Jamie Beckland

Spend any time on Twitter, and you quickly learn that looking at the unfiltered feed of tweets is like drinking from a firehose. There are a number of human ways of getting around this problem: setting a “Twitter check” appointment, or only reviewing certain Twitter lists. But, inevitably, you miss so much good stuff.

Enter Cadmus, which dramatically improves the signal/noise ratio, and gets you to the good stuff on Twitter fast.

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Tags: Cadmus, Justin Bieber, social media, third-party, twitter

Today Twitter announced their advertising platform, called Promoted Tweets. Twitter’s focus on message resonance is a large step forward in content marketing because it uses algorithms to determine valuable content within advertising units. This convergence of paid and earned media tactics raises the importance of effective content marketing strategies for digital marketers.

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Tags: AdAge, AdWords, content, curation, earned media, Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, New York Times, paid media, Promoted Tweets, resonance, Starbucks, twitter

We are now fully immersed in the era of the information stream. The stream requires new ways of curating relevant information, even as we grapple with insufficient tools. But, as the content universe grows rapidly, our capacity for curation must find new ways to scale.

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Tags: content, curation, information streams, Keith Haring, museums, Newcurator, tag cloud

Today I noticed something new on a Spanish language site: a toolbar asking me if I wanted to automatically translate the page into English.

This is the type of functionality that makes me get warm fuzzies for Google. Oh, and it brings the Star Trek universal translator and Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish one step closer to reality. Continue Reading »

Tags: Chinese, David Bellos, earthquake, English, Google, Google Reader, Google translate, Haiti, Haitian Creole, New York Times, RSS, Spanish

Google was built on search. It was not built on social. And, to thrive in the space, you have to have social running through your veins.

But, in their fight for social relevance, they will force the other players to play fair. So, thanks, Google! Continue Reading »

Tags: Blogger, Chris Wetherell, Dodgeball, Evan Williams, facebook, Foursquare, Google, Google Answers, Jaiku, Mahalo, McDonald's, microsoft, Orkut, twitter, Yahoo Answers

Facebook recently announced that they will give up personally identifiable information to certain “approved” sites that use Facebook Connect. Within the tech industry, this is seen as a scary invasion of privacy, but I am not sure if it is really a very big deal. This isn’t a very big step forward from a marketing perspective, and in the end, most users will be better off.

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Tags: danah boyd, digital marketing, facebook, Facebook Connect, Huffington Post, Jason Kincaid, marketing, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Mediaplex, PEI, PII, privacy, Quantcast, ReadWriteWeb, SXSW, TechCrunch, tradeoffs, Traffic MarketPlace

The simple fact of the matter is there are not that many news-worthy events that happen in a day. But, the amount of content is exploding. So, here’s what happens:

1. Something happens

2. People talk about what happened

3. People talk about what people said about what happened

4. People try to link what people said about what people said about what happened to a grand unifying theory

Let’s look at an example:

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Tags: abstraction, CNN, commentary, context, grand unifying theory, Haiti, meta, natural disasters, twitter

Seth Godin has an interesting post about the rise of “drive by culture”. He argues that the dramatic rise in content found online, and the incredible ease of finding it, has created a culture of “clickers, stumblers, and jaded spectators.”

He is right. But he also misses the (obvious) way to fix this.

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Tags: algorithms, crowdsourcing, curation, editorial, horses, HuffPo, Posterous, Seth Godin, social media, Tumblr, YouTube

Really, this advice is good for just about any conference, but especially important at South by Southwest, because it is non-stop for several days, from 9 AM to 1 AM (or later).

Do these things and you will be in the clear. Continue Reading »

Tags: Airborne, Franklin Barbecue, Hot Club of Cowtown, how-to, illness, lattes, milk, Miller Lite, mono, Monster Energy Drink, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, siestas, sleep, SoBe, SXSW

This past weekend, my camera broke.  I’m not sure what happened, but the lens is stuck open and it won’t turn on.

Of course, no one even considers fixing electronics anymore, so I reluctantly started the search for a new camera on Monday. Continue Reading »

Tags: cameras, Casio Exilim, innovation