Online Media Cultist

As 2009 wraps up, Twitter is expressing its most serious and visible signs to date of how it plans to convert its massive popularity into a profitable enterprise. The latest is leaked screenshots of a new "contributors" feature, which aims to give businesses that utilize Twitter for online marketing, PR, and customer service purposes more [...]

Remember The Truth Laid Bear? It’s okay if you don’t. I’ve mentioned the blog directory/search engine to a few dialed in friends recently and received blank stares. At one time it was a pretty big deal though, at least within the bourgeoning blogospheric community during the middle of this decade. The search and ranking system [...]

Amazon's new Disc+ On Demand product allows you to "purchase select DVD and Blu-ray titles from Amazon.com… and receive an Amazon Video On Demand standard definition version as a gift with purchase." At present, only a small portion of Amazon's DVD titles (300 of 330,000) are available, but we can expect this number to increase [...]

My social media consumption workflow has changed quite a bit over the last year or so. I still really love Google Reader’s share feature and use that as a bedrock of how I absorb and share information, along with Twitter and even (for me) Facebook of late. I also like to use Google Readers “shared [...]

In 2005 and 2006, MySpace was the king of the hill. “Web 2.0″ was in its ascendancy, and everyone couldn’t stop talking about MySpace. Kids loved it and were telling their parents and friends, single people flirted and told their single friends, bands loved it and marketed their asses off, while the mainstream media pumped [...]

At the beginning of the year, Twitter was already a big deal in the geek community and was already well on its way to becoming a leading social media service. How do we know how it's doing at the close of 2009? Check this: Dell Inc. claims to have earned $6.5 million via the power [...]

Facebook Connect: on route to becoming the one ring to rule them all? Inside Facebook reports that "MySpace is planning to make [Facebook Connect] a key part of the site, rolling out a number of Connect features in the first part of 2010." Earlier this week, Yahoo's "Project Rushmore" was revealed, described as a "massive integration [...]

Can bloggers publish opinions on the Internet without contacting companies that they’re writing about first?

Before I get into what will likely be a somewhat negative diatribe about ”Boxed In,” by Grady Hendrix, I’d like to start out by saying how much I love online magazine Slate. I’ve read it daily for years and greatly enjoy its intelligent and savvy coverage of politics, pop culture, technology, and television (its TV [...]

Several years ago, I thought that the future of online content would be led by Netscape (which later “spun” off to become Propeller), which innovated by using a mixture of user submitted content and curated content with an element of community-controlled voting or ranking. As we get close to 2010, things are basically playing out [...]