The company’s future depends on finding just the right balance between the privacy expectations of its users and the quality of the social marketing data it can serve to its business partners.

For many people, Facebook is the first stop in any Web surfing session. It has developed into a highly engaging combination of online bulletin board, personal scrapbook, and group communication network. But did you ever wonder why, being all those things, Facebook is free?
Well, it really isn’t. Facebook offers its service in exchange for the right to capture …

How generous of the nice people of 37Signal to share with the world the amazing artwork from their most recent REWORK book. The book is a MUST read for everyone with a pulse, the artwork is eye candy for who believes that :
business–>art–life–>business (again)
Links:

REWORK Illustration flickr stream
Slideshow
Buy REWORK (the book) at Amazon.com
37signal

The new book Rework tells you how.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are two of my favorite guys in the tech industry. That’s mainly because they have little in common with everyone else in the tech industry. Their 10-year-old company, 37signals, makes Web software for businesses. These products are universally hailed as simple, elegant, and useful—not to mention extremely popular and profitable. Yet 37signals’ software often seems like a byproduct of a larger mission. On Signal vs. Noise, their entertaining company blog, and in lectures and classes all over …

What if everything we did was a little more fun?
Ever since Foursquare burst onto the scene with its clever badges and simplified “mayoral” achievements, people have been going gaga for game mechanics (and Gaga videos, circumstantially). Its competitors and allies, from Gowalla and Yelp to Miso, Hot Potato and my own startup, beamME, have been evangelizing the value of points, badges, levels, challenges, leaderboards and achievements as an easy and powerful way to get consumers to engage with a product or service.
This use of game mechanics outside of games—also …

The new book Rework tells you how.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are two of my favorite guys in the tech industry. That’s mainly because they have little in common with everyone else in the tech industry. Their 10-year-old company, 37signals, makes Web software for businesses. These products are universally hailed as simple, elegant, and useful—not to mention extremely popular and profitable. Yet 37signals’ software often seems like a byproduct of a larger mission. On Signal vs. Noise, their entertaining company blog, and in lectures and classes all over …

Here at The Economist Innovation Conference in Berkeley, California, hundreds of thought leaders have gathered to discuss the process, politics and economics of innovation.
How do you create an innovative technology? How do you balance innovation and economics? What fosters great ideas? On stage earlier today was Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, who spoke to a lot of these points. He was interviewed by Economist correspondent Martin Giles; He also answered question from the audience.
Here’s a small sampling of his thoughts on how innovation and …

What was once just a Seattle event — first started by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Media and Bre Pettis formerly of Etsy.com in 2006 — Ignite has grown to become an ongoing series of International geek gatherings where the brightest minds get five minutes of stage time to make their point.
Today marks the start of Ignite’s most ambitious endeavor to date: Global Ignite Week. This week-long Ignite extravaganza has been eight months in the making and is a first of its kind.
You can find an Ignite event to attend …

Chrysler was in dire straits earlier this year, and while bankruptcy is now behind the Pentastar, the battle that looms ahead will prove if Chrysler can truly remain a viable company. Chrysler’s hope rests with Fiat, the Italian car comglomerate who took a 30% stake in Chrysler as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. While we’ve heard much and seen little thus far in regards to the future Chrysler lineup, the Detroit International Auto Show should give some hint as to the direction of Chrysler/Fiat.
One such car sure to make …

http://Discuss2010.com

In the last post I beat you to death about ditching your business plan but failed to provide an alternative.
Okay okay, “Planning = Bad,” but the supposed benefits of planning are still important: designing for profitability, understanding your customers and competitors, focusing your attention, deciding what’s worth doing next, changing directions, and ensuring the founders agree on important issues.
To help you, I’m stealing a trick from therapists.
Therapists don’t tell you what to do. Rather, they ask probing questions that get you to discover for yourself what is true for …

Small companies can already tap the power of the crowds for help with their graphic design, advertising and other business challenges. Whereas most such services reward the creator of just a single winning solution, however, FreshlyBranded pays its marketing creatives for the top 10 ideas.
Read more at: Springwise
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{Photography by yab994}

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer. “

Read more at: Seth Godin’s Blog on marketing, tribes and respect
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{Photography by Joi}

Let’s call it the “Paranormal Effect” initiative.
Clearly dazzled by the fact that it could gross more than $100 million on a movie that barely cost $15,000 to make, Paramount Pictures is set to launch a new production wing devoted to films budgeted at less than $100,000. As my colleague John Horn reported today:

“The as-yet-unnamed division’s initial plan is to finance as many as 20 ‘micro-budget’ movies annually starting in 2010… Funds for the movies — about $1 million annually — will be part of Paramount’s existing production budget….Some of …

The Daily Mail has uncovered an orangutan at the Vienna Tiergarten Zoo that uses a modified Samsung ST 1000 digital camera to automatically post photos to Facebook.
Nonja, the 33-year-old orangutan, has more than 10,000 fans on her Facebook page, which was created on Tuesday by the zoo. The page currently boasts 20 photos taken by Nonja . . .
Read more at: Mashable
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{Photography by itshears}

Last week the world watched in wonder as Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz’s wedding party transformed a familiar and predictable tradition into something spontaneous and just flat-out fun. The video, set to R&B star Chris Brown’s hypnotic dance jam “Forever,” became an overnight sensation, accumulating more than 10 million views on YouTube in less than one week. But as with all great YouTube videos, there’s more to this story than simple view counts.

At YouTube, we have sophisticated content management tools in place to help rights …

Every time I watch Rick Sanchez on CNN or every time I get a new follow update from someone I know in real life, who 12 months ago made fun of me for being on Twitter, I question its value over time: are Twitter and other social networks destined to niche status or are they so embedded in our lives that they are now an indispensable part of our society?
To answer, we can take a look at some other community-based cultural phenomena as a way to shine a light …

Seth’s Blog, December 2008: If you could change your life. Here Seth challenges audiences to do something different while taking matters into their own hands, and he leads by participating. He’s offering to open up his offices for 6 months.
Squidoo lens: Don’t go to Business School
SAMBA Blog
Seth’s Blog, June 4, 2009: Learning from the MBA program. Here’s a re-cap, Seth’s style of what happen. Candid, objective, personal, with lots of resources, sharing stories and accounts. Readers felts a bit as if they were there, and many others wished they …