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Brands and marketers have different levels of participation in the social media space, but many have similar goals and strategies. The "2010 Social Media Benchmarking Study" from Ketchum and FedEx fou

Five centuries years ago, a new technology swamped the world with data. What we can learn from the aftermath.

Jane Beard and Jeffrey Davis didn't realize how little they speak to their children by phone until they called AT&T to switch plans. The customer service agent was breathless. The Silver Spring couple had accumulated 28,700 unused minutes.

While this is an interesting article, i don't think it provides sufficient nuance to be useful. A person's ability to operate in a situation (their digital fluency, for example), the types of tasks that they are doing, and the intensity of the attention they need to apply in a situation should determine the degree to which they attempt to multitask. The more fluent people we've seen know when to shut down their laptop or crackberry when they know they won't be able to pay attention, and when the context calls for them to keep it open.

This is worth reading and thinking about on both a governmental and at an organizational level. As elements in a system become more interdependent, and as the speed and scale of financial, informational, contractual, physical transactions between the elements of a system increase, the system can become more prone to big shocks from relatively small disruptions.  If Churchill said in the age of radio that "..A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" what would he have said about organizations in the age of mobile devices, Twitter and YouTube?

"Survey results revealed engineers' chief concern to be fear of exposing critical company intellectual property (IP), with 58.5 percent of respondents citing security as their primary hesitation. Loss of productivity was a worry for 40.1 percent of respondents, while 29.3 percent said company policy precluded them from frequenting social networking sites on the job."

Admittedly, it can be difficult to quantify a specific profit or revenue impact from some types of experience enhancers-more robust "voice of the customer" programs, more polished customer statements, better trained front-line personnel, streamlined customer touchpoints, a more user-friendly website, etc. The financials surrounding such initiatives are much less precise than those of hard-dollar initiatives, like the renegotiation of real estate leases or the consolidation of corporate functions. Of course, that doesn't mean customer experience investments have any less of a compelling return than these other endeavors. It just takes a little more work to quantify it. And, frankly, in some cases, it requires a leap of faith.

Copycense points us to the bizarre news that the Massachussetts state legislature has decided to ban Twitter from office computers. While Facebook is still allowed, and officials can still tweet via their mobile phones, it's banned on computers. The Legislative Information Services dept is claiming that it's because Twitter is "vulnerable to viruses," but that's fairly bizarre reasoning. Twitter itself is not prone to viruses. Some users may post links to viruses, but that's true on Facebook as well. Besides blocking all of Twitter seems like a sledgehammer approach.

Trying to prevent leaks by employees or to fight off hackers only helps so much. Powerful forces are pushing companies to become more transparent. Technology is turning the firm, long a safe box for information, into something more like a sieve, unable to contain all its data. Furthermore, transparency can bring huge benefits. "The end result will be more openness," predicts Bruce Schneier, a data-security guru. It may be useful to think of a computer network as being like a system of roads. Just like accidents, leaks are bound to happen and attempts to stop the traffic will fail, says Mr Schneier, the security expert. The best way to start reducing accidents may not be employing more technology but making sure that staff understand the rules of the road-and its dangers. Transferring files onto a home PC, for instance, can be a recipe for disaster. It may explain how health data have found their way onto file-sharing networks. If a member of the employee's family has joined such a network, the data can be replicated on many other computers.

Imagine what your [organization] could accomplish if every employee was an entrepreneur. Not only would there be a steady flow of new ideas, but every person would treat the business as if it were her own.

"No executive can afford to be a Luddite and dismiss all new media. Sometimes it's exactly the right way for you to spend your time (especially if you're "on the way up" and need to build your profile). But too many leaders dive in without thinking through the costs of social media (what else could you be doing with your time?). After all, in this crowded media landscape, sometimes what matters most isn't your use of 21st century technologies. Instead, it's the forgotten 19th century arts (handwritten notes, personal phone calls, and high-quality personal meetings) that can have the greatest impact." Dorie's article misses two important reasons that leaders might need to include social media as part of their activities: 1) Good leaders understand culture, and social media are an important part of culture 2) Good leaders understand media and their effects on how humans organize. Understanding, especially where media are concerned, is best gained through participation. If they were to take Dorie's advice, Napoleon probably wouldn't have read newspapers, Winston Churchill wouldn't have listened to radio, and JFK wouldn't have watched television.

Collaboration means different things to different people. When some people refer to collaboration, they're talking about technology. And that's part of the problem. Companies think that if they introduce certain technologies, that they're collaborating. But a central point in my book is that tools and technologies never create collaboration. Culture creates collaboration.

I have always believed that collaboration is most meaningful when you are really creating something together and when you are sharing your thoughts before they are finished products. If I am only willing to show you something that is a polished document, you might edit or change it a little, but you are not really doing it with me. People have to trust each other to do that. It is risky to show people your unfinished thoughts. Technologies for a long time could let you do that; people did not always do that. Social software, to the extent that it is helping people build trust and be comfortable with more casual, lightweight communications, could make it possible for more of our attempts at collaboration to be real collaboration.