Now we know why Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has starting updating his blog again after a long hiatus between posts:  he’s been gearing up to defend himself from the revelation that on several occasions he tried to drive down the stock price of his smaller rival Wild Oats by leaving unflattering pseudononymous comments on online investor forums.  Whole Foods has since acquired Wild Oats. 
Both […]

The kerfluffle over Federated Media’s hamfisted attempt to obscure the line between advertising and editorial is neither trival, as Michael Arrington suggests, or some kind of of noble experiment in bringing advertisers “into the conversation,” as John Batelle would have it in his downright laughable defense of the practice.  All successful news publications, online and off, develop a […]

The debate about whether the punishment truly fits in the crime in the case of a now former shock jock who has raised more than $100 million for childrens charities and the subsidiary argument about exactly who gets to sit in judgement on whom is likely to go on for awhile but there is certainly one thing we […]

For those of you who are interested in the enterprise possibilities of blogs, wikis and other forms of interactive media, my other web site–Social Media Today–is hosting  the first of our web-based colloquiums: Using Social Media to Buzz Your Brand, next Tuesday, February 27 at 11 am Eastern, 8 am Pacific.The format will be a roundtable, and […]

An awful lot of social software vendors operate under the old field of dreams theory that “if you build it, they will come.”  Because they are often strapped for cash and have put everything they have into development, there is generally no budget for marketing, advertising, and PR. They depend almost entirely upon word of mouth–blogs and demos and meeting people […]

Google has just added its re-designed (or shall we say, “un-designed”) Writely word processor to its online spreadsheet offering and renamed  the package Google Docs & Speadsheets.  Is this the end of Microsoft Office?  Not a chance.  Will it be a threat to Microsoft someday?  You bet your ass. 
As is its style, Google has stripped away […]

The always forward-thinking Gabe Rivera, creator of Memeorandum and its theme focused clones, has created a clever new kind of advertising for TechMeme.  Basically, he’s offering three sponsors a month the chance to have about 40 words or so of the latest posts from their blogs, plus a logo and a link to full blog entry, appear in a special sponsorship […]

Can the cowboys and the farmers really be friends?  It’s an old question that cuts to the heart of the current ideological struggle between those who believe the internet derives its power and usefulness from the fact that it is an open range commons that belongs to nobody and those who think there ought to be fenced properties.
In […]

Speculation about Apple’s highly-hyped “It’s Showtime” marketing event tomorrow is running about as feverish as a third-grade classroom during a chicken pox epidemic.  Everyone agrees that a download distribution deal with Disney will be announced and probably a larger capacity video iPod, but after a rather lackluster performance at the last Apple hoopla a couple of months ago and the lingering […]

In the high lonesome county in West Virginia where I grew up in the 50s and early 60s, the arrival by mail of the Sears-Roebuck catalog always made for an exciting day.  The “wish book,” as everybody called it, arrived in big fat Fall and Spring editions as well as the always over-stimulating Christmas version.  For those of us who lived 15-20 […]