So, I get this call (this was a few years ago, when I was Forrester’s TV analyst). The Forrester salesperson wants me to do a strategy session at Playboy Entertainment Group, the parent company of the Playboy Channel, the Spice Channel, and all of Playboy’s video assets. I take it, because I’m the TV expert….
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey suggested that he might allow long tweets — up to 10,000 characters. That’s fixing a bug, not fixing Twitter. It won’t change much. Twitter has limited Tweets to 140 characters since the start, a limit that arose out of length restrictions on text messages. Short tweets defined the service. Nobody tweets by text message…
The Boston Globe is now a week into its epic delivery mess. You could blame digital disruption, but you’d be wrong. The Globe’s management did this to itself. First, let me single out the Globe’s journalists for praise. In the wee hours Sunday morning, reporters volunteered to help deliver papers. (I love Hiawatha Bray‘s caption for this photo…
The Boston Globe has managed to survive the inescapable digital transformation of the world, only to destroy itself in spectacularly shortsighted analog fashion. Like all media, the Globe faces digital disruption. But from the innovative launch of Boston.com in 1995 to the responsive-design works-on-all-devices site of today, its digital steps have been clever and effective. The paper’s…
There is truth on the net. There are lies. Have you taught your children how to tell the difference? I’m currently homeschooling my 16-year old. They are right now working on a research paper I assigned. I began to ask myself if my kid has the skills to know, not just how to search, but…
An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook: False news is out of hand. People read lies and obliviously share them on Facebook. You can solve this problem. Not only that, you can solve it in a scalable way, without censoring anything and without changing your main sharing algorithm. Let’s see how….
People see patterns, but sometimes they are coincidences. To analyze numbers in a meaningful way, you must be disciplined both in how you collect them and how you connect them. Otherwise, you’re just doing numerology. Take Charles Arthur’s article in The Guardian called “90:9:1 – the odd ratio that technology keeps creating.” The intelligent reader asks…
While I don’t believe Donald Trump will win the upcoming election, he has changed American political marketing forever. Successful politicians like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all changed the rules of the game. Trump’s innovative political brand will change how politicians market themselves. Put aside your perspective on the morality of his positions and analyze…
While you can make the case that Donald Trump is a fascist or a racist, one thing is certain: he’s an aggressive, belittling bully. And bullies don’t stop until authority figures stop them. Bullies recruit supporters and then use that power to establish an “us vs. them” narrative, demeaning and hurting others. Trump’s recruits are the people he perceives as “true” Americans…