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Widget Marketing

When I was in business school, "widgets" were the term that we used to refer to units of a fictional product in case studies.  Today, widgets are those smart little applications meant to be used as small utilities in a blog, operating system or web browser.  A few months ago, SixApart launched Typepad Widgets to … Read more

Inside The Da Vinci Code Marketing Strategy

After much fanfare over the last few weeks, The Da Vinci Code opens in theaters across the US today.  Though some early reviews from the Cannes Film Festival premier have been less than perfect, there is no denying that the marketing machine behind the film has generated buzzworthy firsts, from partnering with Google to open … Read more

Getting Global Insight on Trends from Search

Since websites have become primary information sources about companies and products in the late 90s, integrated marketing teams have been using web analytics to mine data about users and translate this into trend information and ammunition for testing the usability of websites.  One metric in particular that almost all marketing teams pay attention to are … Read more

The Arrival of Product Placement on Blogs

Anyone in the marketing and advertising industry has probably followed the evolution of product placement on TV and in films with interest.  With the Tivo phenomenon changing how consumers view (or skip) the 30 second spot, some say the future of television is in product placements.  But what about product placement and sponsorship on blogs?  … Read more

Wikipedia No Longer Defines the Wiki

Part of the appeal of the Wikipedia phenomenon has been that in a group edited model, it is more likely that individual biases in writing can be removed through frequent editing.  Indeed, for many of the self appointed Wikipedians who guard the content of Wikipedia, their mission in life is to objectivize any entries that … Read more

What's In Your Firefox?

I love Firefox.  From its signature "tabbed browsing" to its open source heritage – Firefox has experienced huge growth thanks to the legions of brand believers who have spread the word about Firefox.  The Firefox brand has become a badge of honor – just as most graphic designers would never willingly choose to use a … Read more

A New Way of Sharing Patient Opinions Online

The phenomenon of Internet users sharing their opinions about products and services online is well into the mainstream now, with large etailers like Amazon.com encouraging customer reviews, sites like TripAdvisor asking travellers to review lodging in destinations around the world and  ratings systems for buyers to evaluate sellers on sites like ebay and others.  Online, … Read more

Finding a New Formula of Blog Influence

In a world of personal media where the technical constraints of publishing content are becoming nearly nonexistent – some have recently discussed the rising problem of information overload.  Seth Godin suggests that we may all be adding to the clutter, and though self-filtering, or relying on content creators to tag their content is ideal – … Read more

Are Domain Names the Next Tagging Phenomenon?

Tagging is in right now.  From a network for teens to Yahoo’s purchase of del.icio.us and Flickr … everyone in the industry is betting big on tagging.  And why shouldn’t they?  Search is no longer the only way to find information online. Jakob Nielson (the controversial usability guru) even categorized search engines as leeches. That … Read more

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Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.

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