Does Big Data Kill Big Thinking?

Big Data is a popular term today that references the huge volumes of business and consumer data being collected and stored by organizations, which cannot be effectively data mined due to the limitations of commonly used software tools that capture, manage, or process the data.

While first diagnosed in the science, government, healthcare and military industries, the vast volumes of consumer data being produced through social technologies has landed this reality – and this problem – on the desks of CMOs globally.

Not only is data being produced at lighting speeds, the devices used to produce, broadcast, measure, store and share that data are on the rise, which then fuels further content generation. The cycle is creating a Big Data cyclone that organizations will continue to struggle with.

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The Eleven Letter Word That Continues To Elude All CMOs And Marketers

It’s a rather simple word to say, just four syllables. It’s an easily understood word on the surface – at least I think it is. Its meaning is quite apparent the moment you hear it. Yet so many CMO’s and marketers treat this 11-letter word as if it were a 4-letter word.

And I don’t know why for the life of me.

The word that continues to elude and evade CMOs and marketers is *I*N*T*E*G*R*A*T*I*O*N.

And as anyone who knows me knows this about me – I am a Scorpio who enjoys hot chocolate in August. No wait, not that.

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The Fallacy of Information Overload

Some of you know me through my work in studying how social media and disruptive technology impact business and culture. Others have worked with me in translating insights into action and change within the enterprise.  Every now and then, I share another side of myself that evokes the aspiring social scientist in me as I explore how all of this is affecting us as individuals and human beings.

Not a day goes by when I’m not asked about whether or not the social media bubble will finally burst. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Foursquare, Pinterest, this all has to be too much right? More often than not, I’m expected to assume the role of psychologist to either validate their digital existence or help individuals understand, and in some cases cope, with what is most often diagnosed as information overload.

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Badgeville Partners with Yammer to Enhance Employee Performance and Engagement

Badgeville, the gold standard for gamification, today announced a key integration that builds on its partnership with Yammer, the leading provider of enterprise social networks. With this integration, companies can enhance employee performance by leveraging Badgeville to reward high-value user behaviors across the enterprise, and showcase them in the Yammer Ticker, a real-time activity stream.

“We are committed to partnering with first-class business applications to create a powerful social layer across the enterprise, increasing visibility and insights in every corner of an organization,” said An Le, VP of Business Development, Yammer. “Badgeville’s behavior platform helps us deliver on that vision by rewarding employee performance and pulling those key milestones into Yammer where the whole company can discover them.”

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The Next Stage of Smart Mobile Adoption

We’re in a state of mobile transition.

Pouring over some of the various pieces of mobile research recently, of which there is a lot these days, it stuck me that mobile is moving into its next phase, which we plead not to be called Mobile 2.0.

Smartphone penetration in the U.S. has finally reached 50 percent, though higher in the 25-34-year-old demographic, says Nielsen, and comScore pegs Android at half of that entire share.

Latin America is on its way to more than 50 percent smartphones in a few years and in the last quarter, 24 million smartphones were shipped in China, more than in the U.S. for the first time. More smartphones than full-featured phones are now sold in the U.S.

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Are brands wielding more influence in Social Media than we thought?

As one who has read, dissected and written about many a study regarding social media, brands and consumers, I can tell you I for one was quite surprised to see read the findings of a survey recently conducted by Market Force – a worldwide leader in customer intelligence solutions.

In querying more than 12,000 consumers in the US and UK, they wanted to see how consumers engaged with varying industries – retail, restaurant, travel, entertainment and financial businesses to be specific, via the big dogs of social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

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A simple antidote to a corporatized, unfeeling, profit-maximizing world

Care.

Care more than you need to, more often than expected, more completely than the other guy.

No one reports liking Steve Jobs very much, yet he was as embraced as any businessperson since Walt Disney. Because he cared. He cared deeply about what he was making and how it would be used. Of course, he didn’t just care in a general, amorphous, whiny way, he cared and then actually delivered.

Politicians are held in astonishingly low esteem. Congress in particular is setting record lows, but it’s an endemic problem. The reason? They consistently act as if they don’t care. They don’t care about their peers, certainly, and by their actions, apparently, they don’t care about us. Money first.

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Deloitte Digital Gamifies Executive Training with Badgeville

Press Release: Badgeville, The Behavior Platform, today announced Deloitte Leadership Academy, an innovative digital executive training program for more than 10,000 senior executives at over 150 companies around the world, added Badgeville’s gamification and reputation solution to reward participation, lesson progression, and to certify program completion with an optional diploma.

Deloitte Leadership Academy delivers lessons and insight from some of the world’s best known business schools, such as Harvard Business Publishing and IMD, and global leaders in an easy to consume format via their online portal, newsletter, and mobile access. Badgeville’s dynamic behavior management technology enables Deloitte to measure, surface and reward engagement across this online education platform. 

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The Path from a Social Brand to a Social Business

I’ve been a long-time supporter of MediaTemple’s (MT)Residence program along with Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, and many others whom I respect. I wanted to share my “7 questions to answer to become a social business” with you here..

Social Media is pervasive and is becoming the new normal in corporate marketing. Brands who get this right are starting to build their own media networks rich with customer connections numbering in the millions. Right now, Coca-Cola has over 34 million fans on Facebook, but they’re hardly alone. Disney follows just behind with 29 million fans, Starbucks boasts 25 million, and Oreo, Red Bull, and Converse play host to over 20 million fans. If we were to look at other networks such as Twitter and Youtube, we would see a recurring theme. People are connecting en masse with the businesses they support and new media represents the ability to cultivate consumer relationships in ways not possible with traditional earned or paid media.

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