5 signs that you’ve mastered the art of online discretion

I sometimes think that the most useful preparation for my career in social media came not from my academic research into online politics, but rather, my practical experience with electoral politics. Working on the political staff of a senior elected official (the...

The Core Tenets of the Social Web, 25 years in the making

This post originally appeared on the Harvard Business Review. We like to think of the social web as green fields in which we are just now sowing best practices and first principles. After all, if there are no hard-and-fast rules, then anything goes. We get to come up...

Why I’m happy to pay for the New York Times

My latest blog post for the Harvard Business Review is a celebration of the New York Times’ new paywall. OK, maybe not a celebration of the paywall itself, but a celebration of the decision to alpha test the paywall on Canadian readers. This news gave me the...

Don’t try this at home: Implementing the e-mail vendetta

Today I declared war on e-mail. Well, not all e-mail: just the tyrannical assumption that we should all reply to every single message we reply. In a blog post for the Harvard Business Review, I called for a vendetta on the mandatory universal reply. That means...

Today in HBR: 6 social media choices you have to make in 2011

What am I choosing to do on the Web? That’s one of the key choices you’ll need to make this year, as we set the course for how social media will integrate into our lives and reshape the world. In my blog post today for HBR,  Social Media in 2011: Six...

Santa goes to Best Buy

Early adopters are the hardest folks to shop for. As an early adopter married to yet another early adopter, we struggle to find good gifts, since we own every gadget we need, and many we don’t. That’s why you’ve got to surprise us with something so...

The Devolving Meaning of Social Media

The headline in yesterday’s New York Times business section was instantly exciting: "Kleiner Perkins and Partners Create $250 Million ‘Social’…