Marc Andreessen famously said that software is eating the world. That was a statement about economics. Now I believe that social media is swallowing our brains, which is a much broader statement about human behavior. The precipitating event for this observation is Salesforce’s announcement that it would acquire Slack for $27.7 billion. According to Salesforce…
Boycotts rarely work. But in the face of advertiser boycotts, Facebook just did a U-turn on its policy on labelling or blocking presidential posts. The cause and effect here is a lot more complex than it appears. As recently as the beginning of June, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the right decision on presidential posts,…
I’m not getting together in person with very many people these days. I connect with all my professional friends on social media and email. And you people are remarkably consistent — you either offer value, or you don’t. Here’s what I value: original, thoughtful content, and information I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. For example: Data,…
Twitter’s VP of Research and Design Dantley Davis tweeted a list of new features coming to Twitter. Here’s the list: Where’s tweet editing on this list? These are minor tweaks that will mostly affect heavy users and celebrities. Everyone who has ever made an error while tweeting — that is, everyone who uses Twitter —…
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on CNN that YouTube will never be free of offensive content. Fine. But let’s get some appropriate principles for content in place. Here’s some of what Pichai said: We’ve gotten much better at using a combination of machines and humans. . . . So it’s one of those things, let’s…
We all belong to an insiders’ club. What’s yours? By 2007, Charlene Li and I had gotten the approval from Forrester to write the book that become Groundswell. She was already well-known as the top analyst covering the use of social media for business. With her help, I studied and became knowledgeable about that as…
The intersection of human evil and Facebook algorithms has created the evil-amplifying social networks we now share. Facebook says AI can solve the problem. So far, it can’t. If it ever does, heaven help us. The New York Times published a revealing profile of Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s CTO. He’s the man whom Mark Zuckerberg has…
Milo Yiannopolous is a provocateur. A British national stirring up American politics, a gay icon of the alt-right, he takes hateful positions on race and politics that have earned him wrath and protests wherever he appears. He advocated for sex with 13-year-olds. He cheered on Gamergate’s harassment of women. As a result, now, his life…
On April 21, 2008, ten years ago, Charlene Li and I celebrated the publication of our Harvard Business Press book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. It was the first book for each of us. It made an impact, selling over 150,000 copies. Ten years later, I’d like to talk about how…