Holtz Communications + Technology

What is the evolutionary path of social networks? Blogs might hold the answer. In the early days of blogging, blogs were independent units, unafilliated with other web content. Sure, you could link to your blog from elsewhere, but they didn’t integrate into websites. Today, it’s not uncommon to see “blog” listed as a core element of a website (like this) or even serving as the…

Business adoption of social media: It’s not about employee rights

The caller to today’s live episode of “For Immediate Release” (via BlogTalk Radio) was something of a revelation. Evidently, there are those who believe the counsel I and other communication consultants give to organizations about the adoption of social media is based on a fundamental belief in an employees’ right to do whatever they want.

Not…

There is no limit to the uses to which companies can put social media, but companies have to be willing to experiment in order to discover those uses. A lot of companies are reluctant, for one reason or another, to undertake such experimentation. (See my post on why companies resist social media for elaboration.) General Motors is not one of them.

I spoke last week about the uses of social media for industrial organizations. The venue was the annual conference of a trade association representing these companies that employ lots of blue-collar workers who go to outdoor job sites every day; they never sit in front of computers except, maybe, at home.

The audience was made up of owners of smaller companies…

I maintain a couple of lifestreams, one at Tumblr and one at Jaiku. The Tumblr lifestream frustrates the hell out of me. I enter the URL of a perfectly valid feed, then check back to find a big red X and a note informing me that the feed could be found. Jaiku finds all the feeds without any trouble.

In case…

Ragan Communications has posted an article (in which I was quoted) dealing with the issue of employers blocking access to social media sites. The response has been interesting. I started responding in the comment area, but that’ll just take too much room. Here are the points made by various commenters and my responses (I’m not naming the authors of the comments because…