Wikinomics

When they wrote the book, “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” Don Tapscott was in Toronto and Anthony Williams was in London.

And their trans-Atlantic relationship is at the heart of the premise of their book that delves into the evolution and promise of mass collaboration, buoyed by the Internet. They coined the term “Wikinomics” to explain an emerging economic paradigm that combines economics and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, a zeitgeist of our times written and edited by anyone.

Smart Mobs

Remember life before cell phones? I don’t. My first came in 1995, when I learned to drive. For $50 a month, the cell phone plan offered 30 minutes of use - and it was for emergencies only. I had to dial numbers, and it was so hefty I had to store it in the trunk and hardly ever took it out of the car. Pay phones were far more convenient.

Today, cellphones are cheap and pervasive, penetrating deeply most of the developed world. This technology, as well as other network-based technology, has helped create the new smart mobs - a phenomenon that is created when communication and computing come together to bolster cooperation among individuals, according to the book, “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution”, by Howard Rheingold. As technology advances and makes this kind of communication easier and cheaper, it also has implications for social, economic, and political changes.

Technology has not only altered the way people communicate - making it more immediate and allowing people to live in “real time” with others - but also the way they live and think. Rheingold acknowledges the positive and negative aspects of this technology, noting that smart mobs have been created to both promote democracy and civil liberties as well as to coordinate terrorist attacks.

Mobile access - wireless internet, SMS messaging, cell-phones at the ready - allow us to be in constant contact. We can connect quickly over issues and ideas, mobilize and organize, and breakdown and disconnect simply and cheaply. This has great promise for organizing political demonstrations, spreading ideas, and having fun.

Especially as generations grow up into organized adulthood with instant communication technology as much a part of their lives as, say, sneezing, we will see greater implications of smart, mobile individuals and their power to organize and communicate with technology.

Food Fight

Watching the pretzel pummel the matzoh with rounds of sea-salt bullets was funny at first. This is good stuff. Watch it twice.

The Search continues, and advertising is the treasure

After it built the engine that – a decade later, still – is the crux of internet search, Google differentiated from other such start-ups by continuing along its trajectory of success.

In 2004, Google made its initial public offering, a successful effort that netted nearly $3 billion. In the effort to build a thriving business model, Google capitalized on the search function with the most successful advertising efforts in AdWords and AdSense, the two products that produce most of Google’s revenue. Just this week, Google finalized a deal to acquire DoubleClick.

Growing Giant: Google

Long, long ago, before dates were made over g-chat or news was filtered through Google Reader, the internet was a wild, wild west with gold waiting to be mined. Many cowboys tried to tame it and some mined for gold (with a few eurekas here and there) but no one has had more influence on the shape of the internet or how we find and process news and information more than Google.

As Battelle wrote, the modern story of the internet can be best told through search. And the story of search is most completely captured in the story of Google, a company barely a decade old but still one of – if not the - world’s hottest companies.

PR 2.0

At its core, the blog — this potentially long-lasting technology that has turned news and information dissemination into a conversation between business and consumers — requires businesses to “be real” and fundamentally authentic, according to Scoble and Israel. A good blog should “build trust, interest, awareness, and enthusiasm,” and if it encompasses authenticity, will build credibility with readers and consumers.

This is the new public relations, replacing spin and canned quotes with requisite transparency and direct communication. Birthed by the evolution of the Internet, Web, and blogosphere is what I will call PR 2.0, a wave created by a fundamental alteration in how we communicate and how businesses and other newsmakers disseminate information and how consumers and the public ingest and digest information.

Setting an agenda in the Digital Age

Gone are the days of sharing the newspaper sections over cereal and the family gathering each evening around the TV for the nightly news broadcast. The media landscape has evolved from there to round-the-clock cable news stations to even better: an online world where news and analysis are available at the point of a mouse, read of a personal RSS lineup, or scan of shared information forwarded electronically by friends, family, and acquaintances.

This change has significant implications for traditional media theory, particularly agenda setting.

The Business of Blogging

A few weeks ago I lost my glasses in an airport, on a plane, or in a taxi somewhere between Palm Beach and Baltimore. Annoyed that my carelessness would now cost me new prescription lenses, I plugged into Google the name of the neighborhood optical to find out the store’s hours.

We the Media - Um, who are we?

By nature, by training, and by trade, I am a journalist. Until recently, I thought that was something special.