On Words and Business

Want to create a social media policy but don’t know how? Want to make sure your existing policy passes muster?

Check out Social Media Governance, a website with over 100 policies from companies like the BBC, FedEx, and Sun Microsystems. In addition, there are links to over 100 research reports about social media policy, some of them free.

A great resource.

Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis

Thoughts on marketing, branding, and communications from the folks at market research agency Millward Brown. Good stuff.

Apparently, a lot of people are glad to see the aughts go away. According to the Pew Research Center, this was the worst decade in 50 years.

Technology bright spots:

• 69% think cell phones are a change for the better
• 65% think the internet and email are changes for the better

Interestingly:

• 40% think that more people getting tattoos is a change for the worse
• 45% think that more people getting tattoos hasn’t made a difference

As I’ve said before, I’m not big on the lack of standardized categories for website content.

Like most, I’ve gotten used to searching Google for things. Although I’m not anti-Google, most of my searches are done reluctantly and with a sigh at the knowledge of all the dreck I’ll have to sort through. These days, sadly, it’s almost the only way to find something online.

Then…there is an outage. Here’s a great article on the single point of failure for finding content on the web.

As the web and other technologis grow quickly, and people struggle to catch up, to keep up, and to measure their success, we need an objective and studied viewpoint. The Society for New Communications Research is all about that.

Their 2nd annual Research Symposium is coming to Boston in December, and promises to have some interesting things to say about trends in blogging and other new media.

As a trained librarian, I find it frustrating that the internet is still such a morass of information. Search engines try to make it easier, but their focus and methodologies leave a lot to be desired.

I understand the user-generated part of the equation, but there are times I just wish everything was categorized (by its owners, of course, because who else would have time to review every page?). From a list of subjects. Like library books. That system isn’t perfect either, but it’s better than what we’ve got.

There is so much good information out there, on the free side of the internet house, that it’s a shame we can’t find it when we need it.