Exactly 50 years ago Marilyn Monroe was discovered dead in what is a probably suicide (but might have been an accidental overdose). Our love affair with her since that time has only grown, creating that difficult to define status of a cultural Icon.
Facebook has had its share of problems of late. Adding to the concerns of falling revenues, click fraud and miscommunication with customers that amount to a shake down, Facebook now has to content with Fake profiles that amount to almost 10% of the network.
Without a doubt Twitter has become synonymous with social media. The platform was the darling of the Press when the Arab Spring broke out. It has become the principle means of getting out real-time information on disasters which range from acts of God to acts of Man and it even stood up to the might of the US government when it refused to hand over sensitive information regarding Wikileaks. So why is it now in hot water over its ethics?
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is sailing into uncharted waters with the 2012 Olympic Games scheduled to be the first social media Games in history. While the explosion of social media platforms and the use of social networks by smartphone owners this is a great opportunity to see just what the impact social media will have on a sporting event which is as high-profile as this one and, at the same time, see first-hand how the IOC will cope with the challenge social media poses to its command-and-control structure.
The web is at its best when it disrupts traditional divides, breaks down barriers and creates a level playing field. It achieved this for business, brought in ecommerce, and did it for communication. In each case we saw, online auction places and start up hothouses, commercial websites and social media platforms, spring up and add to the mix.
Anyone who has seen the film Mutiny on the Bounty, realises just how important the role of the captain is on a ship. He sets the tone and pace, maintains a semblance of order and steers the ship by dint of presence through stormy waters.
This year I’ve spent four out of seven months away from home and travelling for business. Over the course of those four months I gave workshops, talks and seminars on social media and SEO to business groups and entrepreneurs in countries as diverse as Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic and Greece. I became an expert on local food, picked up how to say ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’ in a handful of new languages and managed to stay sane by cutting through the usual airport, hotel, and new environment, disasters which pile up the pressure just when you least want it to.
Few companies today manage to inspire passion the way Apple does. It appears that hardly a day goes by without the company and its practices making headlines somewhere. This leads to a ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ kind of approach and they are both wrong. While we may choose to love (as well as hate) a company, it is an emotive response which has little to do with what the company does and a whole lot with how it makes us feel.
At the beginning of this week I found myself in Prague. The occasion was a week-long, regional mini-MBA seminar operated by Rutgers University where I was presenting on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Crisis Management.
In the middle of last month I found myself in a corporate environment like the one I used to think was the norm in the earlier stages of my life. Magnolia corridors, anti-static hall carpets and double-glazed floor to ceiling windows populated by men and women in suits, carrying folders with notes.
