Jeff Nolan
Latest from Jeff Nolan
Gawker Hacked: Seeing Past Your Nose
By now you have probably read that Gawker Media’s password database was hacked and over 1 million usernames and passwords spilled out on to the web. It’s a serious problem because most people don’t have unique passwords for websites they register for, which not only exposes the futility of passwords but also makes a serious ...
A Few Thoughts on Social Media Monitoring
Social Media Monitoring evolved out of the explosion of non-traditional media channels developed in the last decade combined with the increased velocity of information flow as a consequence of viral information sharing. Born of crisis, social media monitoring was initially focused on containing negative news that could quickly envelope a company as a result of ...
SEC Defines Venture Capital
The SEC fulfilled their obligation under the Frank-Dodd financial reform bill and defined what venture capital is. Represents itself to investors as being a venture capital fund. Only invests in equity securities of private operating companies to provide primarily operating or business expansion capital (not to buy out other investors), U.S. Treasury securities with a ...
Locked in Paradigms
Have you noticed that Google looks terribly stale when compared to Facebook? It’s not that Google’s products are weak by comparison but rather the simple fact that Facebook isn’t locked into paradigms imposed by having widely used products that reflect how earlier generations of users see them. More importantly Facebook has a distribution capability that ...
Check in Fatigue
Danny Sullivan wrote up a piece on Foursquare that perfectly encapsulates the issue I have with Foursquare (and their ilk) these days… summed up as “really, who gives a shit?”. I have really made an effort to apply myself to FourSquare and have accumulated a handful of mayorships and a dozen badges in the process… ...
Roadmaps… How Much is Too Much?
One of my favorite services, Feedly, published on their blog the roadmap for their next major release. Obviously this is not a new practice and through various mechanism companies make available for comment their product development process. In recent years the evolution of “ideation” applications has provided companies of all types a powerful capability for ...
Does Paper.li Break Twitter?
I love Paper.li, it’s one of the most innovative and useful services I have seen in a long time. I actually look forward to people I follow coming out with their “The xyz Daily is Out” tweets because they are great information discovery tools. In addition to Techmeme and Feedly various Paper.li editions have become ...
Google, the Wisdom of Crowds and Conventional Wisdom
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about crowdsourcing and whether or not the benefits suggested by proponents are overstated. It’s not that crowdsourcing doesn’t have value, the problem I have with it when applied to generalized questions is that the result often mirrors the conventional wisdom on any given subject. It’s not surprising, we are ...
Is Gap’s New Logo a Crowdsourcing Black Ops?
Here’s an interesting argument… that Gap hoodwinked everyone into signing on to crowdsource a new logo by using their decidedly crappy “new” logo as bait: That’s right. One of the most prominent popular fashion brands is crowdsourcing its new brand logo. So the favorite last-ditch tactic of brands and causes lacking money or new ideas ...