Any startup company is agile by design and necessity. There are certain characteristics of a startup that make an agile approach come naturally, and allows startups to achieve far more in a month than some larger companies do in a quarter. Paying attention to these key principles, one can encourage the startup approach in larger organisations - not just in the design and development teams, but beyond to all areas of the business.As a disclaimer, let me say upfront: this ...

Many brands are struggling with the burden of social networking and the power it has put in the hands of the consumer. In days of old, you phoned a customer complaint line, and they told you that they were recording the call for quality assurance. Your complaint usually fell on deaf ears, because brands weren't that worried about a private phone call between the company and an individual.Now imagine broadcasting that recorded message to a possible listenership of 500-million ...

Two of China's leading internet companies, Tencent and Qihoo, have been forced by the Chinese authorities to issue public apologies over a nasty spat marked by accusations of unfair market practices and privacy infringement.Tencent, China's premier online game operator and its largest instant messaging provider, and security software developer Qihoo 360 issued the apologies late on Sunday after being ordered to do so by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.The Ministry said both companies need to "strengthen professional ethics" ...

Gary Vaynerchuk, the famous host of Wine Library TV, a daily internet webcast on the subject of wine, mentioned in his SXSW 2010 keynote that inevitably we’re all going to be in one industry i.e. customer service. I have to agree, over the last five years, the internet has become more a platform for people to express their opinions and less about porn and music.Even more so, by empowering the average consumer, the internet has become a reverse ...

Internet search behemoth Google said social media was "absolutely" part of its strategy and would be embedded in "many of our products" but played down its rivalry with networking icon Facebook.Chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said that Google was at the centre of an exploding digital economy where computer power was "relentlessly, dramatically increasing" and innovation was crucial to survival."Search is clearly the core product of Google but many of our other products are having phenomenal trajectories," Pichette told Australian ...

After months of top secret development, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. appears poised to take the wraps off a digital newspaper for the iPad called "The Daily".News Corp. has been tight-lipped about the project but the Australian-born media mogul acknowledged its existence for the first time in an interview last week with his Fox Business Network.Asked what "exciting projects" his sprawling media and entertainment company was working on, the 79-year-old Murdoch cited The Daily but offered no further information about the ...

A Chinese woman sentenced to a year in a labour camp could be the first person in the country persecuted over a tweet, human rights groups said Friday, as Beijing tightens its grip on social media.Cheng Jianping, 46, was convicted on Monday of "disturbing social order" after she retweeted a Twitter posting that mocked anti-Japanese protesters and suggested they attack the Japanese pavilion at Shanghai's World Expo."To my knowledge it is the first time ... someone was sent to labour ...

"Queen of the Net" and acclaimed web analyst Mary Meeker delivered one of her landmark presentations on worldwide internet trends at a recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. When Meeker speaks, people listen. They listen very carefully. Meeker has become famous for her incisive presentations on the state of the internet, bringing it all together in a way that makes sense.In "Ten Questions Internet Execs Should Ask & Answer", Meeker touches on the state of the web worldwide and ...

On October 29th 2010, a fan posted on Afro-Soul singer Simphiwe Dana’s Facebook wall this message: "I love the fact that you actually interact with us. Happy to be your friend" With social media making it easier to reach superstars, the ones who see the value of interaction are the ones who reap the rewards of the medium.Simphiwe recently posted an update on her Facebook status, lamenting the fact that she was finding it hard to find a good ...

There is no doubt in my mind that the topic of curation and the Internet, is an important one and that it will be a dominant topic in 2011.Curation is important because we are reaching the limits of what can be achieved through algorithms and machines in organising and navigating the Internet.Aggregation looks like curation but it's not.I define curation as a person, or a group of people, engaged in choosing and presenting a collection of things related to a ...