I’ve been one of the greatest proponents of turning web properties like Facebook and Google into platforms that can anchor a rich ecosystem of applications developed. That was the strategy that helped make Microsoft a fortune from Windows and the one that enabled Apple to keep its PC business alive long enough to launch the […]

We all know, or at least are learning, how hard it is for advertisers to penetrate social networks. Many of the experiments taking place on these networks are an attempt to see if the community can at all be engaged around an action that leads to a sale that rings a cash register somewhere. While […]

There is a brand new book out by Martin Lindstom that sets out to uncover the “truth and lies about what we buy.” The book is the result of a 3 year, $7 million research project on something called neuromarketing which uses science (MRI technology to be exact) to really see what is going on […]

Ten years after its founding, the search giant has not one, but three books, that are nicely reviewed in last weekend’s Financial Times. Randall Stross has the business history which according to the review nicely describes the evolution of the company and benefits from “rare insider access.” Then there’s another one by a French intellectual—the […]