Google’s New Privacy Policy Critical to Competition with Facebook

Google has a new, 360-degree privacy policy. Take that, Facebook. The consolidation of data that creates a unified customer profile across very nearly all of Google's products and services creates a view of the customer that's very, very Facebook in nature. Funny that with all the attention directed to the Facebook IPO lately, so few commentators have made this observation. It's a good idea that has, understandably, creeped users out. The reality and the perception of privacy are miles … [Read more...]

Facebook’s IPO: What Does It Mean For…?

Jaimy Szymanski, Zak Kirchner

Over 800 million active users - more than half of whom log in on any given day and interact with over 900 million "objects" (pages, groups, communities, etc.). Over 250 million photos uploaded every day, over 70 languages on the site. The stats go on and on, and anyway you look at them, the numbers are huge. How can Facebook grow bigger still? That's what we're waiting so see as the tech world - heck, the world at large - holds it breath for the biggest IPO since Google went public in … [Read more...]

Content Marketing: What’s the Impact on the Advertising Ecosytem?

Content Marketing by Rebecca Lieb

It's always a strangely climactic and at the same time anticlimactic moment when a book you write finally publishes. After months of writing, editing and corrections, you wait. And wait. One night, you return home to find a box on the doorstep. Suddenly, you're savoring that long-anticipated moment of holding the book in your hands. That how it transpired with my first book, and the moment was repeated yesterday when Content Marketing appeared at the door. It felt  a bit like an ending, but … [Read more...]

Occupy Wall Street: Disruption & Leaderless Leadership

Part of what's fascinating about working at the Altimeter Group are the back channel conversations we have internally about the meaning and impact of disruptive events (not just technologies). A burning topic of late has been the Occupy Wall Street movement and its many Occupy offshoots throughout the country. Last weekend, in the spirit of inquiry and research, we ventured to the demonstrations in our respective cities. We're interested in issues of leadership, and in how institutions such … [Read more...]

Future of Media: Altimeter Group Pilot Event

Advertising: is it dying? In an ecosystem where rolling your own media has never been easier or cheaper, why would advertisers buy media from publishers to spread their messages? What's the new model: advertorial; advertent (as one attendee dubbed it); content marketing? And hey, aren't ads content, too? Last week, a group of advertisers and marketers from all sides of the equation (tech, buy-side, media and agency) got together at the Hangar to discuss these and other very topical issues … [Read more...]

Facebook Places completes the picture

By Susan Etlinger and Charlene Li Today, Facebook confirmed that it is adding location awareness to the Facebook experience. Facebook Places enables members to share where they are and who they are with, find people near them and discover new places of interest.  So if you travel to Chicago and are craving deep-dish pizza, you can see where your friends have “checked in” and what they thought about the experience. Facebook Places launches with an iPhone app, the addition of a location … [Read more...]

Private Dinner

Charlene Li, Featured Guest … [Read more...]

New study: Deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance

I'm releasing today a new research report that I wrote in conjunction with Wetpaint called "ENGAGEMENTdb". The study looked at how the 100 most valuable brands -- as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking -- engaged in 11 different online social media channels. We critiqued the brands on not only their breadth of engagement across these channels, but also their depth, such as whether they reply to comments made on blog posts. Each brand was given a numerical … [Read more...]

MLB.TV Blog – MIA

I was tipped off by IDG report Juan Carlos Perez that Major League Baseball had pulled their MLB.TV blog earlier today, after opening day problems for the paid service that broadcasts games in real time. (The service starts at $14.95/month or $79.95/year). You can read the story by Perez at Computerworld. As Perez wrote, the MLB.TV blog had been active for months, with hundreds of comments from MLB.TV subscribers. But now all that remains is a single terse entry. Gone are the posts chronicling … [Read more...]

Future Of Social Networks presentation from SXSW

I had the honor of presenting at the SXSW conference last Saturday, on the topic "The Future Of Social Networks". I've embedded the slides below, and you can also access them on SlideShare. Below the slides I've included a quick synopsis, including examples of what the future will look like. I'd also like to get your ideas of what you think the experience will be like if/when your identity, contacts, and social activities are ubiquitous. Update: Some additional resources include a Twitter feed … [Read more...]