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In fact, it isn't far from the total of all the students who have ever been there since the 19th Century.

Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, says the expansion of online courses will raise difficult questions about what mainstream universities offer for such high fees.

if the content of university courses becomes freely available, what is it that students are paying for? Is it the interactions with staff? Or is it the time with other students? Is it something to put on a CV? "This is causing universities to rethink their value to students," says Professor Koller, who is from Stanford University's computer science department. The most prestigious universities are always going to have enough demand for places - but the emergence of high-quality online courses could be tougher for middle-ranking institutions. Why would you pay high fees to sit through a mediocre lecture, when you could go online and watch world experts at another university, even if it's in another country? "The universities in the middle will really have to think about their proposition," she says.

e-diplomacy is the talk of foreign ministries the world over, as foreign affairs is increasingly conducted in 140 characters or less.

Semiocast analysis indicates that Twitter’s own website accessed from desktops, not mobile, is the largest platform overall, representing 27.6% of all activity worldwide.

But collectively it is mobile clients (including iPad software) that are most-used: they represent about 61% of all tweets, with Twitter’s own mobile apps and mobile web presence accounting for 74% of that.

In his own study, Macy analyzed words expressing mood in 500 million tweets sent between February 2008 and January 2010. He found that people’s mood, as measured by their tweets, tended to be elevated in the morning and to decline as the day progressed. Weekends tended to be “happier” days, although mood peak started later in the morning, possibly reflecting twitterers' tendency to sleep in. Most remarkable, Macy said in an interview with Science magazine, was that the tweets showed a similar pattern across the 84 countries where the tweets originated, suggesting that the daily mood curve is fundamentally human rather than cultural.

take the time to set up your Google+ page. There’s some indication that the number of “+1″ votes your articles receive is a factor that’s weighted in the natural search ranking algorithms. Boosting your presence here may help to ensure stronger SEO for your website.

take a look at the impact on great-quotes.com, which experienced a 94% decline in SEO visibility. If natural search traffic from Google was the site’s primary source of visitors, this single algorithm update could have dramatically decreased the company’s revenue.

Facebook's ad service has recently suffered accusations that it is afflicted by bots, and it's also been suggested that Facebook's user base growth has significantly slowed down.

But for curators to surface awesome content, there has to be awesome content to begin with. Original content, from inspirational marketing videos (like Nike's below) to an online-specific show, will continue to rise in popularity. While user-generated content will exist as long as users exist, and can often be very successful, the next five years will see viewers putting curated quality over random quantity.

Online video doesn't have the luxury of longer-form shows that a viewer schedules time to watch. More likely, they stumbled upon your video by chance on their Twitter or Facebook feed. They haven't committed to watching their video, but their interest is piqued and they've pushed play. Don't waste that chance. The video must grab and engage them nearly instantaneously--if not, you'll lose potential longterm fans. Unengaging, ported-over content won't survive in our ADD environment.

in an attempt to push the brand, marketing videos often forego authenticity in favor of an over-markety tone. This disengages the viewer and separates them from the brand. Online users don't wanted to be sold to, they want to be engaged.

Brand loyalty stems first from producing the best product possible, but once you've captured a user's attention, it's about engaging that user and making them feel special. Because of their loyalty (whether that's liking a brand on Facebook or signing up for their newsletter), they want to feel as if they are in on a secret that non-followers don't have access to.

Brands should create a movement they believe in--and match their videos to it--rather than slamming their brand down their viewers’ throats. Be authentic and engaging and the viewers will come.

Like Pinterest did for online photography, a new startup will emerge for curated video content.

In research published in HBR in 2006, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce reported that 62 percent of high-earning individuals in America (whom they define as the top 6% of earners) work 50 hours or more per week; 35 percent work 60 hours or more per week.

Don't be afraid to use the "delete" button when reviewing your inbox. If you can't say "no" to a certain request, recognize that it may only require a B+ effort. Don't spend hours bumping it up to an A+ unless you really need to.

the only way they can get the best out of their employees is to focus on results, not hours.

Previous, self-reported studies had suggested that extroverts spent more time on Facebook and tended to post more personal posts - think of the dreaded “this is what I had for breakfast” status update. But Moore and McElroy turned that notion on its head. In fact, people who scored high in the agreeableness of the personality test tended to be the ones most likely to offer status updates about themselves.

Based on previous studies, the researchers also predicted that conscientious people would likely spend less time and have fewer friends on Facebook. The reasoning was that people with those personality characteristics believe Facebook will not drive efficiency or production. The study, however, upended that notion, showing that scoring highly for conscientiousness in personality tests was not a reliable predictor of Facebook activity.

The trigger is the actuator of a behavior—the spark plug in the engine. Triggers come in two types: external and internal. Habit-forming technologies start by alerting users with external triggers like an email, a link on a web site, or the app icon on a phone. By cycling continuously through successive desire engines, users begin to form internal triggers, which become attached to existing behaviors and emotions. Soon users are internally triggered every time they feel a certain way.  The internal trigger becomes part of their routine behavior and the habit is formed.

After the trigger comes the intended action. Here, companies leverage two pulleys of human behavior – motivation and ability. To increase the odds of a user taking the intended action, the behavior designer makes the action as easy as possible, while simultaneously boosting the user’s motivation. This phase of the desire engine draws upon the art and science of usability design to ensure that the user acts the way the designer intends.

Variable schedules of reward are one of the most powerful tools that companies use to hook users. Research shows that levels of dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward. Introducing variability multiplies the effect, creating a frenzied hunting state, which suppresses the areas of the brain associated with judgment and reason while activating the parts associated with wanting and desire. Although classic examples include slot machines and lotteries, variable rewards are prevalent in habit-forming technologies as well.

The exciting juxtaposition of relevant and irrelevant, tantalizing and plain, beautiful and common sets her brain’s dopamine system aflutter with the promise of reward. Now she’s spending more time on the site, hunting for the next wonderful thing to find. Before she knows it, she’s spent 45 minutes scrolling in search of her next hit.

What separates the desire engine from a plain vanilla feedback loop is the engine’s ability to create wanting in the user. Feedback loops are all around us, but predictable ones don’t create desire. The predictable response of your fridge light turning on when you open the door doesn’t drive you to keep opening it again and again. However, add some variability to the mix—say a different treat magically appears in your fridge every time you open it—and voila, desire is created. You’ll be opening that door like a lab rat in aSkinner box.

unlike a sales funnel, which has a set endpoint, the commitment phase isn’t about consumers opening up their wallets and moving on with their day. The commitment implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around.  Inviting friends, stating preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use new features are all commitments that improve the service for the user. These commitments can be leveraged to make the trigger more engaging, the action easier, and the reward more exciting with every pass through the desire engine.

As Barbra enjoys endlessly scrolling the Pinterest cornucopia, she builds a desire to keep the things that delight her. By collecting items, she’ll be giving the site data about her preferences. Soon she will follow, pin, re-pin, and make other commitments, which serve to increase her ties to the site and prime her for future loops through the desire engine.

the great storyteller takes time to understand what his listeners know about, care about, and want to hear. Then he crafts the essential elements of the story so that they elegantly resonate with those needs, starting where the listeners are and bringing them along on a satisfying emotional journey.

a great story is never fully predictable through foresight—but it’s projectable through hindsight.

LMU’s Teri Schwartz picked up on Hodge’s idea: “Make the ‘I’ in your story become ‘we,’ so the whole tribe or community can come together and unite behind your experience and the idea it embodies.”

The context of the telling is always a part of the story

Great storytellers prepare obsessively

Orchestrate emotional responses effectively, and you actually transfer proprietorship of the story to the listener, making him an advocate who will power the viral marketing of your message.

Most of the throng changed from true believers to thoughtful skeptics in just a few moments.

At the same time, the great storyteller is flexible enough to drop the script and improvise when the situation calls for it. Actually, intensive preparation and improvising are two sides of the same coin. If you know your story well, you can riff on it without losing the thread or the focus.

the job of the teller is to capture his mission in a story that evokes powerful emotions and thereby wins the assent and support of his listeners

This explains the passion that great storytellers exude. They infuse their stories with meaning because they really believe in the mission

When truth to the mission conflicts with truth to the audience, truth to the mission should win out

Colin Callender, president of HBO Films, noted that several of HBO’s most acclaimed productions are ones that audience pretesting marked as losers.

it isn’t special effects or the 0’s and 1’s of the digital revolution that matter most—it’s the oohs and aahs that the storyteller evokes from an audience

At the end of the day, words and ideas presented in a way that engages listeners’ emotions are what carry stories

the ability to articulate your story or that of your company is crucial in almost every phase of enterprise management. It works all along the business food chain: A great salesperson knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero. A successful line manager can rally the team to extraordinary efforts through a story that shows how short-term sacrifice leads to long-term success. An effective CEO uses an emotional narrative about the company’s mission to attract investors and partners, to set lofty goals, and to inspire employees.

Help them build social capital. Practitioners of this new, community-oriented marketing are also rethinking their customer value proposition for such MVP (or "Customer Champion" or "Rockstar") customer advocates and influencers. Traditional marketing often tries to encourage customer advocacy with cash rewards, discounts or other untoward inducements. The new marketing helps its advocates and influencers create social capital: it helps them build their affiliation networks, increase their reputation and gives them access to new knowledge — all of which your customer influencers crave.

Get your customer advocates involved in the solution you provide

Florida won half of the "non-buyers" of its anti-teen-smoking "product" away from its much bigger, much better funded competitor. They did so by tapping the best source of buyer motivation: peer influence.

“The whole phenomenon of cocreation is the most important change in what’s going on right now. You get the best, most authentic communication if you cocreate your messaging by consulting with employees and by engaging them in a dialogue.” By fostering what amounts to an open-source approach to content generation, leaders can inspire “employees to proselytize, to ‘own’ what they talk about, to advocate enthusiastically for their company,”

inclusive leaders know that bringing non-sales employees into the sales process can offer a low-cost, high-impact way to generate interest in their company’s latest offering. Word of mouth, ideally, starts at home.

letting employees join the fray of organizational conversation means letting go--letting go of the eminently understandable impulse to monitor and restrict what people say on company-sponsored communication channels. The advent of social media raises a particular challenge for leaders: Should they seek to impose rules on a medium that appears to be as unruly as it is powerful? But there, too, inclusive leadership requires a willingness to give up the need for control, together with a faith in employees’ ability to control themselves.

Conversational inclusion fosters employee passion.

Passion of that kind, in turn, helps fuel greater innovation, faster execution, and other ingredients of improved organizational performance. “The goal is to have engaged employees,” says Larry Solomon, of AT&T. “If you’re an engaged employee, you’re going to score high on your commitment to customers, your loyalty to the company, your overall happiness as an employee. You’re going to stick around, and you’re going to act as an ambassador for the company when you’re talking to your friends and family. And one of the key factors in having an engaged workforce is creating an environment where people feel like they’re being listened to.”

best practices are in the curation space. Here's where you should start1.  If you don't add context, or opinion, or voice and simply lift content, it's stealing.2.  If you don't provide attribution, and a link back to the source, it's stealing.3.  If you take a large portion of the original content, it's stealing.4.  If someone asks you not to curate their material, and you don't respect that request, it's stealing.5.  Respect published rights. If images don't allow creative commons use, reach out to the image creator--don't just grab it and ask questions later.

There are a number of companies building cool solutions you can explore if you're looking for curation tools. Among them: Curata, CurationSoft, Scoop.it, Google+, Storify.com, PearlTrees.com, MySyndicaat.com, Curated.by, Storyful,Evri, Paper.li, Pearltrees, and of course Magnify.net (where I hang my hat).

Figures from Compete note that Pinterest had over 18 million unique visitors in March but that growth appears to be slowing.

There is also that issue of spam and copyright questions: two no-nos for the mostly-over-36, female audience that uses the site