Following a whirlwind week and a half dozen product announcements, you can throw Twitter's attempts to differentiate itself as an "information network" out the window -- there is little doubt the company is now entrenched in serious competition with Facebook for the much grander social networking crown.

SALEM, the very name conjures witches. Witches hanged in the notorious trials of 1692. This city of 41,000 souls is so closely identified with its witch history that flying witch logos adorn police cars and firemen's uniforms — and Salem High School's mascot is, shockingly, a witch.

Creating your personal brand is one of the most fun and exciting projects you will take on. But, like your corporate branding plan, your personal plan needs to be thought out and executed with strategy. I see too many people casually jump into a Twitter account or create a Facebook page without realizing those are the first steps of personal brand building.

Ridgewood, Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC, recently launched an integrated marketing strategy built around its newly redesigned website, www.sothebysrealty.com. The site, said a company spokesperson, gives affiliates the ability to create their own broker, agent, and specialty websites that share the corporate site's innovative features, functionality, look, and feel.

Users on the web are notoriously distracted and hop around from page to page. Mobile users are distracted even further. Their devices are buzzing with push notifications from their apps; text messages and e-mails are constantly popping up on the screen. They might be standing in line at a grocery store, waiting for a movie to start, in a taxi, in an elevator or walking down the street.

Why so much emphasis on social content? For one, there’s so much of it. Google can’t ignore the fact that social content is being created at a breathtaking pace. And because search is all about content, they have to go where the action is.

The release of a pop star's album usually comes with the typical cross-marketing splash — strategic magazine covers, a few major TV appearances, and perhaps a cosmetics or fashion deal to remind the public a new project awaits. Yet the social media-powered blitz connected to this week's drop of Lady Gaga's third album, Born This Way, is bordering on epic, with partnerships ranging from Starbucks to FarmVille, and virtual giveaways of the album's 17 tracks. It also represents the kind of bold, new business model that could help rejuvenate a deflated music industry.

It is so easy to get bogged down by social media marketing. The options are seemingly endless. Constantly creating and finding new content is time consuming, and getting a stronghold on the specifics of each networking platform is tedious at best. Because social media is so imperative to the success of any business or brand, one must use the right tools and be incredibly organized in order to carry out their social media strategy effectively and, ultimately, profitably.

It's not unusual for public libraries to set aside a large section or even an entire room for young readers.  But as the population ages, many librarians are pondering how to better serve older visitors.

Museums and galleries are much in the news, and they should be. They are a critical part of the public sphere, where people can meet, debate, contemplate, and converse. They are fundamental to democracy, to mass political movements, and to the modern evolution of art and science. They are places where urban crowds can discover not only their past but a new dignity and intellectual liberty.

Consumers are obese, but not in the way you might think. They’re over-served and over-branded. They’re stuffed to the gills with logos. The average U.S. supermarket, one right down the road from you, sells as many as 50,000 products. There are 16 varieties of Tropicana Pure Premium juices alone, for example, and PepsiCo will probably up it to 30 before long. That’s over-service. We don’t need it.

One of the fallacies of social media is that you need deep pockets to effectively engage with your audience. There are a whole suite of social media products out there offering social media listening services, analytics, and cross channel platforms either for free or for a fee. The permutations and choices are many with each one claiming to have a definitive solution in managing and understanding social media interactions. The reality is there is no magic pill to make social media engagement easier and scaleable.

The latest alleged trend to set the world in a tizzy is the Crisis of Shorter Attention Spans, a dire development that has been brought about by the rise of the Internet. Or texting. Or iTunes. Or Twitter. Or whatever. I find it hard to get upset about this existential threat to Western civilization, though, perhaps because I'm part of the problem. My attention span is much shorter now than it was a decade ago—and that's just fine with me.

Yesterday, Google introduced a new feature for its Google Places pages: Business Photos, which essentially brings Street View into the interiors of businesses. Just as Google started providing panoramas of the insides of museums with its Google Art Project three months ago, the new Business Photos will enable restaurants, shops, hotels, and other businesses to have a Google photographer come take a panorama of their interiors--for free--and post it to their Places page.

At Fast Company's recent Innovation Uncensored event in New York, the actor-musician-artist Jared Leto shared how social media and technology enable him and his colleagues in the increasingly tough music, TV, and live concert businesses to do whatever the f--- they want. As long as it involves a good story.

In my last post, I spent some time talking about advance sales and discount ticketing strategies, as well as how it’s too easy to train the patron to wait for a better deal if you offer large discounts late in the game.

The new logo is both bold and cost effective, using design-world standards to maximum effect.

Foursquare is a location-based social network that motivates its users to get out and explore a city using three basic concepts – loyalty, encouragement, and discovery. In January of 2011, Foursquare stated on its blog that the company grew 3,400 percent. That's not up to Facebook's numbers, but the platform has made a place for itself in the social media world and has a dedicated base of users around the globe - Foursquare is reportedly nearing 7 million users. Now that it has been around for a while, we were curious to discover what influences users to participate.

"You've got your Groupon and Living Social, and your Foursquare and Facebook Places," says Jonathan Marek. "What our clients are struggling with is: How big a deal are social media and location-based services, and how much of it is just sound and fury?"

Dance Writer: for aspiring choreographers-cum-typography freaks everywhere! We're well aware that 95 percent of you stopped reading after "interpretive dance." Your loss! Because this app, by Dutch type foundry Typotheque, is all kinds of awesome. It uses a real dancer, the lovely Valentina Scaglia of Netherlands Dance Theatre fame, to convert plain-jane text into a sequence of lissome poses that'd do Martha Graham proud, based on the shapes of the letters themselves.

Lookie here:
 

By Suzanne Labarre as seen in Fastcodesign

Youth behavior typically sets many tongues wagging; especially older generations, such as Generation X, who have many prejudices against Generation Y. We would like to challenge some of the common misunderstandings.

Gen Y only put trust in peers

More than 55,000 Facebook users “like” the new Broadway musical Sister Act, which, like most major theatrical productions today, has its own page, as well a Twitter account (1,300 followers), YouTube channel (30,000 uploaded views), and set of apps. (Photoshop your face into a nun’s wimple and win free tickets!)

Facebook offers a great platform for you to develop stronger relationships with your fans and customers, but not all Facebook Fan Pages are alike. Fan Pages in the same industry with the same number of fans can have vastly different communities based on how those pages engage with fans.

Recent years have seen the Cleveland Orchestra reaching out to colleagues in dance, theater, and opera. Now the group is extending a hand across the street, into the realm of visual art.

Yes, for the first time in the history of both institutions, the orchestra and the Cleveland Museum of Art are partnering on a large scale, presenting a series called "Italian Masterworks," in which musical performances will take place in the shadow of the museum's galleries.
 

Written by Geoge Guildford, as seen in Social Media Today

By Barbara Staugger, as seen The Future of Museums  Blog

Working and Playing
In 2009, I was a museum exhibit developer in search of an audience. I had tested out an exhibit at a Maker Faire a year prior, had fun and learned a lot. Serving 60,000 people in two days is a great way to try something on for size.

By Mark Suster as seen in FastCompany

1. Keep it Short -- "It's gotta be short. 30 seconds is good, 60 seconds is worse, 90 seconds is worse, people just do not want to watch long stuff." Doh. I guess this video won't go viral, then!  Again, Jon, "I'm not just talking about video. If you want something to be shared virally on the web it has to be short."

By Martin Lindstrom as seen in Fast Company

By Eliza Bent, as seen in Theatre Communications Group
 
A still image from a promotional video produced by ACT Challenge Regular subscription models are shriveling up.

Plan
Revamp subscriptions by asking the public to pay a small fee per month.

What Worked
Selling a product! People love plastic cards that ensure no financial transaction at the theatre.

What Didn't
Establishing the concept of monthly membership.

By Susan Fabry, as seen on Fastcodesign.com

Women are the next global emerging market.