Mitch Joel

When was the last time you discussed Time Magazine around the dinner table?

I found myself giving a dissertation on mass media at dinner the other night. It all started when one friend leaned into the table and spoke (in an almost embarrassed whisper), "Did any of you see the...

It's funny how things fall together.

I found out that Julie Burstein, the author of Spark - How Creativity Works and creator of the radio program Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen for Public Radio International, was going to be a speaker at this past year's...

What makes media a social media?

There's a long-standing answer to this question. For some, it seems both obvious and clear as day. If you ask someone what social media is, they will inevitably say that it's all about the conversation. I'm no longer bullish on this notion of conversation...

The business of selling is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

When you think about e-commerce, how does it make you feel? Do you feel that it's still a fairly nascent part of the retail experience or do you think that it has matured to the point where...

The robots have landed.

It should come as no surprise to you that some of the traffic to your websites and mobile apps are not a real human being. There are spiders out there crawling websites to index them, there are malicious hackers poking and prodding away to find a...

Is your head buried in your lap?

After attending the TED 2012 conference in Long Beach, California last week, I could not help but think about how pervasive technology and media is in our lives. Surprisingly, I have not been thinking about it in the best possible light. If...

Marketers don't control their brand... the consumer does.

It's been the battle cry of social media enthusiasts since The Cluetrain Manifesto was first published over a decade ago. If "markets are conversations," as the book says, then we can't be so presumptuous as to assume that the marketers...

If you publish online get ready for a lesson in humility.

Brands quit publishing content for the exact same reason that many individuals stop publishing content: the brutal reality that nobody cares. As someone who creates and publishes a lot of content online (roughly six blog posts and one...

Is it just a question of getting the facts straight when it comes to our media?

What blogging brought forth is the notion that opinion lies neatly next to news (and that it is sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between the two). In fact, it's worth arguing that...

It's hard not to hit a like button and come across a social expert, guru, or ninja.

Even the discourse around the value of those job descriptions have taken over the social media conversation over the years. I've been called one (if not all) of those titles many times, and...

Read. Read. Read.

Blog posts are great. So are Twitter, online newspapers and magazines and the occasional podcast, but if you really want to deep-dive into a topic and spend more than a grazing moment with it, you have to read a well-written book about the topic that interests...

Brands and popular individuals have done a great job of mucking up their reputation via social media.

It's something that is not going to end anytime soon, either (sadly). Whether it's a Weinergate or Kenneth Cole choosing a bad time to promote a new line of clothing, this...

Is there a sure-fire way to be successful using Twitter?

Business books, blog posts, magazine articles, Tumblr feeds, newspaper articles, TV news segments and yes, even tweets, have been written about what it takes for both individuals and brands to be successful on Twitter. Allow me to sum...

How many mindless presentations have you sat through in business and life?

How many numbing slides have you had to endure of pie charts or ones littered with hundreds of words? How many times have you sat through a presentation in which the speaker was, literally, reading aloud the content...

Whether it's the Arab Spring, the Tea Party movement or Occupy Wall Street, what is it about leaderless organizations that makes it all seem so strange to us?

In 2006, I made the six hour drive from Montreal to Boston to attend the first PodCamp Boston...

Television has always been based on two pillars:

1. Destination. From "Must See TV" to your favorite sitcoms on Thursday night, you could always tell what the conversation around the water cooler was going to be based on the schedule set forth in TV Guide. We do things (like...

No loyalty? Don't like these bargain-hunting customers? Don't blame Groupon.

I have no desire for another daily deal on a pedicure, manicure, hair removal or a Lebanese meal, but I am still interested in seeing what new businesses in my area are open and what they're offering. And, if...

The comic book industry teaches us many lessons about New Media and the new consumer.

Are you familiar with the comic book, Superman: Red Son? It was released in 2003 to critical acclaim and became a nomination for the 2004 Eisner Award for best limited series. This three-issue...

Is everything moving full circle back to the Web?

It's hard to get excited about something called, HTML5, but if you're in the business of media, marketing and/or advertising, you should be excited. Very excited. The past few years have seen some very interesting shifts from the importance of...

Why is it that the majority of online news sources all look the same?

There is no doubt that news as we know it has forever changed because anyone and everyone can report on an incident live and in the moment. It's hard for the most respected traditional media outlets...