"By news homepage, I mean any way for a user to first encounter content. A push notification could very well be the new news homepage. ... An article or a newsletter ... Overcast or Soundcloud or iTunes may be your homepage.... Homepage, to me, is simply a shorthand version for any of these things. " Neat overview. Just remember, however you desi…

"This paper shares ‘how’ to bring an Enterprise Gamification approach to your organization, building on ‘what’ is Enterprise Gamification, outlined in our earlier paper, ‘Let the games begin: Using game techniques to drive digital transformation’, and demonstrates the tangible benefits of gamification technique to empower employees" - Enterprise …

" online comments can be worth having, if the publisher puts the work in." Excellent case study. Found this stat particularly interesting: "Users who log in, which is required if you want to comment, view seven pages per session on average, while non-registered users make it to only 1.7" I'd suggest that users who both view 4 times as much conte…

"There’s a common misconception out there that user centered design means being led by the user... In some instances, being user centered means ignoring or even going against explicit user wishes in order to better serve the user. Sound confusing? " Then read: - Be user centered, not user led - MindTheProduct

"What astonished him was the level of intimacy inherent in the form. After spending a decade in radio he had assumed that it was the most intimate medium, but he found podcasting to be one step deeper, in that listeners actively subscribe to a show and in doing so feel like they’re joining a club. " - Why Slate went all-in on podcasts while other…

"content marketing is hard... We pour energy and resources into minute gains, instead of focusing our attention on the simple changes that make a huge difference. Today, I’d like to talk about 7 content marketing tips that will get you so much more with so much less. It’s about working smarter, not harder." - 7 Content Marketing Tips: Your Audie…

~"Sleek and graphics-focused, the re-skinned Fusion will feature coverage of pop culture and tech, while also highlighting social-justice causes through verticals like “Justice” and “Voices.”... Part of our overall mission is to be a lab for experimentation and innovation for our parent company. Univision and ABC ... to reach this incredibly dyna…

"build[ing] our brand in the places [the audience] is spending time”—as opposed to publishing everything on a single website and hoping it spreads from there—is not strange in the context of television companies. They’re used to filling channels that they don’t totally control. ... Vox is now publishing directly to social networks and apps; BuzzF…

"Guardian digital editor Aron Pilhofer say killing off comments is a “monumental mistake.”... ... many traditional newsrooms are failing to take full advantage of the web’s ability to create a two-way relationship with readers, and that this is a crucial element of what journalism has become in a digital age... ... "You see site after site movin…

"an inspiring design experiment... Earth: A Primer, a new interactive book for the iPad... instead of simply telling you about geological processes, it actually lets you control them. Each topic’s page pairs text and a simulation... Like a deity in training, you can sculpt mountains, summon rain storms, and move tectonic plates with your fingertip…

"Taboola isn’t the only company trying ... Outbrain, Gravity ... Google and Facebook have their sights set on the same goal... Google Now... will start recommending content from specific partners like The Guardian. The Facebook newsfeed algorithm is designed to do the same." - Taboola gets $117M in funding to build a Google Now for content — Tech…

"David Duncan, coauthor of Build an Innovation Engine in 90 Days, explains how to organize corporate creativity... serendipitous ideas that turn into major innovations do happen, but they’re relatively rare. And the key thing is you don’t want the future of your company to be dependent on strokes of luck or accidental breakthroughs. " - Innovati…

Sets out "... the five characteristics of an innovation that determine its use... how well an innovation addresses these characteristics will determine people's long-term adoption of an innovation." and, for good measure, sets out the implications for design teams of each characteristic, because "Design teams can address many components of thes…

"In How Google Works, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg... focus on hiring, developing and empowering "smart creatives"-professionals with the technical skills to solve problems as well as the imagination to dream up new ideas. ... while senior executives strategize and plan, those plans always fall short. "Since the plan is wrong, the peopl…

Sound familiar? "All it takes is the retirement of one blogger ... and the social web explodes with a mixture of praise, recriminations, eulogies for the death of blogging..." Good piece on how blogging has evolved, in the process pushing forward the evolution of the online world. "bloggers stopped thinking as much about being part of a larger …

With a very nice longform, multimedia html5 presentation to boot. "In this bustling environment, there is less news and more noise. ..." More news but even more noise, rather.

"banks and bank regulators don't seem to be aware of how much danger they're in, or how fast tech is moving to destroy traditional financial services" - TransferWise, Mark Carney, And 'Uber-Type Situation' In Banking - Business Insider

"Get ready for companies that run themselves. But will the autonomous economy set us all free, or just make the rich richer?" Good intro, setting companies like etherum into a wider context and using a hypothetical example to show how a DAO could emerge and propagate. And then it sets alarm bells ringing. "the true economic significance of autom…

Over on Medium, a terrific piece taking apart how bad most hiring processes are, and exploring one experiment with fixing it: hiring hackathons. The actual results were mixed - it was a pilot, after all - but the idea definitely deserves traction for a company like Intrasoft."

"Condé will have editors from its fleet of magazines work directly with marketers to produce branded content.... ... raises another potential tension point: the extent to which journalists should be involved in the business side of publishing. In the media world, the two wings have long had a church-and-state separation." - Conde Nast Unveils Br…

"Twitter video allows users to post up to 30-seconds of video clips directly to Twitter... expect to see videos from live events and breaking news coverage ... also presents an opportunity for marketers to create unique content in a variety of ways..." Most intriguing suggestion: "Crowd-Sourcing Video Content" - Twitter Launching Video and Grou…

Interesting study of "whether having a video go viral leads to long-term success [defined as] increased activity with the brand on the whole.... After 15 days from the creation of a viral video, these brand YouTube channels receive virtually the same amount of attention ... before the viral video was posted... Our data does not support that vira…

Of them all, I particularly like the look of Write Or Die, Wridea & StayFocused, which possibly says more about me than my 5 latest blog posts combined: "These tools will not only provide you with a way to write down your ideas whenever they hit you, but will also enable you to organize your time better and start writing more content through a re…

"decision makers get stuck in a memory loop and can only predict the future as a reflection of the past... A way around... is a speed-dating version of scenario planning, one that takes hours rather than months... get participants out of their usual frame of reference, opening their eyes to a possible future that would require very different type…

"This video would have cost peanuts. Although it’s not something that can be directly applied to most of what we do, it’s here because of what it reminds us: there’s no better comms than filming people loving what you do. Unfortunately, you first need to give them something insanely great. The greatest communications can’t transform fish’n’chips…

This one's a mustread, helping you identify and understand all four 'Dark Tetrad' personality types (everyday sadists, narcissists, Machiavellians & psychopaths). Useful not just for navigating your own organisation, but also that of your client ... "Blessed with a surfeit of confidence and knack for lying, they dazzle in interviews, make great…

"people keep asking about how to start a personal brand... without having a clear understanding of what comes before that, which is actually knowing something about something... To position yourself as an expert is difficult, but most people aren’t asking the first important question, which is: expert in what? ... You have to earn the privilege…

"Starbucks’ first-ever brand campaign, Meet Me at Starbucks ... showcases stories of how people use Starbucks as a meeting point, with an emphasis on the idea that technology brings us together, but there’s nothing quite as authentic as an in-person cup of joe. ... an incredible job of striking an emotional connection with people by associating t…

"reach is an easy-to-see vanity metric and not what you should be focusing on.... Facebook Insights provides some handy numbers, but the most useful ones are somewhat hidden." - 6 tips on Facebook analytics and going beyond...

"Taster is a place for the BBC to try new ways of telling stories, develop new talent, and put new technology through its paces. It also allows the BBC to showcase a range of editorial and technology projects that may have previously remained behind closed doors... Enables the BBC to ... innovating quickly, gaining valuable feedback and respond…