Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Who Are You Online? A 360-Degree View
Who are you when you go online? That’s a question that goes way beyond how you feel in your own…
3 ways you can use Pinterest
In my Friday post for Harvard Business Review, I provided companies with some ideas about how they could use Pinterest to connect with customers. Today, I want to suggest 3 ways to use Pinterest personally: Compile a list of purchases before deciding what to buy; or...
3 features that would make Pinterest even more useful
Today in the Harvard Business Review, I invite companies to meet your Pinterest customer -- me! I've been using Pinterest for over a year, after I was introduced to it by Samantha Lefort, a talented designer and Emily Carr University alum. My experience using...
5 ways to make task management software work for you
I have a love-hate relationship with task management software. On the one hand, I'm kind of obsessed with it: trying out new task and project management tools is one of my favorite pastimes, and it's hard for me to resist trying out each shiny new entry in the market....
Stop worrying about your kids’ online future
I'm one of more than a thousand Internet experts who contributed thoughts about our emergent digital world to the 2012 Elon University-Pew Internet & American Life study on the future of the Internet. My comments were picked up in the Globe and Mail and MindShift,...
3 reasons to check out the latest research on social media and food
In the past, ethnicity and family traditions dictated the foods we prepared; we bought our groceries at a neighborhood store; we learned our recipes from “mom” or a cookbook; and we ate our meals together around a table. In contrast, today social media introduces us...
Save your laptop from reclining airplane seats
I live in fear of my laptop getting crunched on an airplane. How many times have I been working away when the person in front of me suddenly reclines, threatening to trap the top edge of my laptop and break my screen? I thought my 11" MacBook Air would save me, but...
S.E.O. is payback for teenage freaks
Today I was catching up with my colleague Haig Armen when he asked me if I knew Steve Andersen. "You mean, Steve Andersen from Salesforce?" I asked. ["You mean, Steve Anderson of Open Media?" my husband asked later.] "No, Steve Anderson of Get Mental Notes," Haig...
Infographics against infographics
I am super in love with the Pinterest collection of social media infographics compiled by Irene Koehler. But the ever-growing excitement about social media infographics isn't all good news: along with the gems there are some absolute crimes against infographicality....
Be the e-mailer you wish to see in the world
How many people do you receive e-mail from that you read and reply to every single time? I'm guessing it's just a handful: Your best friend -- the one who sends you short periodic updates with a single recent photo, not the one who sends you weekly 2-pagers. The...
The Harvard Business Review
Who Are You Online? A 360-Degree View
Who are you when you go online? That’s a question that goes way beyond how you feel in your own…
3 ways you can use Pinterest
In my Friday post for Harvard Business Review, I provided companies with some ideas about how they could use Pinterest to connect with customers. Today, I want to suggest 3 ways to use Pinterest personally: Compile a list of purchases before deciding what to buy; or...
3 features that would make Pinterest even more useful
Today in the Harvard Business Review, I invite companies to meet your Pinterest customer -- me! I've been using Pinterest for over a year, after I was introduced to it by Samantha Lefort, a talented designer and Emily Carr University alum. My experience using...
5 ways to make task management software work for you
I have a love-hate relationship with task management software. On the one hand, I'm kind of obsessed with it: trying out new task and project management tools is one of my favorite pastimes, and it's hard for me to resist trying out each shiny new entry in the market....
Stop worrying about your kids’ online future
I'm one of more than a thousand Internet experts who contributed thoughts about our emergent digital world to the 2012 Elon University-Pew Internet & American Life study on the future of the Internet. My comments were picked up in the Globe and Mail and MindShift,...
3 reasons to check out the latest research on social media and food
In the past, ethnicity and family traditions dictated the foods we prepared; we bought our groceries at a neighborhood store; we learned our recipes from “mom” or a cookbook; and we ate our meals together around a table. In contrast, today social media introduces us...
Save your laptop from reclining airplane seats
I live in fear of my laptop getting crunched on an airplane. How many times have I been working away when the person in front of me suddenly reclines, threatening to trap the top edge of my laptop and break my screen? I thought my 11" MacBook Air would save me, but...
S.E.O. is payback for teenage freaks
Today I was catching up with my colleague Haig Armen when he asked me if I knew Steve Andersen. "You mean, Steve Andersen from Salesforce?" I asked. ["You mean, Steve Anderson of Open Media?" my husband asked later.] "No, Steve Anderson of Get Mental Notes," Haig...
Infographics against infographics
I am super in love with the Pinterest collection of social media infographics compiled by Irene Koehler. But the ever-growing excitement about social media infographics isn't all good news: along with the gems there are some absolute crimes against infographicality....
Be the e-mailer you wish to see in the world
How many people do you receive e-mail from that you read and reply to every single time? I'm guessing it's just a handful: Your best friend -- the one who sends you short periodic updates with a single recent photo, not the one who sends you weekly 2-pagers. The...
OneZero
Don’t blame the Internet for infidelity
The Petraeus drama reflects the enticements and betrayals of our new, disembodied modes of discourse. The come-ons, the flirtations, the stalking, the alleged harassment: all were abetted by the deceptive cloak of cyberspace, and all were immortalized there. It’s a...
Smartphones have transported us from an offline third place
Public transit used to be a version of what Ray Oldenburg calls a “third place”: a neutral space, neither work nor home, in which conversation and community can unfold. Have smartphones changed that?
6 ways to speed up your social media response times
Speed is essential to developing the right social media campaign, response or update. In my last post, I looked at how the right kind of market research program can support faster and more responsive social media management, inspired by The Quick and the Dead, a new...
Why the speed of research matters in social media
How quickly do you have to reply to a critical tweet? How long does it take for the right video to go viral? How often do you have to update your company's Facebook page? Speed is at the heart of many of the questions that come up over and over again in social media....
Should copyediting be part of your social media strategy?
I'll admit it: I'm a grammar nazi. When I see a poorly punctuated tweet, I cringe, and when I see a blog post with a comma splice in the title, I want to tear my hair out. I've fantasized about a supper club for copy editors -- the folks like me and my husband, who...
A new path to social media insight at Vision Critical
People who post frequently on Facebook and Twitter are more than 3 times as likely to care about being the most fashionable person in the room, compared to more passive social media users. That was one of the surprising findings that came out of a major social media...
5 questions about your personal brand and your day job
My latest for the Wall Street Journal addresses the challenges that companies face in managing "co-branded" employees: employees who have built a significant reputation and following through social media. The story covers a range of issues managers need to consider,...
How quickly should you reply to email?
I'm a judgemental email sender and an anxious email recipient. When I send someone an email, I judge them based on their response time: instant? slow? eternal? And by judgement, let me be clear: I'm not judging them on their email skills alone. Increasingly, I use...
JSTOR DAILY
Don’t blame the Internet for infidelity
The Petraeus drama reflects the enticements and betrayals of our new, disembodied modes of discourse. The come-ons, the flirtations, the stalking, the alleged harassment: all were abetted by the deceptive cloak of cyberspace, and all were immortalized there. It’s a...
Smartphones have transported us from an offline third place
Public transit used to be a version of what Ray Oldenburg calls a “third place”: a neutral space, neither work nor home, in which conversation and community can unfold. Have smartphones changed that?
6 ways to speed up your social media response times
Speed is essential to developing the right social media campaign, response or update. In my last post, I looked at how the right kind of market research program can support faster and more responsive social media management, inspired by The Quick and the Dead, a new...
Why the speed of research matters in social media
How quickly do you have to reply to a critical tweet? How long does it take for the right video to go viral? How often do you have to update your company's Facebook page? Speed is at the heart of many of the questions that come up over and over again in social media....
Should copyediting be part of your social media strategy?
I'll admit it: I'm a grammar nazi. When I see a poorly punctuated tweet, I cringe, and when I see a blog post with a comma splice in the title, I want to tear my hair out. I've fantasized about a supper club for copy editors -- the folks like me and my husband, who...
A new path to social media insight at Vision Critical
People who post frequently on Facebook and Twitter are more than 3 times as likely to care about being the most fashionable person in the room, compared to more passive social media users. That was one of the surprising findings that came out of a major social media...
5 questions about your personal brand and your day job
My latest for the Wall Street Journal addresses the challenges that companies face in managing "co-branded" employees: employees who have built a significant reputation and following through social media. The story covers a range of issues managers need to consider,...
How quickly should you reply to email?
I'm a judgemental email sender and an anxious email recipient. When I send someone an email, I judge them based on their response time: instant? slow? eternal? And by judgement, let me be clear: I'm not judging them on their email skills alone. Increasingly, I use...
THE VERGE
How Email destroyed the world
I spent the last day of Western Civilization addressing the very phenomenon that caused our collective downfall: email. On November 8th—Election Day—I spent six hours in a rented studio in Manhattan, taping a new class for Skillshare. Email Productivity: Work Smarter...
Resistance is futile: A success story
Sometimes success looks like a little boy sobbing his eyes out. This success story begins yesterday morning, when Peanut showed up at school in his Halloween costume: a Borg cube. For those of you who aren’t Star Trek fans, let me explain that the Borg are a race of...
In The Orange Dot: Is my kid addicted to tech or am I just old?
Even adults can get obsessed with their social media analytics. So what do you do when your kids start measuring their every online move.
Rock Bottom
When we finally pulled Peanut out of public school at the end of Grade 2, I thought we’d reached rock bottom. We had a 7-year-old with a basket of diagnoses and labels: anxiety, ADHD, sensory processing issues, tic disorder, fine motor lags and a 99.99th percentile...