Thought Leader

It seems that effective monetising of websites may still be a hit and miss affair. In an interesting article on Brand Republic the discussion is about a video site called Hulu. According to projected ad revenue figures Hulu will be earning as much if not more advertising revenue in 2009 than YouTube will. What is…

NO ONE could hold it against you if you hadn’t noticed the extent to which our news media are in crisis. After all, the traditional media are no longer the source of your really important news any more. And by “really important” I mean really important to YOU. Of course, the headlines of the day…

One the world’s most revered brands, you’d think Google would employ best practice in setting up a local office. Not so. The search giant’s presence here is marked by a lack of local development, no commitment to equity and a company structure that sees revenues originated in this market shipped offshore. In this opinion: Google…

Google’s presence in SA is marked by controversy and confusion as its commitment to equity, skills transfer and development is questioned.

Some time back I heard of a group of people on the internet who were spending their time creating graphs of songs titles and lyrics and posting them online – in fact there was a whole song chart pool on Flickr that was collecting them all. As a closet geek with a passion for music,…

(This piece originally appeared on tonylankester.com) South African blogger Donn Edwards is being sued for libel by a timeshare company called Quality Vacation Club (QVC) after he wrote of his experience with the company. I have no axe to grind with the timeshare industry. But if they bend the rules and dupe people into buying…

It can be enormously confusing when you first set out to liberate yourself. Having a full-featured office that is not an office at all is a contradiction and a challenge — but also an enormously satisfying goal once it is achieved. The first few times you hit the road (or a restaurant, airline or conference)…

It struck me the other day when I read a message from a friend on Facebook. “Who’s Alan?” he wrote. Alan? I wondered. Alan? I don’t know any Alans. I went back over what I had written to him. I was explaining why I needed a polio shot and other vaccinations, according to my new…

It’s difficult today to grasp that just 20 years ago most of us were stuck in the same office set-up that had ruled the business world for a century. In this first of a series of excerpts from my new book, The Mobile Office, the argument goes that even the internet was not the real…

A group of American bloggers will be arriving at the end of the month to create what the International Marketing Council hopes will be some very entertaining and informative web content – words, pictures, audio and video — about South Africa. The idea is have a dozen smart, creative and credible people record their impressions…