Tweet I am in the process of reviewing John Battelle’s book The Search and rediscovering how it stands out as a classic in a world with too many marketing books that rehash the same dribble. Check out this quote from page 249 that forecast the notion of “cloud computing.” (Remember, this book came out in 2006 before the concept was getting so much press.) According to many leading-edge computer scientists and theorists, the Web is in the process of becoming the next great computing platform

Tweet This past Thursday, I attended in the IAB Mexico’s annual event – IAB Conecta – and learned about Mexico´s online market and some insightful Internet trends overall. These include: 1. YouTube currently has about 300 million users globally and is growing 80% year-over-year 2. YouTube users upload 8 hours of video every 60 seconds, according to speaker Mitch Joel (my friend Pablo Slough actually corrected this statistic saying it is equal to 10 hours of video every 60 seconds, which is equal to 52,000

Tweet Interesting news yesterday in the WSJ and the Silicon Alley Insider about Google moving in on ComScore’s and Nielsen’s terf. With Google having their hands in Google Analytics and all of its user data from search, it’s no wonder that they are offering a new product – Ad Planner – which is currently open to beta users by invite only. The need for tools measuring online audiences is very clear. Server side data often reports that sites get double the traffic that ComScore and

Tweet One great thing about blogging and the web overall is that well-written content can continue being read and discussed long after it originally appeared in print or was first published online. The New Yorker’s Innovation issue is a case in point, especially the profile of Pascal Dangin, the master of retouching fashion photos, entitled Pixel Perfect. One thing that writer Lauren Collins did very well in the article was objectively describe Mr. Dangin’s successful career in building his digital photo retouching company, Box Studios,

Tweet During my recent trip to Spain, I got to know the executives/founders of a two interesting companies: Gonzalo Garcia and Ramon Leonato of GeoVirtual and Eduardo Arcos and Arturo Paniagua of Hipertextual. While they are under-the-radar now, I wouldn’t be surprised if they make it big in the future, especially as Internet penetration increases in Spain and Latin America. Currently, Internet penetration is 45% in Spain and 25% in Mexico. Even though those penetration rates are so low, Spanish represents the 3rd most used

Tweet This article from the Wall Street Journal last week – The Landline That Refused to Leave – reminded me of a question that many friends and colleagues ask me, “how did you get a cell phone with a 212 area code?” About 4 to 5 years ago when I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, I took advantage of the FCC policy that enables consumers to take their landline numbers with them when they move and transfer them to a cell phone number. The “Local

Tweet This article originally appeared on iMediaConnection on Cinco de Mayo and even though the 5th of May has passed, the article provides (I hope) a comprehensive overview of best practices in marketing to US Hispanics online and how marketers can take advantage of some of the new targeting technology. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Do you know what it means? Has it become the “Hallmark Holiday” for marketing to U.S. Hispanics? Since today raises many questions and challenges about marketing to U.S. Hispanics, let’s use

Tweet Last weekend, April 25 and 26, I spoke at the University of Oviedo at a new MBA program in communications and new technologies. During the coffee break on Saturday, I learned something very interesting from Elena, Alfonso, and Igancio, three students from the program. The government of Asturias (one of the states on the Northern coast of Spain) gives 500 Euros to every person between the ages of 18 and 35 as a means of providing them with an educational tool. This includes 350

Tweet During my trip here in Spain, I have learned about two new, innovative companies based in Barcelona that use funny, Spanglish brand names. The first is Bicing (combining the word “bicicleta” or bike in Spanish with the English suffix -ing), which provides rental services for people that want to bike around the city. You sign up on their web site Bicing.com and once you have a card, you can “take out” one of their red bikes from one of their many bike stands around

Tweet When my brother, Andrew, and I were in Madrid, sitting in front of the Reina Sofia Museum, two young women sat down next to us. As they were preparing some signs to put up nearby, they were laughing. What were they doing I asked in Spanish? Looking for a job they told me, using the following flyers with tabs that had a URL on YouTube since there were a number of advertising agencies in the neighborhood. Evidently, Seth Godin’s blog post about “why bother