Latest publications
Read my latest stories for The Wall Street Journal, Passcode, The Harvard Business Review, JSTOR Daily and more.
Where are you at?
I have become so habituated to referring to people in my tweets as @robcottingham, @morganbrayton, @kk etc. that I'm starting to think of "at" as part of my friends' names. You know, the way Spanish names often include "de la" or Hebrew names include a "Ben" this or...
The next frontier in hierarchy-busting with social media
Lots of organizations suffer from the pain of incorporating social media into command-and-control structures. The very structures that were once a source of organizational efficiencies are not only superceded by technologies that make those efficiences irrelevant;...
Wanted: LadyJoiners
My life is basically a series of social network and web app sign-ups, with a few friends, colleagues and tasks stuffed into the interstitial moments. So the arrival this week of Path -- what some people might consider YAFSN (Yet Another F*ing Social Network) -- was my...
Tweeting the daily life of our future-ancient world
Bill Caraher's post on Historical Figures in Social Media drew my attention to a bevvy of ancient worlders now tweeting away: iTweetus (a Roman soldier), iHerodotus (Greek historian), and Plutarch (ditto). I love the mashup of old-nerd-meets-new-nerd, which reminds me...
If we didn’t have computers…
LOVE Social Media but If we didn't have computers-wouldn't need #SocialMediab/c we wouldn't have stopped being social in the 1st place. When I first shared this interesting tweet from online pal Brenda Johima, it was with some reservations. After mulling it over for a...
Crowdsourcing my identity: an art experiment
The phenomenon of Pecha Kucha -- presentations in which a speaker addresses 20 slides for 20 seconds each -- has overtaken unconferences and WhateverCamps as the hottest format for professional gatherings. So I was interested to see a Pecha Kucha veteran tackle the...
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’…
Adding images to blog posts with Skitch, Zemanta and Flickr
Imagine I wanted to write a blog post about how to do something online. (I know it's a stretch, but bear with me.) If I really wanted me reader to follow what I'm blogging about, I'd need to include screenshots. The typical workflow, on a mac, would look something...
8 ways to make RockMelt an even better social web browser