Jamie Beckland

Why the future of #music is brighter than ever. Hint: a smaller industry is better for the art formMany hands have been wrung about the future of music. The music industry has seen year over year of increasingly steep declines for a decade. Think about that for a minute: in 2001, the business fell by [...]

Why we must solve the #contentstrategy challenge to move the web forward #ux #contentThe magazine industry is running a new campaign that declares that people surf online, but “swim in magazines.” On the one hand, it’s a rather obvious way to distinguish the (in some circles) questionable future of magazines. On the other hand, the [...]

Marketing programs suffer from colony collapse disorder, just like bee hives.In 2006, bees started disappearing at an unprecedented scale. Entire hives would suddenly be abandoned by all of the worker bees. The phenomena was so dramatic, and so startling, it was dubbed “colony collapse disorder.” Since 2006, scientists have studied colony collapse disorder to determine [...]

As e-commerce growth flattens, online video differentiates in a crowded space. #vcsummit recapE-commerce is hitting a wall. The growth in e-commerce is slowing, and it’s slowing fast (yes, that is a pun). From 2008 to 2013, the rate of e-commerce growth is projected to slow from 13% to 8%. Now, please don’t think me a Chicken [...]

How to *never* get that first dollar from the customer – "pretty good" is the kiss of deathWhat do you expect for a dollar? If you think your standards are low, think again. What’s the ratio of free apps on your iPhone, to 99 cent apps? How many albums have you streamed, vs. digital downloads [...]

@AwarenessInc adds @Foursquare integration – 1000s of tips in multiple locations, all at onceAwareness Inc is one of the vendors that I reported on in my report on ten social media management platforms (download here). In a sign of how fast the industry is moving, even before the final report was released, Awareness had made [...]

In-depth review of 10 social media management platforms – plus needs checklist for marketers #SoMe #SoMeMaAfter working with the social media management space for a number of months, and watching a new industry being born, I thought it was about time for a comprehensive review of the products and tools that are out there. You [...]

How much video is on your site? In your email? Liveclicker offers huge possibilities to use videoAt this year’s SXSW, I attended a session on the future of online video, with Mark Cuban, who is part owner of HDNet, and Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee. Ronen was bullish, declaring that the web would be the [...]

Mo data, mo problems: the perils and promise of massively huge data setsThe era of big data is upon us. Over the past 20 years, we have seen a huge increase in the amount of data that the world produces. And it continues to grow. IDC estimates (PDF) that the world will have 988 exabytes [...]

Does your org have a chief culture officer? @grant27 thinks you should.Grant McCracken‘s book, Chief Culture Officer, makes a bold declaration: corporations must institutionalize the study of culture in order to make things that resonate better with consumers. He proposes doing this by creating a new C-level executive: the CCO. The CCO is responsible for [...]