Thursday, June 14, 2007

Blogging Tools Develop Content Management Ambitions

The social media and traditional web worlds continue to converge as more sites add elements for user participation and engagement. It’s no surprise that the systems to support these features are also rapidly evolving. The latest news from Six Apart reflects this trend.

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The Big City 2015

Forbes has an interesting series of articles this week on the future of cities and the statistics are staggering. First, here’s a little history. The ten biggest cities in 1900 were:

1. London (6.5 million)
2. New York (4.2 million)
3. Paris (3.3 million)
4. Berlin (2.7 million)
5. Chicago (1.7 million)
6. Vienna (1.7 million
7. Tokyo (1.5 million)
8. St. Petersburg (1.4 million)
9. Manchester (1.4 million)
10.Philadelphia (1.4 million)

All but one of these cities—Tokyo—were in Europe or the United States.

Now here’s the projected top ten most populous cities list for 2015:

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Silhouetting The Difference Between Marketing, Advertising, Branding and PR

Put away those textbooks and white papers. It’s all explained here in these four easy-to-understand illustrations (via kottke.org).

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Circuit City Confessional:  The Consumer Is In Control

One of the biggest shifts in marketing over the last several years has been the transfer of power from marketers to consumers. This has largely been enabled by the Web. With the current Web tools now available to everyone—blogs, social networks, podcasts—the consumer currently has as the power, ability and means to communicate and disseminate information that was once the exclusive domain of marketers who could buy access, influence and reach through mainstream media.

A classic example is this potentially damaging inside view of marketing practices at Circuit City posted on the Consumerist blog. It was written by a former Circuit City employee, and it details 27 practices that may be of keen interest to anybody buying products or services at that company’s stores.

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Monday, June 11, 2007

Communicators: Who Do You Resemble?

Do you – or the communicators you know – resemble Larry King, Barney Fife, Dr. Phil, Winston Churchill or Julie from the “Love Boat”? As follow-up to his recent keynote at a Ragan conference, the hilarious and perceptive Steve Crescenzo has outlined five categories of communicators he has met over the years.

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