their online experience. In celebration of […]
Facebook Success Summit 2010: The Web's Largest Online Facebook Marketing Conference Oct 5 – 26th
Facebook Success Summit 2010 is a live online conference designed to help you master Facebook marketing, empowering you to quickly connect with customers (and prospects) using the #1 social network in the world, Facebook. The industry’s leading Facebook pros will show you how. Join 22 experts, including Brian Solis (author, Engage!), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Justin Smith […]
Facebook Success Summit 2010: The Web's Largest Online Facebook Marketing Conference Oct 5 – 26th
Facebook Success Summit 2010 is a live online conference designed to help you master Facebook marketing, empowering you to quickly connect with customers (and prospects) using the #1 social network in the world, Facebook. The industry’s leading Facebook pros will show you how. Join 22 experts, including Brian Solis (author, Engage!), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Justin Smith […]
Dealing With Employees Who Are Social Media Celebrities
One of the big promises of social media is that literally anyone can become a celebrity now because of cheap and easy access to social media tools. We all have a shot at our 15 megabytes of fame if we can create compelling content. But what are the implications for businesses that get serious about […]
Cloud Funding Offers More than Pennies from Heaven
In the age of social networking, if you need money for an art project or for a new business, friending could also mean funding. Chris Young wanted to shoot a feature film presentation. The plot: dude’s car breaks down in the desert, no mobile signal, not a soul in sight. Parched, our hero stumbles into […]
Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr
By now, plenty of traditional media companies have hopped on the social media bandwagon, pumping out news updates on Facebook and Twitter. But do those companies have the time and resources to work yet another Web outlet into their daily routine? Mark Coatney certainly hopes so. Mr. Coatney, a 43-year-old journalist, is the latest hire at […]
'New York Times' Bans the Word 'Tweet'
Phil Corbett, the latest standards editor at the Times (maybe the greatest job in the world?), has issued a proclamation! Yesterday, the following memo went out, asking writers to abstain from the invented past-tense and other weird iterations of the magical noun-verb “Twitter.” His case isn’t terrible, actually—and he offers this terrifying vision: “Someday, ‘tweet’ […]