How should brands engage online?

I caught a piece on eMarketer by Clark Fredricksen today about the dilemma of customer engagement companies face when moving into social media. The basis of the post is found in the video embedded below. Tension ramps up between the desire to have a presence and the need to participate. To quote the post:

Most businesses have realized [...]

Ning vs Facebook – a comparison of social networks at odds.

UPDATED: 10/14/09 with new information about groups.
I developed this comparison (download) of Ning and Facebook for an internal discussion, but figured I’d share it since there didn’t seem to be much on the Internet in terms of a direct breakdown.
As an overview, Ning is a site that easily allows the creation of free private social networks.

Facebook and my enlightenment

http://www.flickr.com/photos/magtravels/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
To go on the record: I hate messages that aren’t email (I don’t really love email, but at least it’s standardized). Facebook messages, twitter DM’s, Linkedin messages and a host of other isolated systemic proprietary messages are perpetual pricks in my side as I attempt to stay connected and informed. Why [...]

Online community or communities?

Online involvement has been on my mind recently, specifically the idea of a “unified online presence” to which you may be thinking “What?!” So let me explain, I’ve had the term in my brain for a bit so I figured I picked it up from this guy, or this guy – but a search reveals [...]

Ikea and Facebook share more then just blue in their logo

I just saw an article on Slate.com comparing how Facebook is similar to Ikea.
I’ll admit that the similarities are not apparent at first sight. But a defining idea behind Wikipedia, Facebook, and blogging platforms such as WordPress is that if you give people the right tools, they’ll use them to create wonderful things in collaboration [...]