Twitter has announced it is trialling a new business tool. It should mean an end to faceless acoounts such as @brandX. Instead the same account can share multiple users. Multiple human users. And when a different human being 'takes the helm' you'll know so, and what they tweet will be indidually ascribed against that particular human So where @btcare currently has to update their profile to tell you which human you are connecting with, now the metadata with each tweet reflect its use by each individual human. Now, not every business is going to go for this. Can't imagine the multiple heavy users at Zappos or Dell turning in their IDs, for example. But a lot will. And what I think is truly wonderful here is that with this tool Twitter says loudly and unequivically that Twitter is a human, person-to-person environment where broadcasting your brand = fail. It's a breadcrumb trail for those orgs who would otherwise default to voice-of-the-brand blandness. They are led by the nose toward finding out what Twitter is all about. And in doing so they just may discover the principles of this human way, this better way of being part of the lives of their communities of users. "It's up to business to accomodate itself to (the human shape) of twitter, not for twitter to accomodate itself to business," as @stephenfry put it at #140conf One small experimental step. A giant leap for businesskind. Related articles by Zemanta New survey: 54% of CIOs ban social media (heidi-miller.com)SM Global Report: Shel Holtz [Part 1] (redcouch.typepad.com)How to Extend Your Customer Experience Through Social Media (blogs.harvardbusiness.org) FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

I've been meaning to (find this and) post this ever since I saw JP Rangaswami speak at the London 140chars conference at the 02 on November 17. JP was the reason I came back to the O2 for the afternoon session (I chaired a panel at Monitoring Social Media in the middle of the day). He chose to spend 10 minutes talking about what it means that twitter is not a news service but an information service. And about traffic lights, the internet of things - and his family hamster. Enjoy. And if you do, find JP as @jobsworth on twitter. Thanks to Delymyth for shooting and sharing on Viddler.FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

As promised, here's the video of me presenting my keynote on 'A New Era For Specialist Media' at SIPA 09 (Online Marketing and Publishing Summit) in London, last week. It's shot on a flipcam - and mangled to add to vimeo (at sub 500mb for almost an hour of video) so don't expect a TV experience! Topics covered: • Why the internet-powered long tail of demand is a disaster for traditional broad mass media models but a huge opportunity for specialists • How fragmentation means you can never hope to target all emerging niche communities - and what you can do to counter that • Why the control of content production, distribution and user experience is now in the hands of everyone - and what that means for publishers • Why we need to think of specialist content as 'social objects' to discover where the ROI will come from when nobody wants to pay for content and no one clicks on the ads. You can download a WMV version here. The link is bottom, right of that page. Below the video I've placed the slideshare slides, so you can play click-along-a-david if you choose. Thoughts and comments all welcome. A new era for specialist media from david cushman on Vimeo. A new era for specialist mediaView more presentations from david cushman. Related articles by ZemantaA new era for specialist media? (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)Resources: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Social Media... (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)Whiteboard Friday - Ignore the Long Tail at Your Own Peril! (mt-soft.com.ar)FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

Luke's Monitoring Social Media 09 event in London on Tuesday was an absolute triumph. The venue was packed (literally standing room only) the speakers excellent and the vibe businesslike rather than echo-chamberesque. Luke (one of our collaborators at 90:10, by way of disclosure) asked me to chair a panel on the ROI of social media monitoring, on which I was ably assisted by Chris Quigley (co-founder Rubber Republic), Matt Atkinson, CEO EHS Brann, Tomi Leitonen, CEO Whitevector and Jon Moody, Market Engineer (nice title Jon) at ASOMO. I threw in a thought, without much consideration for how it could be answered. It is this; that social media monitoring is, in its current incarnation, somewhat behind the curve of the real-time web. I think of it like this: we are becoming increasingly good at taking photographs of the web, but can't workout how to view its streaming video. Perhaps it is that we are only able to make sense of it as still photographs - snapshots which we can pour over with a magnifying glass and make pronouncements upon? Most of those of us who go in for this kind of monitoring and measurement have long understood that one set of tools is far from enough. We adapt and compile, create our best set of tools to give us the deepest and broadest understanding of the landscape. But it is for the most part a landscape in which nothing is moving. It is helpful for broad strategy, to identify where the conversations are happening and whom they involve. But how much more valuable could the right-now monitoring of live interaction be. For example, it is useful to know where the conversation has happened, but it is much more useful to know where the conversation is happening right now, how it is moving, at what speed and in what direction. It's becoming increasingly important as we understand the value of the connections over the node, of interaction, of the things people do with each other together (network), compared to the things we would have them do

I was fortunate enough to attend #140conf as one of the 'characters' at the O2 in London yesterday (courtesy of @jeffpulver). I was therefore able to witness the crowning (quite literally folks) of one @stephenfry as 'King of Twitter'. Stephen spoke brilliantly about many of the themes I hold dear and bang on about myself - though clearly not as well as the great Danceciser himself. Which I why I'm delighted to share this video of his talk, thanks to beegod (who shot it and posted it on his blog). And if anyone recorded JP Rangaswami's wonderful words on twitter as a peer-to-peer information service at #140conf (for alerts, advice and assistance) please do point me - I would love to share that too. Related articles by ZemantaThe Death Of Email: What Does Dead Mean, Exactly? (stoweboyd.com)The Importance of Digital Touch (chrisbrogan.com)Twitter Rolling Out Retweets, Rolling Over Trends Spam (marketingpilgrim.com)ConversationList.com - Conversational Twitter Lists (killerstartups.com)The impact and the etiquette of social media (fasterfuture.blogspot.com) FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

On November 17 I will be speaking at Monitoring Social Media in central London. Which is nice. If you're in London or anywhere close-ish, you should come. But if you happen to be on the other side of the Atlantic, I'll understand if you aren't there. Where you should be on that day is at MIT where you can hear from author of Communities Dominate Brands Alan Moore. Alan, a very good friend of mine, and a collaborator over at 90:10, is speaking at the MIT Enterprise Forum, following in the footsteps of Guy Kawasaki, among others. For the detail, go here. But for a taste of the thinking... here's Alan: We are witnesses to a structural and transformational change in society, what many describe as the toxic tail end of our industrial, mass consumer, mass media era. The tragic legacy of the last 150 years is that humanity has been thin sliced and deconstructed almost to the point of destruction. Human beings have become little more than individual units of capitalism – pawns of economists and unfettered capitalism. But the fact is, “I needs we, to truly be I,” wrote Carl Jung, and this is why we as a species are at the barricades of a communications revolution, in which humanity is renegotiating the power relationships between; people, organisations, and even governments. As social philosopher Richard Sennett argues, we want to, “recover something of the spirit of the Enlightenment on terms appropriate to our time”. The tools of the revolution are digital communication technologies, but the drivers are about human connection and human identity. Technology does not come out of nowhere, it is indeed a human invention in the first place, and these technologies succeed to the extent they meet fundamental human needs. The rise of the networked society is no accident, and a new philosophy is needed now to enable individuals and organisations adapt to a new way of doing, trading, educating, living. Therefore, our imperative is to de-school ourselves in a philoso

Jon Hansen was kind enough to invite me to be his guest on his BlogTalk Radio show yesterday. It was broadcast live at 5:30-6:15pm UK time on October 8.

I very much enjoyed and - and Jon's invited me back to do another show in the near future - which I'm going to take him up on.

Apparently, yesterday's caused a bit of a stir:

This from Jon's blog:
"...today’s show regarding the differences between traditional media such as newspapers and the emerging social media world, delivered an incredibly insightful and powerful message in terms the future of these paradoxical mediums.
"Unexpected . . . certainly not given guest David Cushman’s level of expertise regarding the subject matter.  "What was surprising is the level of interaction within the confines of the show’s on-line chat room which even had one listener post a note asking me to take callers earlier in the show.
"While there have been segments in which I have had 19 or 20 people in the live chat room at the same time, the activity was noticeably brisk during today’s segment.
"It was also considerably more active than it was during the 90-Minute Buy American Special that featured a brief interview with Canada’s Trade Minister.  Perhaps Dave should run for public office."

Listen to it for yourself using the player, below.

FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

You've heard the buzz, you've watched it trend - and you've given up on the hour long video... well here's the 7 min version.
Google Wave really is worth at least that much of your time :-)

FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

A short video from Red Hat (via Chris Brogan) which makes some well worn points in an elegant way. You may find it helpful if you are one of the many working hard to convince others of the need to adapt to the networked world. It explains how a billion dollar company became what it is, by giving things away. That is - by contributing to and participating in communities. Red Hat lived a line I like to use: "The people who can make the biggest difference to your business don't work for it." Related articles by ZemantaRed Hat Releases Windows Virtualization Code (linux.slashdot.org)Red Hat stretches Linux system management tentacle (theregister.co.uk)Red Hat CEO: Choose flexibility or Larry Ellison (infoworld.com) FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

Another great TED Talk. I'm reading Dan Ariely's Predicatably Irrational at the moment. It's great. It's a wonderful challenge to many conventional wisdoms. Here he tackles why our consistenly irrational behaviour reveals why traditional economic theory is often so wide of the mark. Really interesting to hear how permission to cheat is granted - and what that means for the stock market. FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

Alan Moore is pitching a proposal for next year's SXSW. If you like the sound of it, vote for it.
His 'No Straight Lines Thinking' approach is a rallying call for a new philosophy more appropriate to the networked world.

Disclosure: Alan is a good friend to me, and someone I have worked with in the past and would gladly work with in the future - a true believer in the power of the network.

He says:

The core areas (to investigate) are these: System breakdown: We are witness to a structural and transformational change in society.
The wholesale pursuit of material wealth has in fact come at a terrible cost for society
Threat: the current unsustainability of humanity
The true nature of humans and the technology of man: their intimate relationship
Liberation Day: We need to examine the various solutions and tools that can enable us to thrive and survive, to take back that which makes us whole as people, individually and collectively.
Simplexity: The digital and highly networked world seems to have created a more complex way of living. We need to learn to deal with this complexity, by understanding how it works.
Deschoolling: Our imperative is to de-school ourselves in a philosophy that has driven us into a cultural, ideological and economic cul-de-sac.
New Philosophy: We need a new language to help us understand the deep context of the change we are in
The no straight line universe: We need to explore its shape we need to feel it; physically, intellectually, and emotionally
And there's a video to explain a little more:

FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

When I saw JP Rangaswami tweeting he was at the recent TED event, I had to ask, what the stand-out for him was. This (below), was his answer. Given that TED is a pretty well curated collection of brilliance, that this should stand out for JP means a lot to me. I trust it will bring value to you, too. Alain de Botton challenges what success means. Watch it and my headline will make sense... Related articles by ZemantaAlain de Botton: Professional Happiness (designmind.frogdesign.com)Alain de Botton on unfortunates and losers (blogs.ft.com)FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

Great to see Mark's Herd referenced in this deck (now available as a paperback, btw). You get to it just before the end. Paul's decks are consistently good and bang on the money as far as I'm concerned. I've long agreed (believed) we must be part of co-creating interesting things for people to do together. Marketing: Advertising: Products: Services. It's not really about the messaging any more (if it ever was?) - that's the message. It's about the doing. Not to them, with them. With us. I often say: We're trying to change the world, not report on it. That's not a media thing. It's a people thing. What's Next In Marketing And Advertising (2009)View more documents from Paul Isakson. Via Neil Perkin Related articles by ZemantaWhat's Next (neilperkin.typepad.com)Think Tank Nominations - March '09 (neilperkin.typepad.com)FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

You may or may not be aware that I'm a Trustee for Citizen's Online - part of which is EverybodyOnline.
EverybodyOnline helps communities and individuals in disadvantaged areas across the UK to engage with digital technology.
It aims to help communities overcome any barriers they may have to computers and the internet so they can take advantage of the wealth of opportunities digital technology and the internet has to offer.
'Simple' things that so many of us take for granted. Like this:

FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

Awesome example of the ability of a group to form in the right conditions. Molecules in an agitated state. The Herd in action. Ask yourself why one guy wasn't left dancing alone? Via Seth Godin. But also read Herd. FasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman

Isn't it a rather brilliant thing that the centre doesn't understand the power of the tools now in all our hands?
And by the time they catch up it's likely to be too late for them. Another victory for the edglings :-)



Via a tweet by twitter.com/johnniemooreFasterFuture is regularly updated by David Cushman