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media file 5.17.10 | The five forces reshaping the global economy

The five forces reshaping the global economy

In the sixth annual McKinsey Global Survey, over 1400 corporate executives from around the world identified the top five forces shaping their organizations’ strategies: (1) the shift in global economic activity from developed to developing countries; (2) the rise of the consumer in emerging markets; (3) increasingly global labor markets; (4) the impact of global digital networks in facilitating the flow of goods, information, and capital; and (5) rising government and stakeholder expectations about the role of business in contributing to the public good. The McKinsey Quarterly reports.

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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 May 17, 2010:

America’s green innovation problem

It’s received wisdom in many business circles--and the thesis of some bestselling pop business texts--that America can retain its strategic edge in global markets by focusing on innovation, even while manufacturing, customer service, and other core business activities get outsourced to other countries. But if trends in green innovation are any measure, this view will ultimately prove bankrupt--both for the companies that bet on it, and for American society as a whole. Globalization is rapidly overtaking the field of innovation, particularly in green technology, where the Chinese government is exploiting the powerful feedback loops that can be created when innovation, manufacturing, and marketing are advanced in tandem. Left unchallenged, governments pursuing this strategy could end up locking in strategic advantage in key markets--and locking America out. Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

Goldman Sachs and Drucker’s law of innovation

What’s the link between mortgage-backed securities and ATMs? Easy--both are financial market innovations. What’s the difference? One followed the route all successful innovations follow--delivering a product or process that fundamentally improves customers’ lives--while the other exploited innovation solely to the innovator’s advantage. The resulting catastrophe was predictable, writes Drucker Institute Executive Director Rick Wartzman for Bloomberg Businessweek. Peter Drucker himself predicted such a mess in a 1999 essay, where he compared compared derivates and other such financial innovations to the “systems” invented by professional gamblers to beat the house. They almost never work, Drucker observed; but the collateral damage they produce to markets and reputations can be enormous, as Goldman Sachs and others have found out.

Should all corporations adopt the “precautionary principle”?

“First do no harm”--the so-called “precautionary principle” has been a shared human value virtually since the dawn of civilization, and yet contemporary business practice seems to regularly defy it. Is it possible to fundamentally shift this dynamic--to inject the precautionary principle into the DNA of every contemporary corporation, so that episodes like the financial meltdown and the Gulf oil disaster become a thing of the past? On CSRwire, attorney Sanford Lewis explores the new risk-management strategies and innovations in corporate law that promise to make the precautionary principle a bedrock of corporate governance, rather than an afterthought.

If corporations are people, then shouldn’t they act like it?

The recent Supreme Court campaign finance ruling in the Citizens United case effectively conferred the same political free-speech rights on corporations that had previously existed only for individuals. So shouldn’t corporations be held to the same standard of personal responsibility that individuals live by? On the Harvard Business site, corporate sustainability advocate Andrew Winston argues that businesses owe society nothing less--or more--than to live by the Golden Rule: to do unto others as they would have done unto them. This approach is the only one that can effectively balance the environmental, sociological, and stakeholder concerns that are shaping the nature of business in the 21st century. Businesses should adopt this new model for the most selfish of all possible reasons--because it’s the only possible path to corporate sustainability in an era in which all stakeholders have effectively found their voice and are projecting it over the social web.

What do you call the world?

There is a famous story from Zen literature that goes like this:

Teacher A asks Teacher B: “Where do you come from?” (Sometimes a trick question.)

Teacher B replies: “From the south.” (Ah, a safe answer.)

A asks: “How is Zen practice in the South these days?”

B responds: “There lots of discussion.”

A states: “How can all the discussion compare to planting the fields and cooking rice?”

B asks: “What can you do about the world?”

A replies: “What do you call the world?”

media file 2.1.10 | How Ford got social marketing right

How Ford got social marketing right

Marketing guru Grant McCracken drills into Ford Motor’s successful “Fiesta Movement” social marketing campaign to identify the strategic elements that made it click. To jumpstart its efforts to break back into the subcompact market--a space it abandoned in 1997--Ford gave 100 consumers each a Fiesta and asked them to complete a different “mission” every month, and document it in digital media. The campaign produced 6.5 million YouTube views, 50,000 requests for information, and 10,000 sales in its first six days. The secrets: (1) Ford selected “culturally creative” consumers--digital sophisticates with something to say and a track record for saying it well on the social web; (2) it offered a very attractive “fair trade”--a free car in exchange for content; and (3) it asked participants to document experiences where the car was used to advance a social cause or lifelong aspiration, thereby connecting the brand to deep, personal and social values. The Harvard Business site reports.

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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 1 February, 2010:

Cars--the next digital platform

Advertising Age blogger Craig Daitch reports on the most compelling spectacle from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show--the sharp elbows flashed by in-vehicle electronics product and service providers attempting to break into the digital media space. Leading the way: Ford Motors’ game-changer, Ford Sync, which the company credits as a major factor in its recent sales uptick.

Bored with your TV? There’s an app for that

The Wall Street Journal reports on the emergence of iPhone-like digital app marketplaces on cable and satellite TV services. Although experimental set-top services like Microsoft’s WebTV failed horribly in the 1990s, thanks to big improvements in the underlying technology, today’s consumers are snapping up digital media service packages that combine phone, Internet, and TV; and a wide array of hardware and software providers are integrating them into next-generation platforms that permit users to wander far beyond TV’s traditional walled gardens. The future portends an explosion of TV-based, free and paid set-top applications that rival anything happening on desktops or mobile phones.

Let your customers sell themselves on you

On the Harvard Business site, MIT research fellow and author Michael Schrage discusses the power of prototyping to advance the adoption of new ideas. Whereas most innovation-driven firms rely on demos, simulations and other kinds of marketing to elicit a “gee-whiz” reaction from customers to their inventions, others put a prototype of the actual product in the customer’s hands, and give them a chance to sell themselves on its merits. The Apple App Store is great example of this kind of prototype-based approach--customers get to play, risk-free, with thousands of different apps; they provide valuable feedback to their developers; and upgrade to the paid version when the value proposition is right. This “sell yourself” sensibility can easily transcend the digital market, finding a home in retail, consumer and professional services, and any other market where playful exploration can speed the adoption of an innovation.

Is your brand a beacon or a spotlight?

Euro RSCG strategic planner Rose Cameron asks this question on the Advertising Age site: Are you shining a spotlight on consumers’ current preoccupations and concerns, or are you projecting a beacon that leads them where they want to go? The difference is huge. Beacon brands take consumers into an emerging future that they desire to embrace. Given a choice, more than 3/4ths of consumers will choose beacon brands over spotlight brands, according to a study conducted by Euro RSCG for the Atlantic Monthly.

Motivation 3.0: Finding satisfaction in a digital age

Advertising Age interviews “A Whole New Mind” author Daniel Pink about his new work, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.” It’s not external rewards and punishments--that is, money, promotions, or the fear of losing those things--that drive today’s key business leaders and employees, but instead the desire to learn, create, and improve our world... what Pink calls autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

media file 7.1.09 | Twitter’s rules for radical innovation

Twitter’s rules for radical innovation

On the Harvard Business site, Havas Media Lab’s Umair Haque describes ten operating principles that make digital phenom Twitter one of the most radical management innovators of 21st century so far. Among these rules: Ideals beat strategies; open beats closed; connection beats transaction; public beats private; and good beats evil.

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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 July 1, 2009:

Nine tips for jumpstarting innovation

When companies go on the hunt for innovations to drive growth, they often waste time scouring the last place they are likely to find it: their own back yards. Rather than try to dredge up new ideas from the heart of the enterprise, look to its periphery, say researchers John Bessant, Kathrin Moslein, and Bettina von Stamm in this Wall Street Journal report. Among the techniques that organizations can use to spot the future before it emerges: Scenario building; open innovation; tapping expert users; “deep dive” consumer research; creating online learning communities; and more.

Innovation: It takes a village

For organizations struggling to survive, let alone advance, Knowledge@Wharton has some advice: Build an “innovation network.” By tapping the expertise and resources of outside R&D partners, Proctor & Gamble improved its innovation productivity by 60 percent, resulting in over $10 billion in revenues from 400 collaboratively developed new products. Performance like this requires organizations to build new internal capacity to cultivate and manage productive external relationships, while simultaneously strengthening their internal R&D capacity to evaluate and incorporate potentially promising innovations.

AOL: The future of digital content?!!!

You heard it here first: AOL represents the future of successful, sustainable digital content publishing, says Silicon Alley Insider. AOL’s coming divorce from Time Warner will free it to do what it does best: Build flashy, inexpensive content sites around special-interest topics, then plug them into AOL’s online traffic fire hose. It’s a model that represents the digital version of yesterday’s magazine launch--only much cheaper, easier to tweak, and less troubling to kill if things don’t quickly work out. AOL has more than 300 staff members producing such sites and contracts with about the same number of freelancers. In the past six months, the company has hired more than 50 journalists from places such as the Associated Press, Washington Post, and USA Today.

Sorry, there’s no way to save the TV business

On Advertising Age, Internet analyst Henry Blodget explains the coming demise of the TV business--broadcast, network, cable, and satellite--with brutal simplicity. TV execs are reliving the same delusion that newspaper execs held onto through most of the last decade, when revenues were holding up despite dire predictions to the contrary. And the same phenomenon that ultimately doomed the newspaper business is about to visit the TV business: the complete breakdown of every distribution barrier protecting historical margins and profits, and a surge in abundant, accessible, free TV across the global Internet.

It ain’t free--it’s a steal

Trendspotter Malcolm Gladwell takes Wired’s Chris Anderson to task in this New Yorker review of the latter’s book, Free. While Anderson asserts that digital technology inexorably drives all products “made of ideas” to a zero price point, Gladwell comes to a different conclusion: “Information wants to be free” is a useful meme for content distribution powerhouses like Google and Amazon, but it is neither an inevitable outcome nor one supported by trends in industries other than media that are being transformed by digital technology. Case in point: the drug industry, which is using digital technology to produce ever-more specific compounds for increasingly targeted markets, at ever higher price points. Meanwhile, YouTube--the avatar of Free--spends over $260 million annually to license commercial content, essentially to make a market that otherwise does not exist with its free, user-generated fare. In other words, the problem with Free is that consumers know exactly how to value it.

Why media brands stumble globally

Advertising Age explores the reasons why globalization has not yet swept the media market to the same degree as in other digital industries--computers or cell phones, for example. While consumer product firms have a natural disposition toward building consistent brand identities over time while simultaneously tweaking products and pitches to specific markets, media companies either give too little attention to branding (relying instead on a hits-driven marketing strategy) or bring a bias or agenda that doesn’t travel well across borders. To be successful globally, media brands need to develop a broad, international appeal that comes from focusing on shared human and social values; and combine that appeal with content fine-tuned to specific audiences. Among those doing it well: Bloomberg, CNN, People, Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and The Economist.

It’s time for a “slow marketing” movement

Think “slow food”: ingredients grown organically and prepared with old-fashioned love, attention, and technique, resulting in undeniably superior appeal, taste, and value. Now think “slow marketing”: brand building that puts the customer first, strives for credibility, and sustains long-term relationships. It’s not a throwback to a time gone by; it’s an approach demanded for success in the digital markets of the future. So writes Nielsen’s Peter Blackshaw in this column for Advertising Age.

media file 9.22.08: Marketers embrace their inner publisher

Marketers are publishers

In case you haven’t noticed, marketers produce a lot of content. So why don’t they think of themselves as publishers? ClickZ reports that marketers are indeed beginning to embrace their inner publisher, moving beyond advertising to new kinds of marketing content that goes viral, attracts community, and pops to the top of search results.

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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 September 22, 2008:

Can MySpace Music save the music industry?

Advertising Age posits that MySpace Music has what it takes to succeed where other ad-supported music efforts have failed. It has a large and growing global audience and advertising sales, creative services, and technical infrastructure that has proven capable of delivering new value to major brands. And by aligning itself with the major music labels and top independents, the site gets around a key obstacle faced broadly by social networks: advertisers’ coolness to user-generated content.

A jukebox on MySpace that takes aim at Apple

The New York Times covers the announcement of MySpace Music. The new site is a joint venture of News Corporation and the major recording companies, and has also secured a deal with the largest distributor of digital music from independent labels. Users will be able to select from the combined catalog of these companies and stream songs for free with embedded advertising. Users will also be able to purchase songs and ringtones for download via a partnership with Amazon.com. The site represents a collective bet by the music industry on free, advertising supported music as its future. If successful, industry leaders believe it could cause a steep climb in global sales up from its current $30 billion annually. Music companies also hope that the site will weaken Apple’s grip on the business.

Newspapers losing ground to other local media

More bad news for newspaper publishers attempting to effect the transition to a digital future: They appear to have hit a revenue wall compared to their online competition. According to a new Borrell Associates report cited on ClickZ, newspaper sites are currently still generating more revenue per site than their local competitors--pure-play Internet firms plus local TV and radio sites--but revenue growth has slowed to a trickle comparatively, and the sector is losing market share. Internet pure plays now account for 53 percent of all local online revenue compared to 27 percent for newspaper sites. The report argues that newspaper companies will not be able to successfully transition to the digital space without severing their online operations from their print operations,

Times Online to charge for archive access

News Corporation’s Times of London has erected a paid firewall in front of its online article archive, according to The Guardian. The online archive, which was launched in June 2008, features articles dating back to 1785.

To launch, perchance to dream

Oh no they didn’t! Advertising Age reports that News Corporation, Wenner Media, and Hearst are all launching new print magazine titles--all of them targeting the luxury market.

Trying to protect print business, celebrity mags risk losing all to web

If you thought you could never learn anything useful from celebrity magazines, think again. By sticking relentlessly to print, and giving miniscule lip service to the web, these newsstand-driven titles appear to be hanging on--just barely. But a closer look dishes up a darker picture. According to Silicon Alley Insider, the torch seems to have been passed to gossip sites like people.com and perezhilton.com, which are edging the franchise brands out of the celebrity space by virtue of their strong showing on the Internet.

25 million Adobe AIR apps have been downloaded

Adobe AIR, the framework for web/desktop hybrid applications, is on the cusp of widespread acceptance, says ReadWriteWeb. Over 25 million AIR-based applications have been downloaded since the framework launched earlier this year, and the developer toolkit has been downloaded 850,000 times.

media file 9.2.08: Defining “social enterprise 2.0”

Enterprise 2.0: The Nature of the Firm

ReadWriteWeb says that the social web is destined to fundamentally restructure the way business is done--with consequences deep and wide for any for-profit or non-profit enterprise. A next generation of enterprises has emerged that is focusing on two main objectives: how to organize global scarcity into new, socially responsible markets; and how to organize business innovations into accessible solutions to today’s global social problems.

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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 September 2, 2008:

Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results

The McKinsey Quarterly reports on its second annual executive survey on the use of web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise. While only 21 percent of executives polled were satisfied with their web 2.0 investments, respondents who did report high satisfaction stated that their organizations were leveraging these investments to change management practices, flatten organizational structures, involve customers in product development, and tap the external expertise of suppliers and partners.

Investor Advocates Creating Issue-Specific Networks

In a quest for greater effectiveness, the corporate social responsibility movement is starting to adopt the tools and strategies of the social web, says CSRwire. Investors, activists, trade associations, and NGOs are banding together into issue-specific social networks that share research, strategies, and best practices openly with each other and invite comment from all stakeholders. This “Open SRI” model is expected to lead to new online advocacy resources involving mashups of previously proprietary data sets.

Google ally T-Mobile looks poised to compete with Apple’s App Store

VentureBeat says that cellular phone carrier T-Mobile is adopting an open software model for its next generation mobile web phones. According to the post, this move will spur a new wave of VC investment in the mobile social web.

Cut your legal fees using Y Combinator’s funding documents

Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator has adopted an “open source” strategy of placing its library of standard deal documents into the public domain, writes VentureBeat. The firm believes that this step will increase the number of fundable startups overall, and will attract the best startups to itself.

Uh-oh, Where Did Those Newspaper Web Ads Go?

Although newspaper sites are expected to post double-digit advertising growth overall in 2008, some major publishers are experiencing online revenue declines for the first time, a worrying trend for an industry that is in transition from print from web. What separates winners from losers? According to Advertising Age, the strongest organizations are furthest along in an building online advertiser base independent from print, whereas the weakest organizations still rely heavily on upselling print customers to the web.

Yet Another Cool Digital Newspaper Product: The Wall Street Journal, For Free, On Your BlackBerry

Silicon Alley Insider enthuses over the new Wall Street Journal Mobile Reader for the BlackBerry device, suggesting that innovative applications like this, arriving even without a revenue model, represent the kind of thinking that could eventually put the newspaper industry back on track.

Social Networks Get Down to Business

Business-to-business ad spending on online social networks is starting to heat up, according to eMarketer. The market research firm announced a new report forecasting that b2b ad spending will rise from $15 million in 2007 to $210 million in 2012. According to the report, the audience for business social networks is exploding, including broad-based professional sites like LinkedIn, but also vertical sites geared toward IT professionals, lawyers, and other professional groups, as well as horizontal consumer sites like Facebook, which is experiencing big growth in usage by business executives.

What’s the Future of Brand Journalism? Collision Content

For companies focused on the social web, “brand journalism” (journalism-like content created by for-profit and non-profit enterprises) poses some special risks. Advertising Age offers a guide to risk mitigation in an environment where brand is decidedly not in control.

media file 8.13.08: Don’t calculate; innovate!

None of Your Business Model

On MediaShift Idea Lab, MIT Media Lab researcher Christopher Csikszentmihalyi posits that the current rush to find a business model to support professional journalism may be missing the point. The most disruptive trend in the recent history of information technology--the free software movement--succeeded largely in the absence of anything resembling a conventional business model. Instead, it began by reformulating the basic notion of how software development is done, and the business models that subsequently emerged inherited the transformative efficiencies that came with free software’s movement-based approach. Media could evolve in much the same way.

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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 August 13, 2008:

The innovation imperative

KMWorld interviews innovation guru John Kao on the moral imperative to introduce the concept of innovation to all aspects of the US economy. Why? A focus on innovation puts all stakeholders on an equal footing--and thereby advances a more just, equitable, competitive, and prosperous society.

Managing Corporate Social Networks

Here’s the news you don’t want to hear, courtesy of Harvard Business Review: When left unmanaged, corporate social networks inhibit innovation, rather than enable it. Company executives shouldn’t expect informal, interdivisional networks to spontaneously produce innovations; they must consciously manage the structure of these networks to promote innovation at all its various stages.

Japan’s super-advanced mobile web: Too unique to serve as a global blueprint?

Why has the mobile web taken off like wildfire in Japan, while in the US it’s still mostly found in Powerpoint presentations? Techcrunch identifies the key conditions that have resulted in 70 percent penetration in that market: Superior mobile web technology; great content; and a tech-savvy, demanding consumer base.

CondeNet Positions to Better Compete With Ad Networks

Feeling the hot breath of niche advertising networks like Glam Media close behind it, Conde Nast is unifying its CondeNet web holdings under a set of content-specific buys, according to Advertising Age.

Censorship: Yahoo, Microsoft, Google Agree on Code of Conduct

In the aftermath of civil liberties scandals that have tarnished their reputations in the global marketplace, ReadWriteWeb reports that the world’s three largest Internet content providers have agreed on a global code of conduct that focuses on three core components: adherence to the principles of freedom of expression and privacy; a set of common implementation guidelines; and a shared governance and accountability framework.

Green business: Scandinavia’s lateral thinkers

The Guardian dissects Sweden’s knockout success in creating a green economy with a double-digit growth rate. The keys: a consensus society that includes all stakeholders; and a commitment to profit.

media file 8.11.08: “Press release 2.0”—corporate disclosure meets the social web

SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure. Can We Now Kill the Press Release?

On Techcrunch, social media expert Brian Solis discusses the SEC’s decision to permit public companies to disclose material financial information via corporate blogs versus the traditional press release, and forecasts that this will lead to the rise of the “social media release”: corporate news announcements that are enriched by external links, commenting, bookmarking, and other media sharing tools--social media innovations that could bring a new level of transparency to corporate disclosure.

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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 August 11, 2008:

Mary Robinson: Human rights are good for business

INSEAD Knowledge interviews former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson about the link between a corporation’s commitment to human rights and its success in the global marketplace.

An Interview with Peter Senge

Pegasus Communications’ Leverage Points reviews Peter Senge’s newest book, “The Necessary Revolution,” and discusses its key insight with the organizational learning expert: Collaborative networks of organizations, not governments or individuals acting separately, will be responsible for the emergence of a sustainable global economy.

A Closer Look at Business Education: Ethical Globalization

The Aspen Institute’s Caseplace.org presents a case study in how organizations are engaging in leadership development initiatives to ensure that their commitments to ethical globalization are reflected successfully in their mission, strategies, and practices.

IBM Creates Volunteer Teams to Cultivate Emerging Markets

The Wall Street Journal reports on the launch of the IBM Corporate Service Corps program, which places rising stars within the organization on four-week volunteer stints in businesses and nonprofits located in emerging markets such as Romania, Turkey, Ghana, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Tanzania. IBM is the first US-based corporation to combine international community service and team leadership development in one program.

The business of positive change

Abu Dhabi-based INSEAD Knowledge discusses the potential of social enterprise to change global dynamics. “Social entrepreneurs identify opportunities for social profit where others see only problems.”

Put Your Game Face On And Plant Some Trees With SGN

TechCrunch reports that social gaming company Social Gaming Network has teamed up with the Arbor Day Foundation on a Facebook game that that the two organizations will co-promote. SGN will donate a portion of game revenues to the foundation.

Microsoft proves there are just six degrees of separation between us

The Guardian reports on a study by Microsoft researchers showing, on a global scale, that individuals are separated from personal acquaintance with each other only by a handful of other individuals. Researchers analyzed over 30 billion Microsoft Messenger instant messages sent among 180 million people around the globe, confirming that the “six degrees” theory of social separation is roughly accurate.

media file 7.23.08: US media firms baffled by global growth

U.S. Web Sites Draw Traffic From Abroad But Few Ads

The Wall Street Journal reports that US-based web sites are facing huge growth in traffic from overseas, but few have even begun to figure out how to take advantage of this latest product of globalization.

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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 23, 2008:

China: Web use accelerates, e-business still lagging

VentureBeat reports on new figures showing that, while China's Internet user base has ballooned to over 230 million, that huge number still represents only 16 percent of its total population; and only 25 percent of users currently shop online.

Twitter: Made in the USA, growing faster overseas

VentureBeat reports on Hitwise data showing that Twitter's market penetration and usage rates in the UK and Japan are outpacing those in the US.

Google Approaches 70 Percent of U.S. Searches in June 2008

Hitwise reports new search engine traffic figures that show Google now commands close to 70 percent of the market in the US. In the UK and Australia, Google owns more than 87 percent share. Google has been taking share from #2 Yahoo and #3 MSN.

Spending on online advertising surpasses TV, report says

The LA Times reports on a study by media research firm Outsell forecasting that online ad spending will grow 12 percent to $105 billion in 2008, surpassing TV spend when advertisers' web site development spending is included in the mix.

Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds

ReadWriteWeb reviews a study by Beeline Labs revealing that a majority of corporate social networks analyzed were massive failures in driving user engagement. Main reasons: Heavy-handed approaches to branding and extremely weak social value propositions.

Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers?

ReadWriteWeb describes how firms doing business on the social web are building new capacity to facilitate communication between themselves and their external stakeholders.

Where Do the Best Ideas Come From? The Unlikeliest Sources

Advertising Age reports on a study by consulting firm Prophet that the most innovative companies develop broad-based "inspiration networks" that tap into the best ideas of their stakeholders.

Recognition is the Reward

In this post for AlwaysOn Network, Flybridge Capital Partners' Jeff Bussgang discusses the huge explosion in volunteer-driven open source projects around the globe, and ask what motivates so many to offer their talents to corporations for free.

Yahoo! Opens Up Search Technology

Yahoo has announced Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS), a set of APIs that allows third-party developers to create custom search applications and mashups using the Yahoo search platform.

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.