I will admit, I was entirely biased upon reading this story from Nick Carr, who has a knack for writing pieces that get a lot of attention by baiting his hook with contrarian link chum. Heck, he's really good at it, and I have a lot of respect for…
I will admit, I was entirely biased upon reading this story from Nick Carr, who has a knack for writing pieces that get a lot of attention by baiting his hook with contrarian link chum. Heck, he’s really good at it, and I have a lot of respect for Nick. So I’ll take the bait.
His piece starts by conjuring HAL, the famous AI which manipulates humans, then makes his case by citing his own “feeling” that Google has changed his attention span to somehow prove that search and web browsing in general is making us stupid.
Balderdash. What Carr is really saying is this: People are not reading long narrative anymore, and that makes me and my pals sad. So let’s blame the Internet!
As you might recall, I am writing over at the American Express Open Forum Blog as part of a sponsorship. Here's my latest post, on becoming a web conversationalist….
My director of events, Stacey Foreman, tells me we have exactly 25 tickets left for the CM Summit in NYC. Now, we are only letting 350 folks in, and we've been selling about 20 tickets a day over the past week. So…while I am inclined to push the fire…
My director of events, Stacey Foreman, tells me we have exactly 25 tickets left for the CM Summit in NYC. Now, we are only letting 350 folks in, and we’ve been selling about 20 tickets a day over the past week. So…while I am inclined to push the fire marshal’s tolerance, Stacey is not. If you want a ticket, I’d suggest you go for it asap. I’m really excited not only by the lineup, but by the chance to gather in an intimate environment and really contemplate some of the bigger issues facing the marketing world in the age of conversational media. It’s going to be really, really fun.
My partners at Web 2 told me today that the new website is live, the initial theme is up and posted (I am very excited about this year's theme) and if you haven't gone before, you can request an invitation to come here. Last year we had nearly 10,000…
My partners at Web 2 told me today that the new website is live, the initial theme is up and posted (I am very excited about this year’s theme) and if you haven’t gone before, you can request an invitation to come here. Last year we had nearly 10,000 requests for an invitation, so if you want to come (Nov. 5-7 in SF) please fill out the form asap. I review each request personally.
The first line of speakers is also up, and there is a lot more cooking. Initial speakers include Jack Ma, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Ken Auletta,
Richard Rosenblatt, Lance Armstrong, Ralph De la Vega, Paul Otellini, Mary Meeker, Padmasree Warrior, Kevin Johnson, Joel Hyatt, Mathis Wackernagel, Marc Benioff and Vinod Khosla.
As many of you know, next month is our second Conversational Marketing Summit, this time in NYC. The line up of speakers is really fantastic. I'll be interviewing: – Beth Comstock, CMO of GE – Rich Silverstein, co-fonder of Goodby Silverstein – Sarah Fay, CEO North America, Aegis Media…
As many of you know, next month is our second Conversational Marketing Summit, this time in NYC. The line up of speakers is really fantastic. I’ll be interviewing:
– Beth Comstock, CMO of GE
– Rich Silverstein, co-fonder of Goodby Silverstein
– Sarah Fay, CEO North America, Aegis Media Americas
– Wenda Millard Harris, Chair, IAB and President, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
FM has partnered with Chevy to create a site that pulls together the best of sites on the web covering all things green. I've found it a nice way to stay in touch with a subject I'm increasingly interested in. I use the feed to monitor stuff, and then…
FM has partnered with Chevy to create a site that pulls together the best of sites on the web covering all things green. I’ve found it a nice way to stay in touch with a subject I’m increasingly interested in. I use the feed to monitor stuff, and then click through when there’s a story I want to engage in. Sure, it’s an FM project, so all the regular caveats apply. But judge for yourself. And if you don’t like it, well, tell me what we can do to make it better.
This is part of an ongoing trend I’m seeing, both at FM and certainly across the web, where marketers are providing a service to their potential customers in the form of supporting authentic media, as opposed to creating their own content and hoping it takes off. I like the trend.
I'm late on Powerset (I just don't have time to do the briefings anymore), but Mike has coverage here and Danny's is here. What I find interesting about Powerset is the refinement, which Danny covers well. The interface (in particular the response to query) is much more grammatical and…
I’m late on Powerset (I just don’t have time to do the briefings anymore), but Mike has coverage here and Danny’s is here.
What I find interesting about Powerset is the refinement, which Danny covers well. The interface (in particular the response to query) is much more grammatical and conversational. That’s where the entire web is going, and it’s cool to see an example of it.
FM's Conversational Marketing Summit is just six weeks away, and I am getting more and more excited about the lineup of speakers, and the issues and topics we are going to cover. Check out the lineup of speakers: # Jeff Berman, President, Sales and Marketing, MySpace # Henry Blodget…
FM’s Conversational Marketing Summit is just six weeks away, and I am getting more and more excited about the lineup of speakers, and the issues and topics we are going to cover. Check out the lineup of speakers:
# Jeff Berman, President, Sales and Marketing, MySpace
# Henry Blodget Co-Founder, CEO, Editor in Chief, Silicon Alley Insider
# Jonah Bloom, Editor, Advertising Age
# Beth Comstock, Chief Marketing Officer, General Electric
# Matt Freeman, CEO, Tribal DDB Worldwide
# Louis Giagrande, Online Marketing Manager, Samsung Electronics
# Darren Herman, Group Director of Digital Media, Media Kitchen
# Michael Hoefflinger, GM – Partner Marketing, Intel
# Mark Kantor, Co-founder, Graffiti
# Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu
# Clark Kokich, CEO, Avenue A | Razorfish
# Andy Lark, VP–Global Marketing & Communications, Dell
# Andrew Markowitz, Director, Digital Marketing & Media, Kraft Foods Inc.
# Daina Middleton, SVP, Director Sunao Customer Insight, Marketing Analytics, Emerging Trends, Moxie Interactive
# Wenda Harris Millard, President, Media, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia & IAB
# Eileen Naughton, Director of Media Platforms, Google
# Martin A. Nisenholtz, SVP – Digital Operations, The New York Times Company
# Michael Osborne, Vice President of Sales, Bazaarvoice
# Rudy Wilson, Director of Marketing, Doritos, Frito-Lay
A great lineup, and we’ve still got plenty more to add. I’ll be the host and emcee of this event, and I’m really looking forward to digging into the theme.
Some musings, fundamental stuff for most of you I imagine, but still, background on the noodling I continue to do around my shadow next book, over at the Amex site where I'm contributing some thoughts from time to time as part of an FM brokered marketing program. From it:…
Some musings, fundamental stuff for most of you I imagine, but still, background on the noodling I continue to do around my shadow next book, over at the Amex site where I’m contributing some thoughts from time to time as part of an FM brokered marketing program. From it:
At its core, the Web is a network of computers. As businesspeople, we’ve been in dialog with computers for some time now. But back in the 1960s and 1970s, computers were hulking machines meant for the back offices of Very Large Companies, not small businesses. These machines had a very particular interface – a command line into which you were required to type an arcane “computer language” to get anything done. The number of people who spoke this language were understandably low, and therefore, the number of people in the world who were having “conversations with machines” was also quite low.
In the 1980s, we all got “personal computers,” and thanks to the graphical user interface – “GUI” – millions of us starting talking with computers. But the conversation was hardly fluent. I call this the “hunt and poke” era of computing – we used a mouse to navigate a representational desktop; when we found something we wanted, we poked at it until it came alive for us. This gesticulative interface – not unlike what the wordless signals we employ while in a foreign land in need of the bathroom – is a step forward, but it sure doesn’t scale.
