This type of post is considered bad form in the blogosphere. Even worse is letting a blog go stale in the first place. So please accept my apologies for both! I’ve had too many balls in the air and, unfortunately, let this one fall.
Since my last post, I joined a software consultancy called Neudesic to help build the Texas region and the Dallas and Austin offices, in particular. As the Regional Practice Director for the Custom Application Development practice, I’m responsible for setting strategic technology direction, cultivating our delivery capabilities, selling and leading engagements, and overseeing all activity within the practice. Now that I’ve had a chance to settle into the role, I plan to revive this blog and start posting regularly. I’ll share my thoughts and observations on the business, science, and art of software development, with a continued focus on interactive media (web, mobile, and social technologies).
For those of you who have been following Mediassembly… it is still alive and I plan to continue developing the company and its products. However, it is going through a substantial transformation from its original form. Mediassembly will be going back into “stealth mode” for a while, as the new strategy and focus is developed. We’ll be leveraging and extending the technologies that have been developed, but with very different focus and product. Stay tuned to this blog or mediassembly.com for more info as things progress.
This post is an introduction to a blog series I’ll be writing that will hopefully help clarify what interactive marketing is, the tools and technologies that enable it, and the disciplines and activities required to do it well.
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Just yesterday I blogged about why Mediassembly switched from Amazon AWS to Windows Azure. In that post, I mentioned that I hoped to have time to describe some of the technical pros/cons of each that influenced the decision. Well, had I done that, the details would have been outdated already. Amazon just announced enhancements to…
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Back in December I made a decision to migrate Mediassembly from Amazon’s AWS cloud platform to Microsoft’s Windows Azure. This post explains why. I’ve been holding this post in draft, waiting for time to add more detail. But to keep this from getting stale, I’ll just start with the the bottom line, which is this:…
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Each year my former colleagues at Razorfish conduct a survey to learn how technology is changing the way consumers engage with brands. The findings are published in their annual report, entitled FEED: The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report. The report is enlightening and compelling – a must read for any brand marketer. The highlights are…
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No, not the heavenly kind. I was recently invited to attend a local angel investment group meeting. It was an opportunity to meet local investors, listen to a few pitches from other entrepreneurs, and learn how the group operates. I gained some good insight and would suggest that anyone planning to seek angel investment for…
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There has been a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) around the FTC ruling regarding social media endorsements. I agree with many that it is actually a good thing and I don’t believe it can or will be applied as broadly as some people fear. WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, has provided…
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It’s been a busy week of announcements from cloud platform vendors. Amazon announced RDS, their MySQL-based relational data service, lower pricing on their EC2 compute service, new new higher memory and capacity EC2 instances. I see RDS as a welcome addition and very complimentary to Amazon’s SimpleDB service. SimpleDB provides simplicity and infinite scalability (relatively),…
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I see a clear parallel between the scalability challenges faced in software and the challenges that will be faced by agencies and marketing organizations as they attempt to scale their social media marketing programs. Brand engagement, at a personal level, is critical to success. But brand representatives are finite and expensive resources. As social media usage continues to grow, along with consumer expectations of brand engagement, consumer demand for attention will exceed brands’ ability to connect at a personal level. Brands can’t add marketers as readily as they add servers. But without those personal connections, the social media marketing benefits are lost. If brands can’t scale their social media engagement and maintain personal connections, they will be perceived as using social media as a broadcasting medium – and end up fostering resentment, rather than affinity.
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“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” ~ Abraham Maslow That golden hammer mentality can be seen in the use of community platforms by many brands. Broadly, there are three common business goals and uses for community platforms. (Again, broadly – there are many more specific uses.) Support –…
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