ION Digital

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…)

I knew I would struggle when I started blogging a few years ago. I blame my years of journalism work. Sentences had to be carefully crafted, and words chosen carefully. My first editor at BusinessWeek told me, “Magazine real estate is precious. Use it wisely.”

Now we live in a new world that is no longer shaped by printing presses and information scarcity. Yet everyday I see companies that make these mistakes: they want to launch the perfect blog, create the polished video, craft the right message.

They are suffering from the curse of the corporate perfectionist. (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…)

Twitter continues to explode in popularity. One estimate has it growing 752% in 2008, hitting 4.3 million unique visitors in December.  It picked up more than 1 million unique visitors in December alone,and by all accounts, the growth is continuing, and possibly accelerating. I’m working on a couple of pieces about Twitter for business users,  but wanted to share some of the cool posts I came across in January–my favorites– and some useful tools.