ION Digital

Reading Twitterville, it’s easy to get the feeling that I’m back in my home state of Texas, surrounded by friendly neighbors, family and loved ones.  Sort of a small town feel, where people leave their doors unlocked and even strangers welcome you warmly.

Some readers may challenge this description—isn’t Twitter a wild west environment, a raging river of commentary, observations and random chitchat?

But by framing it this way—as a “place” we can relate to—author Shel Israel set the stage for what turns out to be an engaging page-turner. (more…)

Q: Why did you write this book? What possessed you?

A: In April 2008, James Buck posted a single-word tweet “arrested.” He was being taken to an Egyptian jail. Because of that post he would be released and sent home in about a day. It blew me away and I posted someone should write a book about the incident. Someone tweeted back, “how about you?” That started a process that became Twitterville. So the credit goes to either James Buck or the Egyptian police, depending on how you look at it.

Q: What was different about writing Twitterville vs  Naked Conversations (ex: completely unchartered territory back then, easier/harder to write?) (more…)

The news that BusinessWeek is now up for sale puts to rest any doubt that traditional publications are in a death spiral. This may  be old news to my counterparts in Silicon Valley, who have been writing off “traditional publications” for years. But I always felt there would always be a handful of business publication stalwarts—BW, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, etc—that would resist the tide, somehow survive, even thrive again one day.

Now I’m not so sure, and the future of another big name publication–and the lives of 190 BW editors–is in limbo.  (more…)

This week’s Inbound Marketing Summit provided a nice display of some of the best thinking on social media on the planet. They were preaching to the choir here, folks who believe the social media movement is long overdue.  So you didn’t get a lot of contention or debate. What you did get was some exhilarating ideas, strategies, tips and techniques.

Many of the sessions were only 20 minutes so speakers had to blaze through their material, but most pulled it off smoothly. It was an interesting mix of consultants, web types, businesspeople, freelancers, former journalists, marketing and PR people and others that I couldn’t quite categorize (I met two people out of work; jobless, well might as well hang out with the social media crowd).
The conference ended the second day as strong as it began, with Louis Gray providing tools to deal with the information overload and Tim O’Reilly giving a spirited speech based on “creating more value than you capture.” Along the way hosts Chris Brogan and Justin Levy kept the trains running on time and the mood upbeat.There were too many great sessions to cover all of them  but here’s a sampling of key takeaways for me. (more…)

photo by Sean Dreilinger

Pretend you’re a speaker approaching the stage at a big conference. As you walk up to the stage, you notice two big screens–one for your Powerpoint presentation, the other for Twitter.

Guess what? You’ve got company. Your audience will be joining you on stage, tweeting about your presentation.

Public speaking is nerve wracking enough. Now speakers will get to deal with Twitter and a new era of “participatory” presentations. Right now the “Twitter factor”  in speeches is microscopic, mainly confined to a scattering of techie conferences. But it’s coming.

As usual, it’s starting with the tech savvy types who are itching to join what they see as a public “conversation.”   The more voices, the merrier (see a recent post in the Pistachio blog). Corporate speakers cringe; they see a public brawl coming. (more…)