Democracy calls, who answers?

By far the most significant communications innovations of recent years, the mobile Internet and mobile applications have eclipsed the Internet, television, newspapers and radio as the world’s most popular way to access news, data and information. More than half the global population now pays to access information through services and applications on cellphones. Social impact […]

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The first We President

President Obama has a historic opportunity to communicate more directly with the American public – and with the entire world. The world, in turn, has an opportunity to monitor, inform and influence the Obama Administration’s actions and policies.

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Using social media for social change

By SUSAN MERNIT Net-enabled social tools have enabled new models for grassroots activism and community building, and they have changed how we function in society — how we communicate globally and locally, how we form ties and how we organize and connect. What’s tricky about deploying social media today is not access to the technology, […]

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Content in the creative commons. Who profits?

There’s a story going around that touts the Internet as a perpetual money machine. It goes something like this: many pieces of old content on the digital-now network have aggregate residual value that, over time, exceed present value of fresh content, which spikes and subsides quickly. The story is called the Long Tail. It is […]

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The sausage factory: Why advertisers and ad agencies are failing customers

By MARK WALSH Have you noticed how much time, money and intelligence is allocated to identify the demographic, psychographic, emotional and purchasing-intent characteristics of today’s Internet users (or consumers?)? Isn’t it amazing how great companies like Tacoda, Revenue Science, Ad.com and all the ad-networks are touting their ability to find the needle in the haystack? […]

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The We Media Game Changers

… and the winners are… Here is a quick rundown of the We Media Game Changer Award-winners. (Full essays on each will be available at the We Media conference and online, soon.) SocialVibe spurs social networkers to choose charities they can reward financially with dollars from sponsors who get a deeply engaged audience. Ze Frank […]

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We Media’s Witnesses: Everything you thought you knew about the news has changed.

The 800 reporters from the world’s news organizations who descended upon Blacksburg, Va., on April 16, 2007, to cover the shootings of students at Virginia Tech quickly discovered an inconvenient truth. Though remote, Blacksburg was hardly isolated. Students, educators and citizens reported the horrific events first-hand through long-established digital and social networks. The news reached […]

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