I found this arresting chart on Swivel . It plots the number of bloggers who have been incarcerated over the past few years, based on data collected by the World Information Access project. The number of incidents it tracks went from five arrests in 2003 to 35 last year. As blogging expands internationally, so do the risk of speaking one’s mind. (Something many of us take for granted).
Most of those arrests are in countries with oppressive regimes, such as Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. But bloggers have been arrested in Canada, France, Greece, and even the U.S. (with Josh Wolf being one of the most famous incidents—he spent the better part of a year in jail for refusing to turn over journalistic video footage to a grand jury).
A few involve cases of alleged terrorism or pedophilia, but the majority involve some form of political speech. Sources! It seems that law enforcers would like clogging as well. Blogging is not only a mind-numbing activity, but it can also get you arrested. On a more serious note, it’s just another reminder that the sources are a crucial part of the clogging experience. It’s essentially humans filtering information written and reported by the pros as opposed to creating your own less valid and biased information.
How do we tell our existing clients that we are renaming our company without confusing or alienating them?
Rather than take an entirely new name, which can cause confusion and disenfranchise people who were loyal to the old “brand,” you can update your name by turning it into an acronynm. Look at AT&T, RCA, MGM and many more that were venerable names that needed to update their old images. If you can’t go this route, you can keep some part of the old name and add to it. That will indicate expansion and growth.
In the case of a complete relaunch with an entirely new name, you’ll need to invest in a complete rebranding campaign with emphasis on assuring clients that their old services will remain.
I thought this was an interesting response to the question. It’s one opinion that could be relevant in any future discussions about a name change (i.e. Amplify).
Regardless of the title your company’s top technology executive uses — CTO, CIO, Chief Product Officer or VP of Engineering — your company will ultimately look to this person to produce the software and technical products upon which your business success depends.
5. Failure to Build World Class Team
As important as any other aspect of your job is the need to cultivate the best team possible given the limitations of your budget, mission and headcount.
4. Failure to Execute
At the end of the day, our jobs are all about creating and maximizing shareholder value.
3. Failure to Lead/Motivate/Inspire
Leadership has to do with those things that inspire an organization to achieve remarkable and extraordinary results.
2. Failure to Manage Operationally
Often, performance lapses by technology executives root to a lack of planning, communication or measurement
1. Lack of Financial Acumen
Most technology curricula do not teach the basics of how businesses operate in financial terms
I don’t think that these apply to CM, however, I thought it was an interesting article given we still have the “start-up” status. I tend to think that the CM team is quite strong and that everyone plays a crucial role in the construction of the site.
 The price is wrong.
Digg is truly the most useless of the big Web 2.0 sites. It won’t make you money and it can’t make money. Its early investors and founder will make money, and if they pull off a sale, management and the founders will have done their job.
The latest rumor is Google buying Digg for $200 million. That would imply that Google (GOOG) needs traffic from the lunatic fringe. They don’t.
So far, the media companies have not liked what they see, be it price and/or opportunity. No surprise to me.
Today Google has launched Knol, its Wikipedia alternative that holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each article is created by a team of authors who receive attribution, and are allowed to take part in a rev-share for AdSense ads on their page. Other users can submit changes, but they have to be approved by the article’s original authors before they go live on the site (it’s basically a moderated Wikipedia).
The big news here is that by assigning ownership and allowing authors to include AdSense ads on their articles, Google is effectively offering a monetary incentive to create good content.
Wikipedia works well because it’s almost like a charitable organization. Everyone contributes what they can in the hopes of furthering the world’s knowledge. Knol’s community will likely be far more concerned with earning money than the general welfare, which may hurt both its credibility and the amount of participation it sees from the community.
Adsense could serve as incentive for an even higher quality of clipping. Not to mention a source of cash for those clippers who might be getting tired of clipping.
Clip. Learn. Make some cash.
Instant messaging service Meebo announced a new product tonight called community Instant Messaging that will effectively provide “instant messaging in a box” to any site with a community. It will be a federated system, which means users can access friends on other meebo powered social networks, too. Like Facebook Chat, users can “pop out” the chat session and keep it live on their desktop even after they leave the site. The business model: Meebo will offer this free and place ads. Revenues are split 50/50 with the partner. For now Meebo is only working with a few partners, but over time they say they will open up the API for everyone and provide the service as a utility on demand.
Having the option to use a Meebo-ish chatbox for clogs is something I find quite interesting. Having the possibility for live chat (either about the clip or not) within a clogging community sounds appetizing. Food for thought.
I had previously posted a poll for the folks reading this blog to vote on a poll for how they’d launch a new product, and here were the results (as of this afternoon), ranked in order:
How do you launch a new product or service?
- Start with a site, then add app(s) later 56% (102 votes)
- Start with app(s), then add a site later 21% (38 votes)
- Destination site only 10% (19 votes)
- Social network app(s) only 8% (14 votes)
I really expected that there would be more folks to be emphasizing app and widget development rather than destination sites. Another way to look at this is that 66% of the votes had you starting with a destination site first, with apps being an afterthought.
Perhaps with all the Facebook and OpenSocial excitement that I’m exposed to in the Bay Area, it’s easy to perceive that *everyone* is working on apps when in fact there are many more traditional approaches out there.
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Another reason why CLOGGING is better
Is there such a concept left in the lexicon as mobile blogging, or “moblogging”? Devices like the iPhone, services like 
