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Business has been built on the foundation of selling stuff. Hopefully, lots of stuff – products, ideas, services – to lots of folks.

The latest tool new-marketing experts are promoting to management is social media. You know, putting your products, your ideas in front of the masses to buy.

Most social media efforts today – Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube video program – are implemented, tested and measured to push what your stuff to retail (brick and mortar or ecommerce) to keep the cash register ringing. If the bottomline is black, the people who recommended and ran the program say, "See, it works!" If the bottomline bleeds red, another social media team is brought in.

Social media, the internet, smartphones, ecommerce, mobile to in-store signage and friends digital coupons put you in front of the customer. If it's a bad product, bad process or the business-as-usual model hasn't changed to align with today's new environment; social media people and tools won't produce the results you want and need…a sustainable business.

Digital marketing and social media programs that are implemented on top of the same old business model to move the products/ideas are too obvious, too easy to see through. They’re about as transparent as Morgan Spurlock's recent documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

The business of yesterday was tough. The business of tomorrow is even tougher; and only a few will be willing to be sit there and be told what they want and must buy through psychological manipulation and repetition. Read more

"Everyone" is embracing social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, etc. It's a way for organizations to bring their staffs, consultants, customers closer together.

Social media is the more efficient, more effective way for companies and consumers to identify each other's wants, needs, goals. It was one of the underlying themes of Dreamforce – The Cloud Computing Event of the Year, sponsored by Salesforce.com.

Internal and external social media has become such a big business (check all of the cloud company stocks) that the global management consulting firm, Accenture, announced they were planting a social media lab in Silicon Valley to help clients realize all of the benefits of the all-inclusive solution.

It's the next phase of industry growth beyond Geoffrey Moore's digital chasm (bringing advanced technology beyond the early adopters to mainstream – volume – profits) that business, industry and communications are rushing to capitalize on … or be left in the dust.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce's CEO, had the solution for organizations (customers) – add customers to Chatter, use HTML5 for mobile CRM apps, provide the means for customers to store sensitive data away from prying eyes and provide opportunities for companies/customers to forever become joined at the waist and live happily ever after. Benioff told the captive audience that the world has moved beyond Moore's Chasm and that businesses are now faced with a huge and dangerous challenge – the Social Chasm.

Make the transition now and join up with their digitally adept customers or be stranded on "the other side."Read more

After the first social media frenzy you'd think/hope people learned so things won't go wrong this time around. If understanding is overpowered by greed, things won't go wrong…they'll go seriously awry. Screenshot – "The Hangover Part II," Warner Bros (2011)

A friend recently gave us a flyover of the island he owns out in the middle of the ?????

Another's son took us on a tour of his farm complete with cows, chickens, pigs, tractors and a horse out in the middle of ????

It was fast, simple, easy…they just went to SecondLife, Farmville respectively and showed us around.

You may think it's the virtual world, but they paid real money for their property and improvements.

The new round of online, social media fervor/fear is as interesting as the stuff we saw in the 1995-2000 dot-com bubble.

Could it happen again?Read more

"You see, Jason was my son, and today is his birthday..." – Pamela Voorhees, Friday the 13th, Paramount Pictures (1980)

Our son is irritated with his grandfather. Wanted to wish him a happy birthday but…he doesn't have a Facebook account…isn't on Twitter…never looked at YouTube. For gawd's sake, he doesn't even have an email address!

Yes, there are people in this whole, magnificent wide world who are...deprived! So his choice was to resort to the old fashioned stuff…a phone call or letter.

Yeah, those early forms of social media are our last resorts too. We were delighted with the next advance – email. This was a whole new solution for communicating with another person. It was "personal" but allowed both of us to use at our mutual convenience.

But like any movie that somehow strikes a cord with millions of people, it needed a sequel. Web 2.0 gave it to us.Read more

"You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." – Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), Sunset Blvd., Paramount (1950)

If it weren't for James Cameron's (Avatar + fame) session at NAB, you would swear you were at a mash up CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and an IT (information technology) conference.

Most of the sessions and discussions focused on:

• social media and mobile delivery
• how Tellywood was going to optimize their network/content assets
• cloud computing/storage (we’ll look closely at this in a few weeks)
• how the old guard was going to protect their stuff/squeeze out kids who seemed more interested in viewers than profits.

Joe Gilles looked over the proceedings and said, "You don't yell at a sleepwalker - he may fall and break his neck."

Cameron loves technology almost as much as he loves movies. He took his shots at the broadcast folks saying it was their fault we still don't have a lot of 3D on our entertainment devices. Read more

Don't worry, it's almost over. Only a few more hours of media obsessively dissecting every outfit and tone of voice, and then we can all return to our pre-Royal Wedding lives. One thing in this whole mess that did catch my attention however, was the statement by Clarence House that this was going to be the most technologically accessible event in the history of the Royal Family. This is interesting because historically "Royal Family" and "Technology" don't really go together; they have been notoriously resistant to most forms. But to be fair I suppose if you don't need to carry money, you equally have no need to carry a Blackberry. Sure enough though, they're really going all out for this event - in some ways that are more successful than others.

Tweeting the Queen
They have a website, of course - The Official Royal Wedding 2011 - because who doesn't these days. That's not nearly as shocking as the fact that Clarence House is on Twitter (@ClarenceHouse) and has been tweeting updates about everything from the wedding day schedule to the hotel where Catherine Middleton (Kate to her friends, and every worldwide media outlet) will be staying the night before. Read more

The Usual Suspects, a Few Surprises, the New Frontier

At the U.S.'s premium broadcast event, you'd expect the usual array of "interested parties" to attend … and they have.

Senior folks from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Facebook, Zynga, EA, Hulu, Roku, Verizon, AT&T, Akamai, Level 3, Intel, AMD and Nvidia; you name it, they were there.

Miss someone?

Oh yes, the growing array of content production/post production houses who are putting together content for the rapidly expanding outlet opportunities.

Sure, there were cable, network, station and Hollywood folks who built the association.

Last year, DreamWorks' Jeff Katzenberg beat the drum for 3D and the studios and a few network operations (ESPN, Discovery) listened and delivered.

This year, tech tinkerer, filmmaking powerhouse James Cameron made an even stronger case for everyone, everything, everywhere to practice 3D production, distribution and viewing.

Cameron prodded the broadcast industry to get onboard or get left behind by the new distribution channels/opportunities. Read more

"This has got to be the weirdest day of my life... well, so far." – Mikey, Look Who’s Talking, Tristar Pictures (1989)

If you're a parent, you have to wonder how a kid can start out knowing zip…zero…nada and in the blink of an eye, they're rocket surgeons!

Our son was always handy for managing the VCR, but now that everything is online who cares?

Today's youngsters – the iGen (interconnected) – don't know what a VCR is or video tape! They're born wired…always on.

Instead of being propped up in front of a TV, they're online.

It's estimated that 40 percent of US children under 12 will go online at least monthly this year.

Nearly half will do so by 2015.Read more

Let's start by saying 2011 is going to be the year we wanted three years ago when the financial institutions "borrowed" our global wellbeing! It was the first time we entered unfamiliar territory because the financial meltdown didn't affect just one country but all of us.

Economic Outlook

Internationally governments are feeling their way along the precipice because the depth and duration of the recession was beyond what most could clearly recall. They are moving – hesitantly – but still slightly dazed by the headlights of the near miss.

At the same time the U.S. government ground to a near halt because of the partisan politics that could last for two years.

Fortunately as in past recessions companies have finally become sick and tired of being sick and tired and realized that government – any government – can't move things forward…it is up to business to get the job done!

Most of the 80+% of the employed U.S. population (10% tracked unemployed, 8% dropped off the grid) are certain that conditions are and will continue to improve. This was apparent over the holiday buying season where PC/CE/communications sales increased more than 7% with a greater percentage being cash sales…resisting mounting additional personal/family debt.Read more