Repent, all ye bloggers; the end of the blogosphere is nigh

In the world of social media, nothing can ever be merely affected. It has to be killed. Slaughtered. Eviscerated. Massacred.

Google+ is the latest alleged killer. Search the phrase “will Google+ kill” and you’ll find nearly 30,000 results speculating whether Google will kill Facebook, Twitter, search engine optimization, email, Flickr, the list goes on.

Some of the rationale for these predictions are head-shakingly stupid. Quora was the last shiny new object deemed a blog-killer. Today, I routinely hear people ask, “Remember Quora? Whatever happened to it?” While Quora isn’t getting the outpouring of love it did a few months ago, it… Read More »

The check-in earns the latest declaration of death

Last night, I joined some other members of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media advisory board, along with some others attending a conference here in Seattle, at the trendy pan-Asian restaurant, Wild Ginger. Once seated, a Singha cradled in my left hand, I used my right to grab my smartphone and check in.

How 15 minutes ago, right? After all, ReadWriteWeb has proclaimed the check-in dead, pointing out that FourSquare has lost half its web traffic over a recent five-month period, pretty serious stuff, especially in light of FourSquare’s announcement that it had amassed 8.5 million users.

As the company signs up new users, check-in… Read More »

Deathwatch: Why Facebook won’t kill your website

Not that long ago, a chorus of voices rose in opposition to advertising campaigns that drove consumers directly to a Facebook page at the expense of the company’s website. They raised all kinds of alarms over this approach, from lack of control (what happens if Facebook shuts down?) to SEO issues (why would you want to share the link love with Facebook?).

Now Jay Baer insists Facebook is killing your website. On his thought-provoking Convince & Convert blog, Baer, writes:

Like print newspapers, basketball players under 6 feet tall, and the McRib sandwich, the website as we know it will soon be a thing of the past ??? a quaint reminder…

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iPad apps won’t replace the narrative art form known as a “book”

A tweet directed me to a TechCrunch guest post titled, “Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, not an iBook.”

While the post’s author, 21-year-old startup exec Cody Brown, doesn’t exactly make the case that books are dead, he does suggest that authors eyeing the iPad as a platform for their books are “missing the point:”

What do you think would have happened if George Orwell had the iPad? Do you think he would have written for print then copy and pasted his story into the iBookstore? If this didn???t work out well, do you think he would have complained that there aren???t any serious-readers anymore? No. He would have looked…

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Death Watch: Marketing and advertising have an important place in the complex media ecosystem

We have a tendency to assume that a law of physics applies equally to the media world. In physics, according to Newton’s third law of motion, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

This odd assumption crossed my mind to me as I was reading last night. In the he book I was reading, the author argued that, thanks to the Internet, geography doesn’t matter any more. Under Newton’s law, this makes sense:

Action: The Internet has given us access to everybody everywhere all the time.
Reaction: Geography is no longer a factor in our interactions.

In truth, though, our complex and messy world does not abide by such clear-cut rules.… Read More »

Death Watch: Feeds are important, but widgets still work

Twitter and Facebook’s rising popularity have altered the online habits of more than a few people. Given the volume of information that comes our way through the tweets and status updates of those we follow, many are now convinced that the news finds us.

Certainly I discover a lot of interesting news by way of shortened URLs embedded in tweets, and the recent use of Twitter to direct Central Texans to the site of a hospital treating victims of the Fort Hood shootings exemplifies the ways Twitter increasingly is being used as a news delivery vehicle. But given the speed with which tweets fly by, I’m bound to miss a lot of news if I’m… Read More »

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