Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 391

An Open (And Closed) Case For Business In A Digital World

Can a business culture be both open and closed?

WikiLeaks scared everybody last week. How is it possible that one individual can become a whistleblower by uploading thousands of documents to a website that anyone can have access to, and one from which the individual doing the uploading cannot be traced? In the good old days (about four years ago, when WikiLeaks didn't exist), if someone wanted to be a whistleblower, it was a very complex and dangerous process that not only put the employee a...

Blogging Still Matters... Now More Than Ever

Blogging is (still) one of the most powerful Marketing tools. Ever. Period. Hard stop.

On November 28th, 2009, I had a Blog post titled, Start A Blog Today, that focused on an amazing video interview of Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence, Re-Imagine, The Little Big Things, etc...) and Seth Godin (Purple Cow, Tribes, Linchpin, etc...) talking about why Blogging matters and why you need to start writing a Blog now: American Express - Open Forum - Let's Hear It For The Blog.

It's 2010, and...

Digital Storyteller

The concept of transmedia and Digital Storytelling is the new Social Media.

You can't throw a Digital Marketing Strategist without hearing the words "transmedia" or "digital storytelling" before they plunk against the ground. It's an exciting time to be in Marketing, Communications and Media. It's no longer just about the big idea in advertising (more on that here: Maybe It Is Time For Marketing To Move Away From "The Big Idea"). As Henry Jenkins explained so beautifully in the brilliant...

The Internet As Your Birthright

As much as democracy and the right to a fair trial, so too is connectivity and access to the Internet.

The news item titled, Finland makes 1Mb broadband access a legal right, from Cnet was published on October 14th, 2009. Check this out: "France, one of a few countries that has made Internet access a human right, did so earlier this year. France's Constitutional Council ruled that Internet access is a basic human right. That said, it stopped short of making 'broadband access' a legal right...

Debating Old Spice, New Media And Old Media With Joseph Jaffe

Episode #213 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Joseph Jaffe is widely regarded as one of the top Marketing Bloggers (Jaffe Juice) and Podcasters (both Jaffe Juice in audio and Jaffe Juice TV in video). He is the author of three excellent books (Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation and the newly minted, Flip The Funnel). Along with that, he is currently one of the chiefs over at the Social Media Marketing...

What You Can Do

Do you realize the power you wield in the palms of your hands?

I was just watching the documentary channel. The movie was ok (definitely not Academy Award winning material), but every piece of video footage, all of the audio tracking and even the details of the journey (which were documented on a Blog) were happening with the power of a couple of  Apple MacBook Pros. The other day, I saw some tweets from someone complaining that there was not enough diversity at an upcoming conference...

Product Is The New Marketing

Brands can't hide any more. If you're reading this Blog , you already knew that.

Last night Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of Amazon) was on Charlie Rose to discuss the latest iteration of the e-book reader, Kindle (if you're interested in watching the online video of the conversation, you have to click around on the Charlie Rose website to find it). While reading Bob Lefsetz tonight, I came across this quote that Bezos said to Rose during the conversation:

"Before if you were making a...

On Being A Curmudgeon

When has a curmudgeon ever really done well in Marketing?

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and especially Blogs have a very magical way of bringing those who are a curmudgeon right out into the open. The definition of a curmudgeon is someone who is "bad-tempered, difficult and a cantankerous person." It's not someone who has the occasional "this sucks!" post, and it's not someone who creates content in a passive-aggressive fashion. The amazing thing about those who are curmudgeons is that they...

The Goods On Virtual Goods

While scaling and monetizing e-commerce is still an issue for many of the top retailers in the world, those merchants should also keep an eye out on virtual goods.

News came down this week that the Executive Director of Shop.org, Scott Silverman (a close friend of the Six Pixels of Separation and Twist Image community), was leaving the organization to join a start-up focused on virtual goods (more news on that here: DM News - Shop.org executive Silverman resigns to found startup). While...

The Next Big Thing Online Could Well Be Anonymity

With more and more people adding more and more personal stuff about themselves online, it's fascinating to think that the next big thing in the online world could well be anonymity.

While it's easy to take a contrarian view of Social Media, Digital Marketing and the trends that are currently underway (and this includes everything from Facebook passing 500 million users to the growing popularity of location-aware platforms like Foursquare), it's important to remember that a lot of what made t...