We create the stories of the connected society

Acquisition is part of the solution for “big media” companies to catch up in the era of new media. But they need to go further, including more investments in early-stage ventures.

SeeClickFix, a company that helps people report and track community needs like roads in need of repair, was one of the two winners in the 2009 PitchIt challenge. That’s our early-stage venture investment competition. We invested $25,000 to help the company get off the ground – and they have been working hard ever since building [...]

Vanity Fair put theirs on Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. If you value accuracy, clarity, spelling and good sentences, check out the work of people who wield smart pencils here.
If you prefer to watch and listen, William Shatner makes Palin a poet.

Stories float, diffuse, wash over us.

Designer Jonathan Harris explores new territory.

Here’s what Mathew Robson, a a 15-year-old in the UK, wrote in a report for Morgan Stanley that has high-paid researchers, media execs and financial analysts wondering what they do for a living:
Radio: With online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free and users can [...]

Our social networks spin out from ourselves, and back again into us.

I don’t recall where I was when Buddy Holly died. But I’ll recall where I was when Michael Jackson died. I was on Twitter.
– One Twitterer by the name of toomarvelous
I will remember where I was when I heard the news about Michael Jackson because it came for me in an unexpected place in [...]

Respectively submitted for your persusal: GM tanks. A plane falls out of the sky. The American president reaches out to the Muslim world. Newspapers slip-slide away. Every blogger has a better idea. Ashton Kutcher says he’s eclipsed CNN as media. 
Surreal? Apocalyptic? Prescient? After forty days and forty nights of downpours, biblical storms, and consequential events [...]

We Media members, readers, fans and friends are invited to breakfast and a conversation with Fast Company magazine founder Alan Webber and best-selling author Dan Pink.
When: 8 am – 10 am Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Where: The Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner, 1700 Tysons Blvd. McLean, VA USA
To register: Click here.
The Washington Board of Trade has extended its [...]

New search engine Wolfram|Alpha launched this week with the Star Trekkian goal to “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone.” Just what the world needs most.
Here’s an example from its visual gallery of examples. Really cleared things up for me.

When Andrew and I framed the concept of We Media back in 2002, we adopted a phrase that was intentionally ambiguous. Our intent was to inform and to be informed by a societal movement around media that respected and impacted everyone. It didn’t matter if you worked in offices, owned presses and managed big businesses [...]

A few weeks back Amazon got blasted by gay rights groups when it was discovered that gay and lesbian book titles were delisted from its site. Amazon claimed an internal glitch caused the problem and declined to offer additional details.  A spokesperson was quoted saying
“This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company [...]

There’s a media and technology feeding frenzy in Washington. Failing U.S. newspapers are looking for a bailout from the government; nonprofits, telecoms and policy wonks are scrambling to have their say and get their piece of the economic stimulus action – a few billion dollars – to expand broadband networks AND create more content and [...]