Forget shiny object syndrome. Does the widespread adoption of social media mean that companies are doing business in a better way by listening more closely and interacting with customers? 

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is well known for delivering (aka selling) customer happiness as opposed to shoes or other apparel. In other words, the reason you shop online at Zappos.com is because the customer service is so extraordinary and the process of

Get ready for some snark. When I watched Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s live streamed announcement of Facebook Messages this week I was struck by a couple of things: his presumptuousness, the insular feeling of the event and his lack of speaking ability. First, his presumptuousness: "Talking with high schoolers makes me feel really old," he told the audience in a San Francisco hotel. Tell me about it. Blogging about 26-year-olds

I love the title of Clay Shirky‘s new book: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. What a marvelous phrase, cognitive surplus. It suggests that there is a basic reservoir of cognitive ability in all of us. And now, in our hyperconnected age fueled by social media, there is a surplus. Interestingly, however, while the digerati prattle away on blogs, Twitter and Facebook, it turns out that more than half of

I’ve started blogging for the Huffington Post. Here’s how my first piece starts: The only thing bigger than the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of BP’s public relations disaster. Just as BP can’t control the oil spill as it seeps further and further, nor can they control what the public is saying. Just to be clear, control is the operative word. >> More

Had the pleasure of a brief chat with Chinese media and Internet professor Qin Lu about the state of social media in both the U.S. and China. We met for a quick coffee at Baked and Wired yesterday after her trip to the FCC to learn about the National Broadband Plan and before her planned visit today to the Washington Post. Dr. Lu told me that "social media [in China] is very popular among business and also academics who are studying