Exploring social business strategy

I spend most of my working life researching how collaborative technologies – particularly social media – are impacting business strategy. My academic background is in economics. So when The Economist does a special report on something like social networking, it always gets my attention. And as with most articles in the publication, I always find [...]

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Last week I wrote about The Hipstery, focusing on the concept of using data to create and leverage “blind spots”. This week I’m going to talk about SeatGeek – a relatively new start-up that uses existing data to empower customers, and potentially alter the dynamics of the secondary ticket industry.
What SeatGeek does is gather information [...]

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My job as executive editor at nGenera Insight involves doing a lot of research about new business models and start-ups tied to the Web 2.0. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be sharing a high level overview of some of the work I’ve been doing recently. Today I’m going to start by talking [...]

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Very early in my career, I was told there are very few new ideas out there – if you’ve thought of it, somebody else probably has as well. What’s rare is for people to actually do something with the idea. So I find it quite amusing when I see people get all upset about somebody [...]

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I do research for a living. A lot of it tends to centre on the Web 2.0. And the Chairman of my research group wrote Wikinomics. So I spend quite a bit of time out looking for new companies and business models, with a particularly keen eye for things that are “opening up”. But to [...]

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In most cases, getting something for free is preferable to paying for it. But now always. One example I’ve always found intriguing on this front is online dating sites. If you’re (say) a very attractive female, it’s HIGHLY likely that you will be inundated with messages from potential suitors. But by making the suitors pay [...]

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As part of my ongoing research, I’ve been paying close attention to developments around Twitter’s “list” feature (launched in October) – “A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts.” Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting finding (that has me scratching my ahead a bit) in relation to follower [...]

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Every once in awhile I come across a story that, while interesting, makes absolutely no sense to me. Outvesting, which I discovered through Springwise, is just such a story. What the site has managed to do is raise $5,000 in seed capital, through 100 donations of $50 each, for a yet-unchosen Irish start-up to use. [...]

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I’m working on a new presentation about Twitter that’s going to be delivered in a couple of weeks. The first few slides are about what I’m calling the phases of Twitter’s evolution (based on my experience with it) – the types of discussion that seemed most relevant to understanding the platform at various junctures, and [...]

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Every year I join about a dozen high school buddies and head out on an NFL roadie. Every year it’s a different team – with New England, Green Bay, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis being among the most recent destinations. Many of the tickets are VERY hard to get – particularly when you’re angling for a dozen [...]

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