• Brands owners should find "one way to compete"
  "Research by Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, of Booz and Co, found manufacturers that emphasise short-term revenue gains and move into categories outside of their fields of expertise generally run the risk of failure."
  (tags: business strategy)

• Schooloscope
  "Schooloscope is still a work in progress. So far, we only have information about state schools in England, but we hope to add more soon."
  (tags: data statistics community infographics)
• Ray Chambers: the Model Collaborative Leader – Imagining the Future of Leadership – Harvard Business Review
  "I also believe that our current MBA programs do not sufficiently help our students develop cross entity collaborative skills. At the Harvard Business School, for instance, we teach cases on individual entities where there's typically a manager with authority, but we rarely teach how to build collaborations across entities (multiple companies, non-profits, government entities, foundations) to accomplish a specific goal."
  (tags: business leadership)

Picture by "stoicviking"

What: Ruby in the Pub
When: Tuesday, May 25th, 7pm
Where: The Shooting Star, Spitalfields (streetview)
Why: More hacks learning to hack!

*FREE*
No registration/sign-up necessary – just turn up!

We had such a fantastic response to last month’s  Ruby in the Pub (#ritp or #rubyinthepub) – thank you so much to all the wonderful people that turned up.

I’m hoping we get an equally good turn out this time!

Remember: Just turn up with your laptop and, if you have one, an extension lead. Also, downloading Hackety Hack before you arrive is advised.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

• The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook
  How data in Facebook is increasingly being made public.
  (tags: facebook privacy)
• The new face of venture capital: The rise of crowdfunding | VentureBeat
  2Conventional VC networks and outlier identification produce poor returns. (This is due, in part, to financiers’ Pavlovian reaction to entrepreneurs with a diploma from a top-tier school.) As we move forward, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding will be used to augment or replace traditional methods and create the high-return VC of the future.2
  (tags: business)
• About New York – Creating a Network Like Facebook, Only Private – NYTimes.com
  A few months back, four geeky college students, living on pizza in a computer lab downtown on Mercer Street, decided to build a social network that wouldn’t force people to surrender their privacy to a big business.
  (tags: facebook privacy socialnetworking)
• The Sunday Times Scotland job cuts
  "Politics, general news and sport are to retain a presence of one reporter each but the bulk face the chop within a period said to be 30 days."
  (tags: newscorp business)
• Twitter to Launch Twitter Business Center
  "One of the biggest additions is the ability for businesses to accept direct messages on the service, even from people they don’t follow."
  (tags: twitter business socialmedia)
• LOLCat King on What Makes Internet Culture Viral
  But Internet culture isn’t just for the Internet anymore. These days, the intersection between online and mainstream media is evermore blurry as celebrities jump onto Twitter (Twitter) and TV shows pull meme content into storylines.
  (tags: viral)
• Older Users Hear Facebook Is Bad News
  According to one study, adults ages 35 and older hear more bad news about Facebook than good. Between bugs, changes and privacy fear, uncertainty and doubt in the media, these mature folks have heard significantly more negative reports than have their younger counterparts.
  (tags: facebook socialmedia)
• Verizon Wireless, Google Work on Tablet – WSJ.com
  Google has said it is working with hardware makers and carriers to create lightweight computers that run its software. As rivals such as Apple Inc. introduce tablets like the iPad, the Internet giant is seeking to spur the adoption of its online software and advertising system through its own partnerships.
  (tags: google ipad)

• Center for Social Media at American University
  We investigate, showcase and set standards for socially engaged media-making. We organize conferences and convenings, publish research, create codes of best practices, and incubate media strategies.
  (tags: socialmedia)

• iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
  "Swiping for the next article is derived from a strong print metaphor in many content apps. In fact, this metaphor is so strong that you can't even tap a headline on the "cover" page to jump to the corresponding article. The iPad offers no homepages, even though users strongly desired homepage-like features in our testing. (They also often wanted search, which was typically not provided.)

  In electronic media, the linear concept of "next article" makes little sense. People would rather choose for themselves where to go, selecting from a menu of related offerings.

  (tags: ipad usability mobile)
• This Is Twitter, There Are Rules: How AFP Stole a Photographer's Work, Then Sued Him | Fast Company
  Here's where we get to the more meta-journalist stuff. AFP claims that Twitter's Terms of Service allows third parties to republish any materials posted to Twitter. That's wrong, in the first place, but even more damning is that Morel didn't upload the photos to Twitter–he uploaded them to TwitPic, which is not owned by Twitter in any way, and which has its own terms of service that clearly say "all images are copyright their respective owners."
  (tags: copyright journalism twitter)

• The Media Blog: Full Report: UK media and the election
  asked whether their use of social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook have increased their involvement and interest in political discussion an overwhelming 82 per cent said 'yes'.
  (tags: trust journalism socialnetworking)