Thought Leadership

The hype around SXSW each year is impressive to say the least. Having been a person who hadn’t gone before, I had painted a mental picture of mind blowing sessions, countless conversations with high level executives and social parties where everyone seemed to be checking-in or sharing a photo via their smartphones.

Since ancient times, when users were ‘surfers’ and Netscape still roamed the Information Superhighway, screen resolution has been a concern for web developers. It was difficult enough in bygone eras to determine how much content could fit onto a screen before the user was treated to an unseemly scroll bar along the bottom of their browser. A developer had to carefully plan the dimensions of their website to accommodate the four or five monitor resolutions used by the broadest possible audience.

According to the market analysis firm Canalys, nearly 500 million smartphones were shipped worldwide in 2011, compared to (only!) 415 million PCs. The predictions for smartphone sales in 2012 are even higher.

I had the opportunity to site on a fantastic panel yesterday at the Inbound Marketing Summit in NYC. Our main objective for the panel was to talk about how brands can focus on social channels, like Facebook and Twitter, to drive customer engagement and loyalty.

If you use anything Google, including Gmail, you probably received notice of Google’s new privacy policy and terms of service. You may also be privy to the controversy surrounding this change. Google says combining your information across its products will help serve up exactly what you’re searching for. Some see this “trans-product” information collection as an invasion of privacy. Many news sources like Forbes, Gizmodo, and The Washington Post have covered the different sides of the argument. You may have even contributed your own thoughts.