ION Digital

Volumes have now been written about Steve Jobs and his monumental achievements and contributions to the business and consumer world. Paradoxically, though, it’s what he “left out” that helped shape so much of his success before he died October 5th.

Jobs had an uncanny ability to define the essential elements of anything-and ruthlessly cut everything else out. The result would be a long string of artistic masterpieces: the Apple logo, the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. Compare it to the typical hardware product like a Windows-based PC, usually loaded with features we don’t need. Simplicity and elegance vs complexity and baggage.

“That was the essence of Jobs’ unique genius — understanding that absence defines presence; that the only path to the great new things of the future was the merciless elimination of the good old things of the past,” Jeff Yang writes in a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal. (more…)

Every day I marvel at the tidal wave of postings, news, comments and observations about social media. Out of this stream I handpicked a few samples of blogs this month I thought were particularly good, either because they provided useful tips, insights, or understanding—or I just liked them for other reasons. So this is far from a scientific sampling but a great array of postings by any measure.  I also threw in some misc favorite articles and blogs, such as one looking at Apple in a post-Jobs world.

My next piece will focus on my favorite postings about Twitter, a platform that is exploding in popularity. 

Social Media

• Obama’s social media toolkit and strategy (Edelman)
• Why companies should embrace social media, the good, the bad and the ugly (w/ an example of the ugly) (more…)