Holtz Communications + Technology

Whether Plague takes off or is relegated to the scrap heap of failed apps remains to be seen, but the idea is intriguing (if not downright revolutionary). At its core, Plague democratizes the process of determining what spreads through social media, and even what goes viral. The app bills itself as “an essentially different way to spread information.”

The idea is simple. You share…

Flickr photo courtesy of Peter GordonWelcome to the Friday Wrap, my weekly summary of stuff I’ve found in the last seven days that didn’t grab the big headlines but is still important, interesting, and/or worthwhile for communicators and marketers. I collect these on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

Sobo is Vine for audio—Audio has been proliferating across the web in all kinds of…

Second Life image courtesy of TorleyThe Friday Wrap is a curated rundown of news, reports and posts from the past week that, while they didn’t go viral or attract much attention, are still interesting and useful for communications professionals. I select Wrap items from my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

Wikipedia tightens rules against undisclosed editing—In the wake of the…

Listen to enough hysterical warnings and dire forecasts and you’d think that information overload is leading us to some kind of bleak, post-apocalyptic future. In an Advertising Age column he wrote back in 2007, Edelman Senior VP Steve Rubel said, “A crash is coming, folks. But this time it’s not financial—it’s personal.” The attention crisis, he said, is an epidemic. “There’s no more room at the inn. People will cut…

A few weeks back, my friend David Murray singled me out in a post to his “Writing Boots” blog in which he complained about the stress that social media is causing him. David and I go way back and he’s hoping I have answers for him to ease his frustrations:

I’m over-friggin’ whelmed with the stuff, constantly scrambling from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn, round and…

Back in 1984, Stewart Brand uttered the words that have become the slogan of the free content movement: “Information wants to be free.”

Those who advocate free content, however, are taking Brand’s statement out of context. At the first Hacker’s conference where he made the statement, he was talking about the tension between the value of content and the vanishing cost associated with…