Is 150 Still the Magic Number?
Posted on 06. May, 2009 by Jason Chan in Social Media
One of the great things about the social network craze has been the number of raw new connections one can make through seemingly ethereal means. Between all of the requisite networks, I’ve somehow managed to create hundreds of connections to people whom I’ve worked with, met informally and shared something in common. Yet, over the [...]
Syndicating Experiences
Posted on 28. Apr, 2009 by Jason Chan in Customer Experience
There’s nothing new about syndication. It’s been around for decades, notably in newsmedia and TV. Then the web came around and RSS made it really easy to syndicate just about any piece of content you could think of. But what about syndicating experiences? Is that something that can be done? Yesterday, Facebook announced that it [...]
Share with Care
Posted on 27. Apr, 2009 by Jason Chan in Social Media, Strategy
A recent post on Mashable got me wondering about the effect of diluting proprietary intellectual property when it’s shared through social networks, Twitter and the like. It used to be that quality of original thought determined whether or not you were making a valuable contribution, particularly in academia. This was valued above all else – [...]
Social App Overload
Posted on 22. Apr, 2009 by Jason Chan in Life, Social Media
Seems like there’s no shortage of social sites, apps and tools these days. It’s only the middle of the week and I just got hooked onto Yammer, a relatively new private Twitter-like network for your company. We’ll have to see if I can get us to a tipping point of users and take advantage of [...]
What Does Strategy Mean to You?
Posted on 29. Mar, 2009 by Jason Chan in Strategy
If you ask 10 people what strategy means, you’ll probably get 10 completely different answers. And with just cause; it’s one of those nebulous terms that gets thrown around with abandon to the point where the meaning gets diluted. Even in my industry, there is still a lot of variance when it comes to what [...]
Bridging the Gap
Posted on 28. Mar, 2009 by Jason Chan in Customer Experience, Strategy
One of the cool things about technology is how it can help companies get closer with their customers. We saw it with the web and now with the trend towards social engagement, there are no shortages of ways to connect. However, too often we see companies use technology as a barrier or don’t have the [...]
Breadth vs. Depth
Posted on 22. Mar, 2009 by Jason Chan in Strategy
In the first class of business school, my accounting prof said “you guys will go a mile wide and an inch deep” regarding the amount of material we would cover and how detailed we would get. We slogged through 2 years and upon graduation, most of us moved onto pretty specialized fields in finance, consulting, [...]
Dropping the D
Posted on 12. Mar, 2009 by Jason Chan in Business Models, Strategy
Digital photography Digital music Digital marketing Enough already! When are we going to just drop the “Digital” and call them what they really are? It’s easy to think this is a minor point, but qualifying something as “digital” is old-school, traditional thinking. No wonder companies have such a hard time becoming digital. This is not [...]
Closing the Loop
Posted on 10. Mar, 2009 by Jason Chan in Strategy, Technology
At various points in my career, I’ve worked with various marketers who all dream of closed loop marketing, where they can account for the direct impact of their efforts on sales. If sales is like an art and science and marketing is much the same way. These days, everyone wants it to be more like [...]
Bloggers’ Oath
Posted on 09. Mar, 2009 by Jason Chan in Life, Social Media
A recent feature article in the New York Times featured a broad ranging interview with President Obama and got me thinking about the idea of a bloggers oath again. The writers covered many of the issues that face the U.S. from the economy, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy and so forth. What struck me [...]