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media file 6.22.09 | Why nonprofits rule social media

Why nonprofits rule social media

In this Conversation Starter on the Harvard Business site, social media consultant Alexandra Samuel argues that the notable success of nonprofit organizations like Kiva in implementing social media strategies is a natural outgrowth of what the sector does best: build deep and explicitly accountable relationships with stakeholders. Businesses can experience similar success by adopting some nonprofit best practices, including: (1) avoid gimmicks, and instead speak to stakeholders’ core concerns; (2) give clients a high degree of decision-making freedom and control; (3) offer a mix of tangible and social benefits; (4) embrace the stakeholder community’s emergent social values; and (5) innovate within the boundaries of one’s core mission.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for June 22, 2009:

Why social media gimmicks don’t work

A short, sharp reality smackdown from social media guru Andy Sernovitz: Whatever get-rich scheme you are cooking up, forget it. Instead of trying to trick or bribe people into engaging with your product or service, just build a better product and customer experience... and love will follow.

Kiva: When nonprofit is the best business model

Stanford Social Innovation Review profiles Kiva, the groundbreaking peer-to-peer microfinance exchange, to learn how it became one of the fastest growing nonprofits in history. Surprisingly, a great part of its success has to do with its nonprofit status itself: By adopting a business model that maximizes social value and leaves profit on the table, Kiva has managed to attract a range of support services that have lowered its cost of doing business and allowed it to scale rapidly. Likewise, it has dodged the legal and regulatory challenges that would have accompanied any attempt to organize as a for-profit lender. And finally, it has been able to establish a steady, growing stream of capital from a virtual community that supports it precisely because it operates purely from a socially constructive agenda.

Maximizing the (non) profit motive

BusinessWeek covers the emergence of new corporate legal structures designed to make it easier for organizations to blend for-profit business models with socially constructive aims. While the law typically holds that a corporation’s primary responsibility is to maximize shareholder value, these new structures make it possible for a for-profit organization to incorporate a social-purpose agenda directly into its charter, and to behave in other ways that are more common to non-profits--raising money in the form of grants and charitable loans, for example. Likewise, they give non-profits new tools to raise capital and engage in for-profit activities, without having to construct elaborate workarounds.

Crowdsourcing: What it means for innovation

In BusinessWeek, innovation guru John Winsor explores the future of “crowdsourcing”--the practice of engaging individuals outside the traditional supply chain in the process of product and business system innovation. While some analysts fear that crowdsourcing will spell the end of the corporate design firm, and others worry that it will drive down the perceived value of new products and services, still others believe that customer participation and mass collaboration will usher in a new era in which customers become deeply invested in the success of the crowdsourced innovation and the enterprise that stands behind it.

Not all collaborations are created equal

On The Big Shift blog on the Harvard Business site, authors and management consultants John Hegel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison discuss “scalable collaboration”: a form of collaboration that moves beyond feel-good progressivity to a style of organizational behavior that delivers increasing returns over time. Three key traits distinguish collaborative styles that are scalable from those that are not: (1) They produce new knowledge and relationships versus specific solutions and results; (2) they are loosely organized in ways that easily admit new participants; and (3) they are designed to advance the group’s future capacity versus simply to leverage its existing strengths.

Got the old-media blues? There’s an app for that

Advertising Age reports on a new initiative by traditional print media firm Rodale to make digital content pay, via an iPhone app for its Men’s Health magazine brand. Users pay $1.99 for the app, which provides basic workout set instructions along with a system for tracking individual progress. Directly within the app, users can then buy additional workout sets to supplement the base set. This strategy opens up a source of revenue--paid subscriptions--that publishers have historically relied upon but has been hard to come by on the largely free Internet. The in-app purchase option is a feature of the new OS 3 for the iPhone.

media file 3.16.09 | In downturn, consumers choose green

Despite economic crisis, consumers value brands’ commitment to social purpose

Marketing communications firm Edelman announces the results of its second annual global study measuring consumer attitudes toward companies and brands that engage in social purpose marketing. According to the study, 68 percent of consumers stated they would remain loyal to a brand during a recession if it supports a good cause. Forty-two percent said that if two products are of the same quality and price, commitment to a social purpose trumps factors like design, innovation, and brand loyalty when choosing one brand over the other. Fifty-two percent stated they would be more likely to recommend a brand that supports a good cause over one that does not, and 54 percent said they would help a brand promote a product if there were a good cause behind it.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for March 16, 2009:

Social innovators can lead through economic crisis

On INSEAD Knowledge: While the international community galvanizes around the financial crisis at the expense of other pressing global concerns, socially innovative businesses have a unique opportunity to fill the gap via money-making enterprises and initiatives that advance the cause of human and environmental sustainability. Social innovators must make sure that the initiative is sustainable and will stand the test of time, even in the face of great economic upheaval, or risk taking a “trust hit” that could undermine its downstream chances for success.

Governing Facebook in an open and transparent way

On The Facebook Blog, founder Mark Zuckerberg announces the publication of two documents intended to shift the social networking site’s relationship with its users: “Facebook Principles,” an open policy framework that the company says will guide its business practices and decision-making; and “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” which will replace the site’s existing Terms of Use. Writes Zuckerberg: “Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.”

Reinventing your business model

While fundamental business model innovations fueled the breakout success of Apple’s iPod and led to the market dominance of retail giants Wal-Mart and Target, less than ten percent of innovation investment at global companies is focused on developing new business models. Why? According to innovation specialist Mark Johnson on the Harvard Business site, the reason is that few organizations fully understand their current business model to begin with--the premise behind its development, its natural interdependencies, and its strengths and limitations. So they don’t know when they can leverage their core business and when success requires a new business model.

Assessing innovation metrics

While two-thirds of top executives consider innovation to be one of their top three strategic priorities, few take steps to effectively measure the impact of the overall innovation process on their organization’s value, according to a recent study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Instead, executives focus on relatively simple output metrics, such as increases in revenue, rather than potentially more instructive indicators, such as ROI or net present value of the innovation portfolio.

The music business isn’t dying; the old business model is

TechCrunch covers a talk by Topspin Media CEO Ian Rogers on the future of the music industry. The old hits-driven business model is giving way to a new model that will permit a broad middle class of artists to support themselves by using the web to promote their music, shows, and merchandise. As an example, Rogers cites David Byrne and Brian Eno’s album, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today,” which was distributed digitally by the artists and in less than two months earned the equivalent of a traditional music label advance.

Hey, magazines: Are you in or are you out?

Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco ponders the magazine industry’s seeming paralysis in the face of digital transition, and asks: Do its leaders have the guts to radically reinvent their business models, or have they given up on publishing, if its future doesn’t include the same high-flying revenues and salaries that defined its recent past?

Foundation starts health policy news service

The New York Times reports on the Kaiser Family Foundation’s launch of a new online health news service, designed to fill a gap in serious health policy news coverage left by the decline of mainstream news organizations. The launch underscores the emergence of so-called “advocacy journalism”: serious, professional journalistic efforts undertaken--mostly online--by nonprofit cause advocacy groups.

media file 12.22.08 | Cause marketing’s black bottom line

Cause marketing can ignite sales, study shows

Communications agency Cone LLC and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business announce the results of a joint consumer behavior study demonstrating that cause-related marketing can boost sales by as much as 74 percent. According to the study, 83 percent of consumers stated that personal relevance is key in supporting a company’s cause-marketing efforts, and 84 percent said that they wanted the opportunity to choose which cause to support.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for December 22, 2008:

MAC Cosmetics: Tying the cause to the brand

Knowledge@Wharton profiles MAC Cosmetics and its Viva Glam brand, 100 percent of whose sales are donated to global AIDS causes. Since the fund’s inception in 1994, the company has given more than $128 million to various AIDS-related projects. The company attributes its 80 percent employee retention rate to the fund, in a sector where the average retention rate is 30 percent.

Google releases details on Android app revenue model

When Google starts selling Android mobile phone applications next year, what percentage of revenues will it keep for itself? (Hint: Apple keeps 30 percent from the iPhone App Store.) The answer: nothing. Developers will get to keep 70 percent of the take, while the rest will go to carriers. Writes mocoNews: “Over and over, people have pondered what a carrier’s incentive will be to adopt the Android platform. Well, folks, here’s your answer.” Google will earn revenue via advertising.

Why platforms are letting us down... and what they should do about it

ReadWriteWeb analyzes the apparent meltdown of Facebook’s application platform and stall-out of Google’s OpenSocial, and compares them to the raging success of Apple’s iPhone App Store. The key difference between Apple and the also-rans? Apple wired monetization into its platform from the start.

New York Times API goes live: Here’s why it matters

ReadWriteWeb reports on the launch of the New York Times’ application programming interface, a move that permits third-party developers to access the newspaper company’s data for use in new applications, interfaces, and mashups. Big media concerns will need to take similar steps in order to maintain their positions in the emerging digital media market, the report states.

Pearson ups its stake in South African publishing firm

Reuters reports that British publishing firm Pearson Plc has increased its holdings in South Africa’s Maskew Miller Longman from 50 percent to 85 percent, as part of a strategy to secure the pole position in educational publishing on the continent.

Sherman’s Travel: The website that launched a magazine

A red-hot travel site successfully spins off a bimonthly magazine. What does that say about the future of publishing? Advertising Age’s MediaWorks reports.

Why comic books are still alive and kicking

Fortune spies a bright spot in an otherwise dismal old-media landscape: comic books. In the last three years, Marvel Entertainment, the industry’s biggest player, has posted double-digit revenue increases while holding margins at about 40 percent. The key to this enviable performance: Most comic books are still distributed via specialty retail stores, and that constrained supply has helped to perpetuate the image of comic books and graphic novels as a cult phenomenon.

media file 12.1.08 | Digital entrepreneurs should “work on stuff that matters”

Tech guru Tim O’Reilly to next generation: Get serious

The LA Times profiles digital pioneer Tim O’Reilly and his critique of the current crop of digital enterprises. Today’s digital entrepreneurs have cocooned in a “reality bubble” insulated from poverty, disease, global warming, and other problems that are gripping the planet, he argues. They should follow the model of some of the world’s most successful technology companies, including Google and Microsoft, which sprang from their founders’ efforts to “work on stuff that matters.”

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for December 1, 2008:

The bottom billion: A difficult market or a source of innovation?

On the Harvard Business site, Forrester VP Navi Radjou discusses how leading global firms--Microsoft, most notably among them--are treating the world’s most underdeveloped markets as breakthrough business opportunities rather than as occasions to demonstrate corporate social responsibility.

Media zone to open in Abu Dhabi

The Abu Dhabi newspaper The National reports that the government has launched a new media innovation zone in partnership with the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and a number of other leading global media brands. The zone is scheduled to launch in 2009.

National Geographic teams with Abu Dhabi to make movies

The Washington Post reports that the Abu Dhabi government has struck a $100 million deal with the National Geographic Society to create a revolving fund to develop and produce 10 to 15 films over a five-year period. According to Tim Kelly, president of the National Geographic’s global media division, the goal of the pact is to “put money on the screen,” funneling funds to filmmakers all over the world.

NBC relaunches local TV sites as web destinations

MediaPost reports on NBC’s plan to transform its local TV station web sites into broader online communities offering news, information, entertainment, and social media tools. Its new, “Locals Only” sites will feature content from print and online publications, bloggers, and NBC’s local TV stations. The initiative rolls out with revamped sites for Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.

Mainstream news outlets start linking to other sites

ONTD! The New York Times reports that mainstream media outlets have recently ramped up the number of links they post to content on other sites. They even have a new name for it: “link journalism.” The idea is to produce a new generation of online news media, supported by local, paid product/service directories.

Five web 2.0 businesses for a down economy

Mashable looks at a seriously disrupted, cash starved digital market and asks, “What new opportunities exist here”? Keywords: Coworking spaces, bootstrapping, collaborative tools, idea marketplaces, workforce marketplaces.

Open source is not a business model

ReadWriteWeb reports on a study by The 451 Group showing that most open source vendors make ends meet via proprietary software and services. In this study of 114 vendors, open source is more of a business tactic than a business model.

media file 10.22.08 | "Social innovation": doing business with the “bottom billion”

Social innovation: Creating products for those at the bottom of the pyramid

INSEAD Knowledge reprises its executive roundtable on the challenges global corporations face in designing and executing “social innovation” strategies--business initiatives targeting the four billion or so people living on less than one dollar per day in developing countries. More than price, executives reported that access to highly segmented, low income markets has proven to be the greatest barrier to product distribution and sales. Partnership with government agencies and nonprofit organizations is key to overcoming this problem, executives said. Another insight: Philanthropic models, in which products or services are donated to needy communities, turn out to be far less successful in delivering sustained social impact than market-based models, in which corporations set up locally run businesses.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for October 22, 2008:

Strong partnership key to success in social innovation

INSEAD Knowledge explores the reasons why global corporations find it so difficult to successfully execute “social innovation” strategies targeting the “bottom of the pyramid”: the four billion people living on less than one dollar per day. The primary reason: Global corporations have become “disembedded” from local economies, especially poor ones, and therefore they have insufficient knowledge of the specialized needs of these market segments. Another reason: Global corporations may harbor expectations about short-term profitability that run counter to the substantial time and effort required to launch and scale projects that deliver mutual benefit to both the corporation and the poor. Corporations can improve their chances through strong collaboration with governments, NGOs, and social entrepreneurs.

Social media in Africa, part I: The market

ReadWriteWeb posts the first in a three-part series on the growth of social media in Africa. The continent is the fastest growing mobile market in the world, with 280 million subscribers and a 30.4 percent penetration rate. The social media sector is currently dominated by independent and nonprofit media operations.

Social media in Africa, part II: Mobile innovations

ReadWriteWeb continues its three-part series on the growth of social media in Africa with a review of how the continent’s technical infrastructure is determining the shape of digital innovation. Due to a history of unstable governance and civil unrest in the 20th century, the continent largely bypassed the era of community infrastructure building that characterized most of Western society during that period. As a result, there is no entrenched land-based communications establishment; the vast majority of Africans tap into the global communications grid via mobile phone and satellite. This situation has spawned a rush to fill satellite demand, plus an explosion in innovative mobile applications such as micropayments, mobile news, and GPS-based theft-deterrent systems for automobiles.

Social media in Africa, part III: Democracy

ReadWriteWeb concludes its three-part series on the growth of social media in Africa with a brief survey of web and mobile applications that are undermining the grip of totalitarian regimes on the flow of information within their societies. The most exciting aspect of these innovative applications is their source: local social entrepreneurs, not foreign aid groups, governments, or corporations. For the continent, this explosion in indigenous social media offers the opportunity to start fresh: new ideas, and a billion people to use them.

Mobile subscribers increase worldwide

ClickZ summarizes a report by the International Telecommunications Union on the worldwide explosion in mobile communications technology usage. By the end of 2008, subscriptions to mobile service providers will top 4 billion, for a global market penetration rate of 61 percent. Subscriptions have been growing at an average of 24 percent annually since 2000.

Meredith expands reach of magazines overseas

The Des Moines Register reports on the expansion of Meredith Corporation’s magazine business into developing countries. Publisher of women’s titles such as Better Homes and Gardens, Parents, and Family Circle, Meredith licenses its content to over 25 partners in 40 countries, with most new deals closing in the developing world. According to the World Bank, more than 56 percent of the global middle class resides in developing countries; by 2030, that number will rise to 93 percent. Meredith officials believe they are properly positioned to help those upwardly mobile populations satisfy curiosity about Western life.

HipChicas.com targets tween latinas with eco-friendly virtual world

MediaPost profiles HipChicas.com, a virtual world targeting socially conscious pre-teen and teenage Hispanic-American girls. Says the site’s founder, Lazaro Fuentes: “It’s as if somewhere along the line, someone decided that being hip meant that girls had to dress or act inappropriately, or had to fit into a specific mold, and that their only interests are picking hair colors or shopping for clothes. They are far more than that. These are kids that want to save the world, be in a band, and start a blog all in one day.”

media file 10.6.08: Philips reinvents itself as a design-driven social enterprise

Philips: Philanthropy by design

Businessweek reports on Amsterdam-based Royal Philips Electronics’ efforts to transform itself from from a high-volume electronics maker into a design-led health, lifestyle, and technology company. Its core strategy: “social innovation”--developing culturally relevant solutions to critical social and environmental problems in emerging markets, in partnership with local nongovernmental organizations that can help facilitate their adoption. Among its first efforts in this space: A clean indoor wood-burning stove that reduces smoke inhalation and is easier to maintain than its traditional predecessor.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for October 6, 2008:

The real value of intangibles

On the strategy+business site, business guru Denise Caruso questions why the contemporary corporation’s greatest source of value--its intellectual property, software investments, staff and managerial expertise, market research, advertising, business processes, organizational structures, and the like--show up on its books, not as real assets, but as potential liabilities and risk factors. The solution to this problem, Caruso writes, is to revise FASB rules to reflect the fact that intangible assets now account for up to 90 percent of a 21st century corporation’s market worth.

The faith-based corporation

Google employees joke that the search giant is a “faith-based initiative,” but they mean it. Google is at the head of a trend called “organizational sacralization,” described in a new research paper on the topic reviewed on the Knowledge@W.P. Carey site. The term refers to the adoption of social-purpose business strategies that galvanize an organization’s stakeholders around the idea that the enterprise is working for a greater good. These strategies can confer significant competitive advantage, the paper asserts, but they also run the risk of serious backlash if stakeholders determine that the organization has committed “sacrilege” by violating its own espoused ideals.

Want to be the next Google? Create enduring values

VentureBeat columnist Bernard Moon compares Google’s founding principles to those of Sony, launched almost fifty years earlier. According to Moon, both companies grounded themselves in a set of core social values that, through strong leadership, translated into tangible behavior and results.

Seventh Generation launches open media marketing campaign

ClickZ reports that green home products marketer Seventh Generation has launched an open media marketing campaign designed to reach parents concerned about product safety and the environment. The campaign is built around a microsite that provides information about Seventh Generation product ingredients and offers users a downloadable desktop and mobile widget that they can employ while shopping to look up health and environmental impact information about ingredients found commonly on consumer product labels. Third parties can add content to the widget’s database.

Agenda for a green recovery

The Center for American Progress announces a report with the Political Economy Research Institute, an economic think tank, entitled “Green Recovery.” In it, the authors advocate a $100 billion, two-year investment program in green technologies, generating 2 million private-sector jobs.

Money to grow on

What is an “investment”? For private foundations and nonprofit social enterprises, that question can get tricky. On Stanford Social Innovation Review, Bridgespan Group partner William Foster says that the nonprofit sector could benefit by adopting the for-profit sector’s attitude toward outside money--whatever its source--viewing it as “growth capital” that strengthens the enterprise’s capacity to sustainably increase impact.

Understanding social entrepreneurs

On the Skoll Foundation’s Social Edge site, author Paul Light posts several excerpts from his new book, “The Search for Social Entrepreneurship,” and related research. Light asks: Do social entrepreneurs really think differently from other high achievers? Are their ideas always radical? Can they create opportunities for change where none exist? Do their organizations have to be new?

media file 7.10.08: At the smart firms, social values drive shareholder value

The Search for Purpose

Business strategist Nikos Mourkogiannis argues that the defining characteristic driving the most successful organizations today is a clearly articulated sense of purpose that appeals to the moral conviction of all their stakeholders.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on del.icio.us, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on del.icio.us. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for July 10, 2008:

Knowledge Capital

AlwaysOn Network blogger Irving Wladawsky Berger reports on a 2006 Federal Reserve study showing that US corporate investment in so-called "intangible assets" has exceeded investments in tangible assets, and now accounts for the bulk of corporate value.

Socializing Innovation

AlwaysOn Network profiles BrightIdea, an enterprise software developer focused on using the power of social networking to spur innovation within large corporations.

Privacy and Behavioral Targeting Heat Up

ClickZ reports on the growing debate over online privacy that is being spurred on by innovations in behavioral targeting and other new advertising methodologies. One solution: data portability, which puts online users in charge of their own personal data.

Exclusive: First Look At Genome, A Next-Gen Social Networking Service

ReadWriteWeb profiles Genome, a new social network that emphasizes open APIs and data portability.

Metaweb's Freebase Now 60% Larger Than English Wikipedia

ReadWriteWeb reports that semantic web database Freebase has surpassed Wikipedia in total number of English-language topics covered, making it a potentially serious platform for mashups and other API-based applications.

Transparency: The Mega-Force You Can't Totally Control

On Sustainable Life Media, author Andrew Winston discusses the rising expectation that companies will share everything about their operations, supply chains, and processes with their stakeholders, and asks: How much is too much?

media file 7.9.08: Social nets the new global battleground for civil rights

Bourgeois Anarchism and Authoritarian Democracies

First Monday researcher Felix Stalder argues that social networks have spawned two conflicting phenomena that threaten to ignite a global battle over civil liberties: an expanding number of loosely organized, informal online groups in pursuit of social change, on one hand; and a heightened regime of covert surveillance by democratic governments around the world, on the other.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on del.icio.us, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on del.icio.us. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for July 9, 2008:

AOL offers services in 4 Latin American countries

Reuters reports that AOL has expanded its reach into Argentina, Chile, Columbia, and Venezuela, bringing to 25 the number of countries in which it currently operates.

Publicis Forms “Open Source” Ad Network

paidContent reports that French agency Publicis Groupe has formed an internal online ad network comprised of its four major global media partners--AOL, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft--with the goal of closely coordinating its campaigns across these platforms.

France To Tax Mobile, Internet And TV Revenues To Fund Public Broadcaster

paidContent reports that in 2009, France will begin taxing commercial Internet, mobile, and broadcast services, with revenues to go to the country's publicly supported media.

First English-Language Sunday Newspaper Launched in China

WARC reports on the launch of China's first English-language Sunday newspaper, to be published in Shanghai, that country's largest city, with a population of over 20 million.

The Wall Street Journalist

BusinessWeek reports on the WSJ's managing editor Robert Thomson and his ambitious strategy to turn the brand into a global online media power. A key element of strategy: micropayments.

Pew Research Center: Assessing Globalization

In this article for the Harvard International Review, Pew's Andrew Kohut reports that average citizens around the world embrace the concept of globalization, although it has greater currency in poorer nations versus wealthier ones.

media file 7.7.08: Social nets spawning a new era of global social enterprise

A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution

Havas Director Umair Haque writes in his Edge Economy blog that the next wave of business innovation will come from tapping the power of social networks to organize the world's main social and economic functions and thereby produce global social change.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on del.icio.us, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on del.icio.us. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for July 7, 2008::

The next step in open innovation

The McKinsey Quarterly discusses "distributed co-creation": a development paradigm in which partners, suppliers, and customers are directly involved in creating new products and services, and share in the rewards of those efforts.

Collaborative Filtering: Lifeblood of The Social Web

ReadWriteWeb looks at how a philosophy pioneered by Amazon.com is shaping the social web. The "Wisdom of the Crowds" and the "Law of Large Numbers" are two core memes that make the social web decisively superior to any expert-driven media environment.

Creative Commons Launches Global Case Studies Project

Creative Commons announces the launch of the Case Studies Project, a global community wiki showcasing successful implementations of the organization's intellectual property licensing system by CC copyright holders worldwide.

Three Obstacles to a Truly Global Conversation

In MediaShift Idea Lab, Global Voices' David Sasaki reports on the Global Voices Summit, where over 200 media activists discussed the primary barriers to creating truly global online community. Top barrier: censorship.

Another "Chinese YouTube" Raises Monster Cash

Silicon Alley Insider reports on youku.com, a Chinese video sharing site that has raised more than $80 million in venture funds, mostly from US firms, and has somehow avoided the censorship death grip stifling other similar Chinese sites, such as 56.com.

In Iran, blogging web could get you killed

iafrica.com reports that a bill has been introduced into the Iranian parliament that extends the death penalty to the crime of "establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy," as reportedly stated in the bill's text.

Bored With Web 2.0? Demand Change

ReadWriteWeb says that the developer community can beat "web 2.0 ennui" by building applications that harness the power of the social web to bring about social change.

media file 6.23.08: Software firm teams with micro lender on breakthrough social marketing scheme

Software Company Ditches AdWords for... Kiva?

ReadWriteWeb reports that business software firm Jama Software has ditched its Google AdWords marketing plan in favor of a social marketing strategy that funnels cash to microenterprise lender kiva.org whenever someone downloads its product on a trial basis. Because kiva.org loans enjoy close to a 100% repayment rate, the campaign could reduce the firm's marketing expense to zero.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on del.icio.us, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on del.icio.us. We publish media file links daily as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for June 23, 2008:

The Real Danger for AP

MediaFlect looks at the AP's defensive efforts to restrict fair use of its stories, and notes that the wire's real problem is that it hasn't leveraged its deep archive and content tagging methodologies into a dominant position on the social web.

Huffington Post To Take on Local Newspapers

ReadWriteWeb reports that Arianna Huffington says she is planning to launch a network of Huffington Post-branded local news aggregation sites for selected US metro areas, starting with Chicago.

Making Print Pubs a Vital Part of Web 2.0

MediaShift Idea Lab author Dan Pacheco discusses his experience at the Bakersfield Californian newspaper, which has developed a strategy to build niche social networks in combination with user-generated print publications.

Friendster’s growth in Asia could make it the top social network in the world, once again

VentureBeat reports that, while analysts have been focussed on the Facebook/MySpace battle for global market share, much-maligned Friendster has captured a global ethnic Asian audience that is large and growing larger every day.

Beijing Continues Search for Balance on Olympic Beam

The Wall Street Journal reports that international media outlets are locked in a stalemate with Chinese authorities over the extent of their ability to cover news within that country outside of the bounds of the summer Olympic games.

IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for Q1 2008

The IAB/PwC advertising report records $5.8 billion in ad spending in Q1 2008, an 18.2% increase over Q1 2007, but a slight decrease over the Q4 2007.