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Month: September 2010

Malcolm Gladwell misses the point

I’ve finally had a chance to read the recent Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker, entitled “Small Change – Why the revolution will not be tweeted”. While I respect Malcolm Gladwell quite a bit, I do often disagree with his views on certain subjects, usually those involving social media. The last great debate he sparked occurred when he called out Chris Anderson (author of the Long Tail), essentially dismissing Anderson’s “free” economy theory and views on the future role of journalism. The ensuing discussion and ripple effect this created throughout the social Internet is what I found most interesting. I’m hoping a similar “long-tail” discussion will evolve out of his latest piece.

The Girl Effect

I was going through some overdue Social Marketing ListServe reading today, when I happened to stumble across this Girl Effect video in one of Nancy Lee ‘s responses.  She came across it by reading a Nicholas D. Kristof article in the New York Times (Build, Boast, Sell). The debate on the ListServe revolved around the differences between Social Marketing and traditional Marketing. This video (created by Nike) illustrates how re-branding the approach on poverty (note that re-branding is a marketing technique) could have a powerful effect on how we deal with it. I only wish this great ListServe discussion had occurred on a more modern platform as it is now lost in email archives.

Nationality of the Internet

Take a look at the image below I found in the September 4th-10th edition of the Economist (p.g. 75). This is a visual representation of the “nationality” of traffic on the internet, created by California’s Co-operative Association for Internet Data Analysis. America is in pink, Italy in pale blue, Sweden in green and unknown countries in white. According to this visualization, it seems as though at least half of all traffic is still American (or at least with an American IP).