Holtz Communications + Technology

It’s funny how The Pew Internet & American Life Project can release results of a study in December, but a late-February article about one of the study results published in The New York Times can create such an uproar.

The Pew study offered a broad overview of how members of different generations use the Net. Among many other things, the study revealed that

UPDATE: Today, January 14, Etsy has announced policy changes that were sparked by the protest outlined in the post below. These changes prohibit the offending products. The post notes that the “intense debate” online led to the review of the policies and subsequent changes.

UPDATE: CNN Headline News has covered the tale of the cards for sale on Etsy.

UPDATE: Per Jonathan Mast, Etsy…

I’ve written before that press embargoes are still employed effectively and can work well when implemented correctly. While TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is leading the “embargoes are dead” charge, they continue to be a staple outside the world of tech journalism.

There’s a lot to doing embargoes right, but one of the most important dimensions of embargoes is an explicit agreement between the journalist or blogger and…

Last week I reacted to the notion that moderating blog comments is a fast path to annoying your readers. Comments to the post leaned toward moderation, but several—including some from people I respect deeply—opposed moderation on personal blogs, suggesting it’s up to the blogger to check comments frequently and weed out the spam. By allowing comments to appear instantly, commenters are happy while…

I awakened this morning to find nine comments to this blog awaiting moderation. Despite the installation of Akismet, the plugin that blocks such things, all nine comments were spam. Seven were blatant off-topic pitches for everything from personal loans to coupon sites. Two offered vague observations (e.g., “This is such an interesting experience.The point that the data stated are all first hand…

This blog features a creative Commons license that lets anybody do anything they like with the content published here, as long as proper attribution is given and it’s used for non-commercial purposes. I have agreements with a couple organizations to republish posts (including Ragan Communications and Social Media Today). Basically, what all this means is that the same content appears in…