Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week. This week discusses how technology is shaping our online behavior and options.
#5: Report: Meaningless Facebook Comments Are Cornerstone Of Useful Networks
According to a new report from the National IT User Center at Uppsala University, those useless (and frequently annoying) updates and Tweets actually serve to make us feel closer to those people than we otherwise would. ““The portrait, comments, and updates provide constant reminders of the existence of ‘friends.’ The content is not all that important, but the effect is that we perceive our Facebook friends as closer than other acquaintances who are not on Facebook,” explains Doctoral Candidate Håkan Selg, who compiled the report.
Link: All Facebook
#4: Now even more ways to customize your LinkedIn profile
The professional networking site LinkedIn announced this week that it has introduced some new tweaks for your profile. Given that, according to Jobvite’s 2010 Social Recruiting survey, 65% of companies will use LinkedIn for recruiting it’s important to squeeze every drop of effectiveness out of your profile as possible.
Link: The LinkedIn Blog
#3: The Time Is Ripe For A Chief Marketing Technologist
This concept came from Mitch Joel who borrowed it from Scott Brinker. Joel (and I) found that Brinker’s message resonated: “Marketing has become deeply entwined with technology. This didn’t happen overnight; it’s been sneaking up on us for a while. But because technology had been so tangential to marketing management for most of our history, the organizational structure of marketing has been slow to adjust to this new technology-centric reality. But we’ve clearly reached a tipping point. To fully reap the benefits of this Golden Age, marketing must officially take ownership of its technology platforms and strategies. And the first step of such ownership is to appoint someone to lead it. Enter the chief marketing technologist.”
Link: Six Pixels of Separation
#2: Steve Job’s Epic 5-Minute Anti-Google Rant
This snippet from Apple’s earning conference call earlier this week is setting the table for the next entry. It may seem that I quote Steve Jobs a lot in this blog, and I do because I think Apple, Google, and Facebook are the juggernauts that are defining how the Internet is going to continue to evolve. In this case, Jobs is articulating a fundamental difference in business strategies between Apple and Google regarding how applications are supported on their respective devices. According to Jobs, Apple is providing an “integrated” solution (as opposed to “closed”), while Google’s Android OS is providing a fractured (as opposed to “open”) solution. He asserts that users prefer integrated over fractured.
#1: Is an App a Tool or a Behavior?
John Jantsch wrote the forward for a new book titled, “App Savvy.” Jantsch says, “The first step to becoming app savvy is to recognize why the app category is red-hot and here to stay, and why you need to think in terms of tapping app behavior to package, repackage, purpose, and repurpose everything that a mobile social consumer wants to do—and even a few things they don’t know they want to do.” The combination of Jobs’ earnings call rant and this post led me to link them together in my article, “Why Developers Could Be Your Best Friend.”
Link: Duct Tape Marketing